Neal Freiman
Appearances
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, where are all the Canadian tourists? Why our neighbors up north are snubbing Miami for Mallorca.
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
If C's get degrees, then U.S. infrastructure may snag that diploma after all. The country's ports, roads, public transit, parks, and other aspects of infrastructure received an overall C grade from the American Society of Civil Engineers, which releases a U.S. infrastructure report card every four years.
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
It may not be a report card your mom would hang on the fridge, but it is a slight improvement from the last review in 2021 when the U.S. earned a C-. The American Society of Civil Engineers said that the bipartisan infrastructure bill passed during Joe Biden's presidency, which authorized $1.2 trillion in funding for projects,
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
was key to improving the country's GPA, as were funds doled out by the Inflation Reduction Act. As anyone who's tried to use Amtrak WiFi knows, there is still a lot of room for improvement.
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
The Society of Civil Engineers used this report card to call on the government to continue funding infrastructure projects, especially at a time when the Trump administration has put on hold some of the infrastructure bill's funds. The group claims that better infrastructure is an efficient investment of taxpayer dollars that results in a stronger economy and prioritizes American jobs.
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
Tobias, someone who's familiar with getting Cs, what do you think the U.S. can learn from this report card?
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
I love efficient drinking.
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
Let's run down some of these categories. So there were 18 categories reviewed. The nation's ports received the highest grade of any form of infrastructure with a B. And the other B, which was a B minus, was rail infrastructure. Bridges, broadband, drinking water systems, hazardous waste treatment, things like public parks all got a C plus to a C minus.
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
And then let's roll it down to the D plus or a D. Dams, roads, schools, infrastructure for aviation, stormwater, transit, and wastewater all got D plus or Ds. So that's kind of where we're standing. We'd love to bump those up a little bit more. But it was very interesting to hear some criticism of this report from certain areas. This these people just love to spend money.
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
Maybe spending money is not the most efficient use to improve our infrastructure. There are other tools and levers you can pull to improve infrastructure. One of them, as an example, might be something like the New York City's congestion pricing that they've just put into place. That didn't necessarily cost a lot of money. It did not cost anywhere significant.
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
near into the trillions that this group wants. But it may improve infrastructure by reducing the amount of cars on the roads, leading to fewer repairs for bridges and tunnels and raising money to improve those as well.
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
So it is, you know, you don't think necessarily of criticism of the folks who are just putting out a report card, but there might be other ways to improve infrastructure than just by spending trillions of dollars.
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
If LaGuardia's new terminal is any indication.
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
You're going to start to hear another word creep up that you may not have heard for a few years, and that word is vibe session. That was around a lot during the Biden years when people were feeling pretty bad about the economy, but all the numbers look good. So there was this weird delta between how the vibes and the actual economic data. That's kind of what we're seeing now.
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
economic data itself, the hard data, which Jerome, what that Jerome Powell calls it, is looking pretty much fine. Strong labor market spending is OK. So we'll see whether those two converge in the months ahead.
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
President Trump said he would launch an investigation of Tuesday's shocking revelation that the Atlantic's editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, was somehow added to a signal group chat in which top officials discussed a plan to bomb Houthi targets in Yemen.
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
But the message from the Trump administration yesterday was mostly, this is not a big deal, nothing to see here, as Democrats and other national security experts warned it was a massive and extremely embarrassing breach of tightly guarded information. A legal battle kicked off after five members of Trump's cabinet were sued for violating U.S.
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
laws meant to safeguard government records by using Signal, a commercial app for official communications.
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
Do you remember what Fluffy's one job was? Protecting the Sorcerer's Stone, obviously. Don't test me.
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
I'm not a conspiracy theorist. They do have an incentive to not let people. try to delete their DNA samples from this database.
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
Obviously, you know, I assume that they are not doing this intentionally, but just the volume of people that are going onto the website that saw 23andMe go bankrupt, oh, I need to go delete my DNA sample from their database, has just been huge and it overloaded their website. And you're right, it's just been a house of horrors for the last few years and it's only picked up in the last few days.
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
Finally, here's an aviation horror story you've never heard before. On Saturday, a United Airlines plane bound for Shanghai from Los Angeles made a U-turn over the Pacific Ocean after about two hours and diverted to San Francisco. And the reason is that the pilot realized they forgot their passport. In San Francisco, the plane got a new crew and made it to Shanghai about six hours late.
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
Sophos provides three layers of cybersecurity. One head is powerful AI-driven protection that targets threats before they become threats.
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
But this was super embarrassing. Passengers said they began to get suspicious when the flight attendant asked, is there a photo doctor on board?
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
My question is, what were the communications from the flight deck to the people in the airplane explaining why they had to turn around over the Pacific Ocean and go back to San Francisco for a little bit? Were they truthful about it? Did they say something a little more general or vague? Did they make up something?
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
Did they make up something completely or were they just like straight out right with it and just said? Actually, the pilot, excuse me, passengers, the seatbelt side is on because the pilot forgot his passport. So we have to turn around. I think there's no way they could say that because there would just been an eruption in the cabin.
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
Poor guy. Okay, let's wrap it up there. Thank you for starting your morning with us and have a wonderful Wednesday. This week is flying by. For any questions, comments, or feedback, send an email to morningbrewdaily at morningbrew.com. Let's roll the credits. Emily Milliron is our executive producer. Raymond Liu is our producer. Olivia Graham and Olivia Lake are our associate producers.
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
Uchenawa Ogu is our technical director. Scoop Stardaris is on audio. Hair and makeup, you get an A for skincare infrastructure. Devin Emery is our chief content officer and our show is a production of Morning Brew.
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
And the third is Sophos Central, where you can easily manage all your security apps in one central place.
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
If you want to sign your business up for its own cybersecurity guard dog, who's better than Fluffy? Head to Sophos.com and get responsibly protected. That's S-O-P-H-O-S dot com.
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
If your bracket is toast in the real March madness, here's an opportunity to start fresh. The Brews social media team, led by Toby right here, has rolled out a bracket challenge that attempts to answer the question everyone is asking in 2025. What was the most important business story of the first quarter of the 21st century? We're not deciding. You are.
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
Well, I wasn't sure what is more surprising about this news that Napster still existed or that it was sold for more than $200 million. That is a very large number. acquisition. And I think you're right that the value in Napster is not necessarily from the brand, but from this library of tracks that it has the license for. It has 110 million tracks.
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
It's paid over a billion dollars to artists and labels over the past few decades in order to acquire that library. And that made it an attractive target for this quite large company, Infinite Reality, which
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
Just recently raised three billion dollars at a thirteen billion dollar valuation So this company is quite large even though most of us had never heard about it I guess they're a big player in the metaverse 3d Space and we'll see what they do with Napster. I
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
And there is a push in the music industry more broadly to let artists monetize their most loyal artists. fans. So that is exactly what Infinite Reality is trying to do with Napster is trying to increase the engagement because on one hand, you have super loyal fans that want more out of their artists. They want exclusive merch. They want more time, exclusive time with the artists that they love.
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
At the same time, artists are looking for new revenue streams. They have, you know, tours, but they're getting less from streaming companies than they did when they sold CDs, so there might be a match here. I don't know if the digital metaverse is the place for that to happen because we have seen most metaverse projects kind of fizzle out. We'll see what happens with Infinite Reality.
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
They have a pretty successful stable of companies. They own Drone Racing League. They own a bunch of esports teams as well that compete in League of Legends and Call of Duty. The guy who's the CEO of Napster was the music head at Roblox, so you'll
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
Roblox is this metaverse-style gaming platform that has also hosted concerts like Fortnite with folks like Lil Nas X. So we'll see what they do with Napster. Just a blast from the past. As anger boils over in Canada against the United States, Canadians are taking their vacations elsewhere and aren't apologizing for it. Airlines, tourism groups, and U.S.
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
businesses say they're experiencing a significant drop-off in Canadian visitors to the United States, citing backlash from President Trump's tariff talk and frequent allusions to annexing Canada and making it the 51st state. The numbers bear it out. In the skies, Canadian residents returned from 13... The decline was even more severe at land crossings, where Canadian return trips from the U.S.
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
You can head to the Brews social media pages on X and Instagram to vote on juicy first round matchups like when Apple put U2 on all our phones versus the release of Vine or FTX collapses versus Fyre Festival. Toby, the first round of voting happened yesterday. Were there any upsets?
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
plunged by 23% compared to a year ago. An American vacation boycott by Canadians could ripple through the U.S. economy, especially in states like Michigan and New York. which have been major destinations for people living just north of the border.
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
Canadians are the number one source of visitors to the U.S., and just a 10% reduction in their travel could lead to $2 billion in lost spending and 14,000 job losses in the hospitality industry, according to the U.S. Travel Association. Toby, we've seen Canadians boycott American grocery store products, boo the Star Spangled Banner, and now cancel that Vegas trip to play the slots in Punta Cana.
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
And it's not good for the tourism business. International travel to the U.S. is expected to slide by 5% this year, according to Tourism Economics. That could contribute to a $64 billion shortfall for the travel industry. And that 5% slide is notable because the previous projection was a 9% increase in foreign travel to the United States. Tourism Economics updated, revised this forecast from a
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
9% increase to a 5% decrease to reflect, quote, polarizing Trump administration policies and rhetoric. And you have such a large gap between those two forecasts because it's not just Canada or Canadians who are skipping out on coming to the United States. A bunch of other countries have updated their U.S.
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
travel advisories over concerns of, quote, aggressive questioning, detentions and denials of admissions. You've seen it in The U.K., you've seen it in Germany. Canada just updated their travel guidelines yesterday. So they're warning their citizens, saying it's not particularly a safe time to visit the United States right now.
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
Yes. Stablecoins have a very explicit promise, and that's you get none of the volatility associated with crypto because they're designed to maintain a constant value of $1. But you get all of the benefits, which is making cross-border payments faster, cheaper, and more transparent. So they're hyping up the lack of volatility and the
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
ability to promote the US US dollar and US dollar Gemini all over the world through these cross-border pavements so that is the promise of the stable coin and you know emphasis on stable because we've seen a bunch of other cryptos be volatile it's the opposite of a mean coin especially because it's backed by US debt and US currency so that is the promise of a stable coin and
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
It hasn't always worked out in the past. I mean, remember crypto winter in 2022? That was caused by another type of stablecoin, an algorithmic stablecoin, TerraUSD, collapsed, and it brought down the crypto market entirely because $40 billion was wiped out. So there are a variety of types of stablecoin here.
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
The one that World Life Financial is hyping intends to be one of the more stable of the stable.
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
Neil, what's one way you rely on tech in your everyday life? I got a lot of health tracking apps running constantly to let me know how the body's holding up.
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
The Quip Ultra is a smart sonic electric toothbrush that's packed full of some pretty cool tech you'll want to use daily.
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
And it's equipped with a timer that monitors your progress and your pressure to help you brush at just the right intensity.
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
Still brushing the analog way? Get 15% off your Quip Ultra at getquip.com slash brew. And subscribe for auto-shipping of BrushPod refill heads to earn exclusive perks. That's G-E-T-Q-U-I-P dot com slash brew.
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
Wise Business can help. Your Wise account has everything you need to operate your global business. With Wise Business, you can process payments, get paid, and manage your money internationally.
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
Setting up your account is super easy, and it takes just a few seconds to make payments in over 40 different currencies.
Morning Brew Daily
Tesla's Terrible Q1 Prompts Musk Return? & Companies Face RFK Jr.'s Food Dye Ban
Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, RFK tells food companies to get rid of artificial dyes and Mountain Dew will never be the same.
Morning Brew Daily
Tesla's Terrible Q1 Prompts Musk Return? & Companies Face RFK Jr.'s Food Dye Ban
And they're very particular, and they consume so much rice. The average Japanese person consumes about 110 pounds of rice per year. Compare that with 27 pounds per year consumption of rice for the average American. So this is a
Morning Brew Daily
Tesla's Terrible Q1 Prompts Musk Return? & Companies Face RFK Jr.'s Food Dye Ban
big deal uh for the japanese government to get a handle on this and you have people there being like where is all this rice you mentioned the high the high temperatures in 2023 that dwindled the crop but there was a much bigger crop in 2024 so somewhere along this very complex supply chain that gets the rice from the farm to the retailer someone it someone it appears some groups of people are hoarding rice and speculating on it because the prices have have
Morning Brew Daily
Tesla's Terrible Q1 Prompts Musk Return? & Companies Face RFK Jr.'s Food Dye Ban
That's the Planet Oat effect. You pour it into coffee or over cereal, and boom, everything's cozier, creamier, just better.
Morning Brew Daily
Tesla's Terrible Q1 Prompts Musk Return? & Companies Face RFK Jr.'s Food Dye Ban
surge so much. So maybe there is a separate black market stockpile somewhere. And that's what people are speculating because they're like, where the heck is the rice? We're growing it. It's fine.
Morning Brew Daily
Tesla's Terrible Q1 Prompts Musk Return? & Companies Face RFK Jr.'s Food Dye Ban
All right, let's sprint to the finish with some final headlines. Stocks ripped higher yesterday and kept on soaring in futures trading after the Trump administration gave a series of signals they would ratchet down the trade war with China and play nicer with investors.
Morning Brew Daily
Tesla's Terrible Q1 Prompts Musk Return? & Companies Face RFK Jr.'s Food Dye Ban
Last night, President Trump said he was not planning to fire Fed Chair Jerome Powell and that 145 percent tariffs on China are very high. and would come down substantially. Those remarks came after Treasury Secretary Scott Bassett told investors at a conference that the current trade war with China was, quote, unsustainable and that he expected a resolution to come at some point.
Morning Brew Daily
Tesla's Terrible Q1 Prompts Musk Return? & Companies Face RFK Jr.'s Food Dye Ban
In trading, the S&P 500 and Nasdaq both jumped more than 2%, reversing their losses from a brutal Monday.
Morning Brew Daily
Tesla's Terrible Q1 Prompts Musk Return? & Companies Face RFK Jr.'s Food Dye Ban
And the unsweetened version, zero grams of sugar, still somehow delicious, plus no dairy, no gluten, no peanuts, no problem. So if your breakfast, like your old couch, could use a little comfort. Reach for the oat milk that's basically comfort in a carton.
Morning Brew Daily
Tesla's Terrible Q1 Prompts Musk Return? & Companies Face RFK Jr.'s Food Dye Ban
But it's enough for investors, and that's why we're seeing stocks ripping. They're looking for literally any shred of evidence that those 145% tariffs will come down, and they're sending stocks soaring again this morning.
Morning Brew Daily
Tesla's Terrible Q1 Prompts Musk Return? & Companies Face RFK Jr.'s Food Dye Ban
Yeah, that's why this is so shocking, because this...
Morning Brew Daily
Tesla's Terrible Q1 Prompts Musk Return? & Companies Face RFK Jr.'s Food Dye Ban
position doesn't get turned over that much but you're right there are a lot of political headwinds facing cbs news they have this 20 billion lawsuit that they're facing and then at the same time paramount global which is its parent is trying to merge with skydance media for that it needs approval from the fcc so you take those both together and sherry redstone who controls that company
Morning Brew Daily
Tesla's Terrible Q1 Prompts Musk Return? & Companies Face RFK Jr.'s Food Dye Ban
is being accused by rank and file employees like Owens. You know, he didn't explicitly say of maybe cozying up to the Trump administration to settle that lawsuit and get approval for the sale. So 60 Minutes is looking for a new leader. Heads up to freeloading fans of Last of Us, your days of mooching off your ex's family's account could soon be coming to an end.
Morning Brew Daily
Tesla's Terrible Q1 Prompts Musk Return? & Companies Face RFK Jr.'s Food Dye Ban
The streaming service Max is following the Netflix playbook by cracking down on password sharing. Users will soon start seeing a prompt telling you to add an extra member to your plan for an extra $8 a month, which is a passive-aggressive way of saying, we know someone outside your house is using this account also. Time to give them the boot.
Morning Brew Daily
Tesla's Terrible Q1 Prompts Musk Return? & Companies Face RFK Jr.'s Food Dye Ban
When Netflix rolled this out a few years ago, it juiced subscriber numbers. Then Disney Plus and Hulu followed with similar crackdowns. So it was only a matter of time before Max fell in line. But Toby, I miss the good old days.
Morning Brew Daily
Tesla's Terrible Q1 Prompts Musk Return? & Companies Face RFK Jr.'s Food Dye Ban
They might. I mean, this is truly shocking. And we know now why Dune 2 didn't get Best Picture because at a 2 hour and 46 run time, maybe voters were like, I already saw, you know, a Nora and that was pretty good. So maybe I'll just vote for that. So I think, you know, this is what BAFTA did this this rule in the UK last year. And it's just truly surprising.
Morning Brew Daily
Tesla's Terrible Q1 Prompts Musk Return? & Companies Face RFK Jr.'s Food Dye Ban
I stand with everyone, including you, who are like, what the heck? Like you didn't need to watch all of the movies before casting your vote. You know, what are we doing here?
Morning Brew Daily
Tesla's Terrible Q1 Prompts Musk Return? & Companies Face RFK Jr.'s Food Dye Ban
If you were already skeptical of the Oscars, I mean, there's even reason to not take it even more seriously now. Let's wrap it up there. Thanks so much for starting your morning with us and have a wonderful Wednesday. For any questions, comments, or feedback, send an email to morningbrewdaily at morningbrew.com. Let's roll the credits. Emily Milliron is our executive producer.
Morning Brew Daily
Tesla's Terrible Q1 Prompts Musk Return? & Companies Face RFK Jr.'s Food Dye Ban
Raymond Liu is our producer. Our associate producers are Olivia Graham and Olivia Lake. Uchenua Ogu is our technical director. Scoops Dardaris is on audio. Hair and Makeup watched all of the Oscar nominees. Devin Emery is our president, and our show is a production of Morning Brew. Great show today, Neil. Let's run it back tomorrow. Grabbing a quick meal is easy.
Morning Brew Daily
Tesla's Terrible Q1 Prompts Musk Return? & Companies Face RFK Jr.'s Food Dye Ban
It's getting a quick meal that's also good for you that's tricky.
Morning Brew Daily
Tesla's Terrible Q1 Prompts Musk Return? & Companies Face RFK Jr.'s Food Dye Ban
Luckily, Factor has chef-made gourmet meals that simplify eating well. They're never frozen, dietician-approved, and ready to heat and eat in two minutes.
Morning Brew Daily
Tesla's Terrible Q1 Prompts Musk Return? & Companies Face RFK Jr.'s Food Dye Ban
But the best arrives at dinnertime when my brain is shut down and all I want to do is take down my number one favorite spicy Creole chicken thighs.
Morning Brew Daily
Tesla's Terrible Q1 Prompts Musk Return? & Companies Face RFK Jr.'s Food Dye Ban
Eat smart with Factor. Get started at factormeals.com slash factorpodcast and use code FACTORPODCAST to get 50% off your first box plus free shipping.
Morning Brew Daily
Tesla's Terrible Q1 Prompts Musk Return? & Companies Face RFK Jr.'s Food Dye Ban
Still. investors heard exactly what they wanted to hear, those magic words. I will be working less on Doge and I will be working more on Tesla. That is exactly what they needed to hear because Tesla stock was in a free fall. Its business is hurting mightily. The fact that Elon Musk will devote more attention to this particular company in its time of need was very much music to their ears.
Morning Brew Daily
Tesla's Terrible Q1 Prompts Musk Return? & Companies Face RFK Jr.'s Food Dye Ban
Are you the kind of person who is super polite to chat GPT? Like you say please and thank you when asking a question so the bots will spare you after the uprising? You could be costing OpenAI millions of dollars.
Morning Brew Daily
Tesla's Terrible Q1 Prompts Musk Return? & Companies Face RFK Jr.'s Food Dye Ban
So where does Tesla go from here now that Elon Musk is supposedly going to be working on it more? They have two big initiatives coming down the pipeline this summer. One is this robo taxi service that they're going to launch in June in Austin, Texas. Elon Musk says we are on track for that. They're going to compete with Waymo and other autonomous taxi companies.
Morning Brew Daily
Tesla's Terrible Q1 Prompts Musk Return? & Companies Face RFK Jr.'s Food Dye Ban
They've already been giving customers rides all around the country in certain cities. They're also expected to release an affordable EV model, which has been anticipated for years because there's an increasing amount of competition, not just from legacy car makers in the United States like General Motors, but also BYD in China has now overtaken BYD. Tesla as the world's largest seller of EV.
Morning Brew Daily
Tesla's Terrible Q1 Prompts Musk Return? & Companies Face RFK Jr.'s Food Dye Ban
So that traditional business where Tesla gets 90% of its revenue, Tesla has fallen behind. Global delivery is down 13%. They think that an affordable model, well, investors have been pushing for this forever. So now it looks like potentially that will come, but we still don't have any details on what that affordable model about $25,000 will look like.
Morning Brew Daily
Tesla's Terrible Q1 Prompts Musk Return? & Companies Face RFK Jr.'s Food Dye Ban
Recently, the company's CEO, Sam Altman, suggested that people simply saying please and thank you to their chatbots cost OpenAI tens of millions of dollars because of the extra computing power required. However, Altman says that money is well spent because in his words, You never know. Wink, wink. Toby, are you overly nice to a chatbot?
Morning Brew Daily
Tesla's Terrible Q1 Prompts Musk Return? & Companies Face RFK Jr.'s Food Dye Ban
Flaming hot Cheetos could soon look a little less neon. Yesterday afternoon, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced a plan to phase out eight artificial food dyes and colorings from the U.S. 's food supply by the end of next year in his first major effort to overhaul America's diet.
Morning Brew Daily
Tesla's Terrible Q1 Prompts Musk Return? & Companies Face RFK Jr.'s Food Dye Ban
His wingman, FDA Commissioner Dr. Marty McCary, said that regulators would aim to revoke two synthetic food colorings, and as for the other six, he told food giants to eliminate them from their ingredient list or else. Artificial dyes are used by major food companies to make food colors pop, and they can be found everywhere.
Morning Brew Daily
Tesla's Terrible Q1 Prompts Musk Return? & Companies Face RFK Jr.'s Food Dye Ban
everywhere in the grocery store, from cereal to ice cream, yogurts, candy, and more. A limited body of research has found links between petroleum-based synthetic dyes and certain neurobehavioral problems in children, such as hyperactivity. Though previous U.S. regulators have found that health concerns aren't something to worry about, the Trump administration has seen enough evidence of harm.
Morning Brew Daily
Tesla's Terrible Q1 Prompts Musk Return? & Companies Face RFK Jr.'s Food Dye Ban
Dr. McCary asked, why are we taking a gamble? For food companies like General Mills, PepsiCo, and Kellogg, they'll have to go back to the drawing board revamping some of the most popular products to comply with the government's recommendations. There's no rule banning the food dyes on the books yet, but it's like your older brother telling you to take the fall when your parents are angry.
Morning Brew Daily
Tesla's Terrible Q1 Prompts Musk Return? & Companies Face RFK Jr.'s Food Dye Ban
You just do it.
Morning Brew Daily
Tesla's Terrible Q1 Prompts Musk Return? & Companies Face RFK Jr.'s Food Dye Ban
You're right. This happened 10 years ago. General Mills took out artificial colors from Trix that year, and then there was a huge consumer backlash saying, we don't want to see Trix that aren't completely so colorful, so saturated, and they're kind of muted colors. So there was a consumer uprising, and they added artificially colored Trix back into grocery stores the next year. On the
Morning Brew Daily
Tesla's Terrible Q1 Prompts Musk Return? & Companies Face RFK Jr.'s Food Dye Ban
other hand, there is a success story with a company removing artificial dyes. Kraft in 2015 changed this recipe, replaced yellow number five and yellow number six artificial dyes with paprika, annatto and turmeric in its, you know, neon mac and cheese. You think about that yellow and it was fine. They still do that to this day.
Morning Brew Daily
Tesla's Terrible Q1 Prompts Musk Return? & Companies Face RFK Jr.'s Food Dye Ban
So, I mean, at this point, it looks like companies don't have a choice. Like I said, there's not a rule on the books, but the Trump administration is basically saying, you guys have to do this. We're asking you to volunteer to do it now to give you some leeway. If not, we will make a rule forcing you to.
Morning Brew Daily
Tesla's Terrible Q1 Prompts Musk Return? & Companies Face RFK Jr.'s Food Dye Ban
Let's talk... Chobani. I mean, this company is a rocket ship. They're building the biggest dairy factory in the United States in the middle of New York, Rome, New York. They're going to try to make one billion pounds of dairy products a year, which my stomach is hurting just thinking about that. This company is one of the fastest growing food companies in the entire United States.
Morning Brew Daily
Tesla's Terrible Q1 Prompts Musk Return? & Companies Face RFK Jr.'s Food Dye Ban
Net sales last year rose 17 percent. Earnings are over 500 million dollars. It says it now controls about one fifth of the entire American yogurt market. They're also on this expansion spree to get into new areas. They bought La Coloma, a massive coffee company, for $900 million. So they are in growth mode. And the next stop for them after this factory is potentially an IPO.
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Tesla's Terrible Q1 Prompts Musk Return? & Companies Face RFK Jr.'s Food Dye Ban
We'll be right back. Tasty Trade Inc. and Morning Brew are separate and unaffiliated companies. If you're planning to do business abroad, you've got to make sure your finances are in order. That's where Wise Business comes in. Wise Business is the account for doing business in other currencies.
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Tesla's Terrible Q1 Prompts Musk Return? & Companies Face RFK Jr.'s Food Dye Ban
and you can still save money as you go global. Wise Business has no hidden fees, no markups on the exchange rate, and no ongoing subscription cost.
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Tesla's Terrible Q1 Prompts Musk Return? & Companies Face RFK Jr.'s Food Dye Ban
To learn more about how you can use Wise Business to save time, money, and stress, visit wise.com slash business. Japan is engulfed in a rice crisis, and to combat the shortage, it's done the unthinkable. Import the grain from South Korea, something it hasn't done in more than 25 years. Last month, South Korean rice hit Japanese shores for the first time since 1999.
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Tesla's Terrible Q1 Prompts Musk Return? & Companies Face RFK Jr.'s Food Dye Ban
an emergency stash Japan hopes will help alleviate soaring prices that has shaken society. Because eating non-Japanese rice in Japan is like drinking a Heineken at a 4th of July barbecue. You just don't do it when Budweiser exists.
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Tesla's Terrible Q1 Prompts Musk Return? & Companies Face RFK Jr.'s Food Dye Ban
Japanese consumers eat rice at pretty much every meal, but they've long been skeptical of foreign-grown rice, so much so that Thai rice imported during another crisis in 1993 mostly went untouched. But they may not have a choice this time around. The price of Japan-grown rice has more than doubled over the past year, leading to outrage from restaurant owners, sake brewers, and customers alike.
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Tesla's Terrible Q1 Prompts Musk Return? & Companies Face RFK Jr.'s Food Dye Ban
Toby, my baseball days are behind me. I'm not throwing anything these days. Come on. Clash your life up a little bit.
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Tesla's Terrible Q1 Prompts Musk Return? & Companies Face RFK Jr.'s Food Dye Ban
A few months ago, Japan was even forced to take the unprecedented step of selling hundreds of thousands of tons of rice, 2 million bowls worth, from its strategic rice reserve, a stockpile of rice only used after natural disasters. But even that didn't move the needle. Toby, what is going on? Where did all the Japanese rice go?
Morning Brew Daily
Google Closes Historic $32B Deal & Nvidia Drops Hot New AI Chip
Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell.
Morning Brew Daily
Google Closes Historic $32B Deal & Nvidia Drops Hot New AI Chip
Yeah, let's break down the money earned by tennis players. At the top of the line, you can make a lot of money, but... and the middle and near the bottom of the order. You are just not making that much money at all. Let's go back to the top.
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Google Closes Historic $32B Deal & Nvidia Drops Hot New AI Chip
The $10 million earned by number one tennis player at the time in 2022, Carlos Alcaraz was equal to the 202nd player in the NFL and the 146th highest played player in the national basketball league. Novak Djokovic, who is probably the goat of men's tennis. He's won 24 grand slam titles. Uh, His career prize money in tennis is $186 million.
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Google Closes Historic $32B Deal & Nvidia Drops Hot New AI Chip
Last year alone, last year alone, the number one golf player, Scotty Scheffler, earned more than $62 million playing golf. That's about a third of Novak Djokovic, the best of all times, career winning. So these are just a few of the data points that these players are bringing to the table when they're accusing the ATP and the WTA suppress wages at the highest level of tennis.
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Google Closes Historic $32B Deal & Nvidia Drops Hot New AI Chip
You can't just have the best of both worlds.
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Google Closes Historic $32B Deal & Nvidia Drops Hot New AI Chip
And one of the accusations lobbed against these tours is that they suppress the prize money. And one example that the players cited was that in 2012, billionaire Larry Ellison, who owns the BNP Paribas Open, which more people know as Indian Wells, which just took place, he tried to increase the total prize money on that tournament that he owns by $1.6 million dollars.
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Google Closes Historic $32B Deal & Nvidia Drops Hot New AI Chip
He said the ATP and WTA rejected that proposal, saying it would put pressure on other tour-sponsored tournaments to boost payouts. So that is just one glaring example of these tours, you know, setting a price ceiling, which the players say violates antitrust action. You talked about a lot of the other North American leagues having problems
Morning Brew Daily
Google Closes Historic $32B Deal & Nvidia Drops Hot New AI Chip
With 500 plus cybersecurity analysts, Sophos provides managed detection and response that proactively guards your network 24-7, stopping threats before they can even cross midcourt.
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Google Closes Historic $32B Deal & Nvidia Drops Hot New AI Chip
more rights and more strength with collective bargaining and free agency and things like that. Well, many of those things happened as a result of antitrust action, which is exactly what the players in tennis are trying to do. Should say that the ATP and WTA came out with a few statements. They said they would vigorously defend the case.
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Google Closes Historic $32B Deal & Nvidia Drops Hot New AI Chip
They talked about measures they had taken to increase payments to players, and they called the allegations baseless. Let's sprint to the finish with a few headlines. The UK has updated its basket of goods that are used to measure inflation, and yoga mats are in, and newspaper advertisements are out.
Morning Brew Daily
Google Closes Historic $32B Deal & Nvidia Drops Hot New AI Chip
Every year, the UK's Office of National Statistics makes tweaks to the 752 items it uses to calculate inflation, which provides a snapshot into changing consumer trends. For example, Wild Rabbit was on the first list in 1947, but no one really buys that anymore, so that's gone. So what are people buying now?
Morning Brew Daily
Google Closes Historic $32B Deal & Nvidia Drops Hot New AI Chip
This year, the ONS added yoga mats, virtual reality headsets, men's pool flip-flops, mango, and pulled pork to the cost of living basket. The stuff they cut is from a bygone era, such as newspaper advertisements or oven-ready gammon, which is a type of cured ham that has dwindled in popularity. Toby, did they get it right?
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Google Closes Historic $32B Deal & Nvidia Drops Hot New AI Chip
It seems like a no brainer. And you might be wondering why weren't they doing this before? Well, a drone from DJI, which is this Chinese company, the world leader in drones, it can cost more than $70,000. That is just a lot of money in a lower income country like Nepal. So they're trying to work out deals to make these things cheaper for Sherpas. But overall, this seems like a
Morning Brew Daily
Google Closes Historic $32B Deal & Nvidia Drops Hot New AI Chip
More like a three-to-zone defense, if you ask me. Also, by the way, you said you're picking the NCAA team with the best offense and defense. That's Duke, Toby.
Morning Brew Daily
Google Closes Historic $32B Deal & Nvidia Drops Hot New AI Chip
great solution in part to make this this mountain safer as the as the climbing season gets underway next month. On Monday, West Virginia Governor Patrick Morrissey held a press conference to make a statement about one of the biggest injustices in recent memory. Take a listen.
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Google Closes Historic $32B Deal & Nvidia Drops Hot New AI Chip
Yes, that's right. The West Virginia governor used a press conference to make the case that his Mountaineers deserved an NCAA tournament bid over the University of North Carolina, who controversially received a bid to March Madness while WVU was snubbed. Calling the NCAA the National Corrupt Athletic Association, Morrissey said he's asked his attorney general,
Morning Brew Daily
Google Closes Historic $32B Deal & Nvidia Drops Hot New AI Chip
to investigate the organization to ensure the selection process is transparent and fair. Toby, does he have a point?
Morning Brew Daily
Google Closes Historic $32B Deal & Nvidia Drops Hot New AI Chip
Well, one thing we should mention is UNC played last night in the round of four to get into the actual bracket of 64, and they crushed. They dominated. Okay, let's wrap it up there. Thanks so much for starting your morning with us, and have a wonderful Wednesday. For any questions, comments, or feedback, send an email to morningbrewdaily at morningbrew.com.
Morning Brew Daily
Google Closes Historic $32B Deal & Nvidia Drops Hot New AI Chip
And if you're enjoying the show, share it with a friend, family member, or coworker, or anyone else. Toby, who should everyone listening share it with today?
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Google Closes Historic $32B Deal & Nvidia Drops Hot New AI Chip
Let's roll the credits. Emily Milliron is our executive producer. Raymond Liu is our producer. Olivia Graham and Olivia Lake are our associate producers. Eugenia Waogu is our technical director. Scoops Dardaris is on audio. Is hair and makeup a spy from The Daily? Hmm. Devin Emery is our chief content officer, and our show is a production of Morning Brew.
Morning Brew Daily
Google Closes Historic $32B Deal & Nvidia Drops Hot New AI Chip
Kenny Rogers may have coined, know when to hold them, know when to fold them, but cybersecurity startup Wiz just perfected the strategy. After rejecting an acquisition offer from Google for $23 billion last summer, Wiz now says you've got a deal. Google will buy it for $32 billion, a big bump from the previous bid. That's not all that's big about this deal.
Morning Brew Daily
Google Closes Historic $32B Deal & Nvidia Drops Hot New AI Chip
It's Google's biggest acquisition in history, Far outstripping number two, a $12.5 billion purchase of Motorola Mobility in 2012. It's also the biggest acquisition announced this year, a hopeful sign for deal-making activity that's as frozen as Lake Erie in the winter. And finally, it's the biggest deal ever in the fast-consolidating cybersecurity industry.
Morning Brew Daily
Google Closes Historic $32B Deal & Nvidia Drops Hot New AI Chip
In Wiz, Google is acquiring one of the fastest-growing startups of all time. Founded just five years ago by CEO Asaf Rapoport and several colleagues, it is on track to double last year's annual recurring revenue to $1 billion, and its sale would mark the largest exit for any tech startup since Rivian's $77 billion IPO all the way back in November 2021.
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Google Closes Historic $32B Deal & Nvidia Drops Hot New AI Chip
Toby, Google just revealed its Philly cheesesteak order, WizWit, and it's a landmark deal.
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Google Closes Historic $32B Deal & Nvidia Drops Hot New AI Chip
Home at last. Yesterday evening, NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore splashed down off the coast of Florida, ending a space saga that captivated the world. Originally intended to be an eight-day mission, their stay on the International Space Station lasted 286 days due to technical problems with the Boeing Starliner spacecraft that carried them up to the ISS.
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Google Closes Historic $32B Deal & Nvidia Drops Hot New AI Chip
And Wiz brings with it not just growth potential, but an already existing massive list of business. Its client base includes over 45% of Fortune 100 companies. It's going to do $1 billion in revenue this year. It is just such a massive player in the space that they built in just the past five years.
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Google Closes Historic $32B Deal & Nvidia Drops Hot New AI Chip
So in its race to compete against Microsoft and Amazon, Google thinks that tacking on Wiz will be a huge tailwind to compete in this cloud computing race.
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Google Closes Historic $32B Deal & Nvidia Drops Hot New AI Chip
And meanwhile, so many people are going to get so rich from this deal. Obviously, Asaf Rapaport, the CEO, and these co-founders are going to be billionaires if they weren't already, because guess what? They already sold a company to Microsoft in 2015 for $320 million. So they've done this rodeo before. Obviously, $32 billion is way more than $320 million. And it's also...
Morning Brew Daily
Google Closes Historic $32B Deal & Nvidia Drops Hot New AI Chip
A huge exit for VC firms that plowed money into Wiz when they were a much smaller company. Some of the biggest VC names in Silicon Valley were involved in Wiz. Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia, Lightspeed, all of these venture firms are, you know, their offices are probably a very fun place to be this week.
Morning Brew Daily
Google Closes Historic $32B Deal & Nvidia Drops Hot New AI Chip
During their nine-month journey, Wilmore and Williams covered some distance. They orbited the Earth 4,576 times, traveled 121 million miles, and played over 142,000 rounds of Never Have I Ever. Toby, gravity has never felt so good.
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Google Closes Historic $32B Deal & Nvidia Drops Hot New AI Chip
Yeah, this is a heated rivalry that just escalated in a big way this week. The HR tech space is extremely competitive. You have these legacy players like ADP, Workday, SAP, and then newer players like Rippling and Deal, which are raising rounds of funding each one after the other in order to gain customers. And they're also competing over the same number of customers.
Morning Brew Daily
Google Closes Historic $32B Deal & Nvidia Drops Hot New AI Chip
A lot of their employees also switch back and forth. So that's They've had a lot of beef with each other for years that has spilled into the public eye. And this is just the climax of that with accusations of a deal implanting a spy into Rippling. And corporate warfare doesn't get more juicy than this.
Morning Brew Daily
Google Closes Historic $32B Deal & Nvidia Drops Hot New AI Chip
Yesterday, 25,000 people crammed into the San Jose Sharks Arena and cheered wildly as a superstar put on a show. No, it wasn't because Conor McDavid was in town. It was because Jensen Huang, the CEO of NVIDIA, was giving the keynote speech of the Tech Giants' annual GTC conference.
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Google Closes Historic $32B Deal & Nvidia Drops Hot New AI Chip
What was essentially a science fair for computer geeks in 2009 has blossomed to become what has been called the Super Bowl for AI, a week-long extravaganza whose growth mirrors the meteoric rise of Nvidia to the top of the tech food chain. Clad in his signature leather jacket,
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Google Closes Historic $32B Deal & Nvidia Drops Hot New AI Chip
Huang defended his company's role in the AI revolution and hyped up new families of chips that NVIDIA would roll out in the coming years. NVIDIA dominates the market for these chips, known as GPUs or graphics processing units, which have become a hotter commodity than a Trader Joe's tote as tech companies hoover them up to train ever-powerful large language models.
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Google Closes Historic $32B Deal & Nvidia Drops Hot New AI Chip
He also announced a partnership with GM for self-driving cars and touted personal AI supercomputers that will allow developers and scientists to build AI models on desktop. But Toby, we need to start with the biggest announcement of them all, a partnership with Taco Bell, KFC and Pizza Hut to roll out AI order taking.
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Google Closes Historic $32B Deal & Nvidia Drops Hot New AI Chip
We do need to talk about the deep seek in the room, though. Remember, this Chinese AI startup revealed this model deep seek, which could do which could compete with the chat GPTs of the world at the highest level of AI models with just a fraction amount of the computing powder required that knocked off six hundred billion dollars of NVIDIA's.
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Google Closes Historic $32B Deal & Nvidia Drops Hot New AI Chip
market cap sent it into a big slump because you had investors thinking, oh, well, maybe AI companies don't need to spend so much money on Nvidia's chips, which they had been, which had propelled Nvidia to become the most valuable company in the world. What was Jensen's response to this?
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Google Closes Historic $32B Deal & Nvidia Drops Hot New AI Chip
He said, hey, I think DeepSeek is actually good for us because the type of inference and reasoning that powers the DeepSeek model and all these models going forward actually requires more computation than we ever thought possible.
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Google Closes Historic $32B Deal & Nvidia Drops Hot New AI Chip
He said the amount of computation we need as a result of agentic AI, which is this AI that powers agents, which we've talked about in the show, it's like they can do all these things autonomously for you, is easily 100 times more than we thought we needed this time last year.
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Google Closes Historic $32B Deal & Nvidia Drops Hot New AI Chip
So he's bullish, obviously, because he is the CEO of NVIDIA, that companies will continue to spend and even up their spending on NVIDIA chips to power this new type of AI model.
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Google Closes Historic $32B Deal & Nvidia Drops Hot New AI Chip
So one day as I was scrolling the web, I got hit with an ad for patio furniture. Dude, I live in a small New York City apartment, not relevant. So if that's happening to me, imagine the incorrect spaces your B2B marketing could be ending up. If you want to reach the right professionals, start with LinkedIn ads.
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Google Closes Historic $32B Deal & Nvidia Drops Hot New AI Chip
LinkedIn has grown to a network of over 1 billion professionals and 130 million decision makers. And in this vast pool of potential, you can target your buyers by job title, industry, company role, skills, seniority, and more if you can believe it. If you think you're wasting budget on the wrong audiences, stop that.
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Google Closes Historic $32B Deal & Nvidia Drops Hot New AI Chip
First and foremost, and start targeting the right people with LinkedIn ads instead. LinkedIn will even give you a $100 credit on your next campaign so you can take LinkedIn ads for a spin. Just go to LinkedIn.com slash MBD. That's LinkedIn.com slash MBD. Terms and conditions apply only on LinkedIn ads. This spring, shake off the winter blues with a bedroom refresh courtesy of Brooklinen.
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Google Closes Historic $32B Deal & Nvidia Drops Hot New AI Chip
Turn your bedroom into a space that works for your life, whether you're gearing up for an early morning or unwinding after a long day.
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Google Closes Historic $32B Deal & Nvidia Drops Hot New AI Chip
Brooklinen's products are made to be loved and lived in for years to come. With customizable bundles, you can refresh your bed and bathroom all in one place. Mix and match Brooklinen's patterns, colors, and textures to create your dream space. As people who wake up so early, sleep is super critical, and so is having bedding you love.
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Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
In my experience, a few things do stand out, like leading by example, taking risks, and being passionate.
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Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
That's definitely a match made in heaven.
Morning Brew Daily
Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
There are reports that Open Table paid one restaurant owner a million dollars to move over from Resi to Open Table. That's how desperate they want to be cool. And you said it's an arms race, which is very true. I think it's an arms race in one industry in particular, and that is credit cards. The Philadelphia Inquirer had this really nice line.
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Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
They said it's a dining industry arms race where restaurants are commodities and luxury credit card holders enjoy the spoils of war. So Amex bought Rezzy in 2019.
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Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
The idea was to offer, uh, its credit card holders, those premium ones who are paying hundreds and hundreds of dollars each year for these gold and platinum cards, access to exclusive reservations, uh, late breaking reservations, and then open table said, okay, let's probably do the same, uh, And they inked this partnership recently with Visa.
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Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
So when you go on OpenTable, I just did this morning, the top hit that they're flashing across their site is, you know, this is our Visa sponsorship. You get access to these restaurants with Visa. So Visa and Amex are going toe-to-toe in this war. And the arena on which it's fought is OpenTable and Resi.
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Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
And in the background of all of this is just a booming market for restaurant reservations after COVID between 2021 and 2022. Restaurant reservation searches on Yelp rose more than 100%. It's becoming much more in demand to book
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Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
these very fancy, you said, sceney restaurants, and that's why this turf war has become even more profound because there's a lot more attractive customers now that are spending lots of money on these platforms, so they want a piece of the pie.
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Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
It is, and it's another chapter in the melodrama playing out between Elon Musk and Sam Altman. Remember, earlier this month, Elon Musk submitted a $97 billion bid to buy OpenAI. Sam Altman dismissed that and said, I wish he would just compete by building a better product. Maybe he did. Here he is.
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Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
XAI, this company that really no one ever thinks about, is about to raise money at a $75 billion valuation. Oh, the humanity, humane, the buzzy Sam Altman-backed startup that made an AI pin intended to replace smartphones is shutting down the project and selling parts of its business to HP.com. for $116 million.
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Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
That is far lower than the $850 million it was valued at before it released the product last year, leaving investors like Altman and Salesforce's Mark Benioff in the red. Despite enormous hype, the product never took off as expected, of 100,000 pins humane hoped to sell in its first year, it only shipped 10,000.
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Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
Now, Humane's leadership and employees will be absorbed into HP, where they'll be working on, quote, building an intelligence ecosystem across HP's product and services. Sounds thrilling.
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Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
Olipop CEO Ben Goodwin was asked about Coca-Cola entering the market, and he struck a defiant tone. He said, it's a massive honor that the largest soda brand in the world has decided that the category I invented and the Olipop team has brought to life is a great place for them to seek growth. And so he's projecting confidence.
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Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
Wasteful, wasteful, wasteful. You sound like B2B marketers who don't use LinkedIn ads. Diving headfirst into a campaign without being thoughtful about where you're allocating resources is like lighting your marketing budget on fire. Hey, I didn't burn anything, but you're right. I need to be more thoughtful. LinkedIn ads is like having a recipe for better B2B sales.
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Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
But I think on the inside, I probably would be a little worried because, you know, the Coca-Cola brand, marketing machine is truly insane. You can press a button. Coke can just press a button and get this simply pop in front of hundreds of millions of people in a second. They have distribution. They're so much bigger than these smaller companies.
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Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
So that's why the beverage space is so tough, because Coke and Pepsi kind of have this scale to extinguish you.
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Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
On May 7th, 1777, in the heat of the Revolutionary War, General George Washington wrote a note to a subordinate on both sides of a single sheet of paper, roughly 8 by 12 inches, and now it can be yours for just $150,000. Last Wednesday, a firm that buys and sells historical documents said it had acquired the letter and was putting it up for auction on President's Day.
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Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
Experts said to call this note rare doesn't go far enough because it represents a unique reflection on the essence of the war, which you simply can't find anymore. This won't be record breaking for a GW letter, one that he wrote to Thomas Jefferson sold for two point four million in 2022. But it is a grand sum for a discolored piece of paper with a grimy fingerprint on it.
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Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
Toby, I totally bid on this, but unfortunately, I can't read cursive.
Morning Brew Daily
Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
Let's wrap it up there. Thanks so much for starting your morning with us, and have a wonderful Wednesday. For any questions, comments, or feedback, send an email to morningbrewdaily at morningbrew.com. And if you're enjoying the show, share it with a friend, family member, or coworker. Toby, who should everyone listening share it with today?
Morning Brew Daily
Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
Let's roll the credits. Emily Milliron is our executive producer. Raymond Liu is our producer. Olivia Graham is our associate producer. Uchenua Ogu is our technical director. Scoop Stardaris is on audio. Hair and makeup lives in a very stylish pineapple under the sea. Devin Emery is our chief content officer and our show is a production of Morning Brew.
Morning Brew Daily
Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
It lets you filter your audience by industry, company, and role so you don't have to ad lib like Toby.
Morning Brew Daily
Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
45 years to the month after the first miracle on ice, they just released the sequel. On Monday afternoon, a Delta Airlines regional jet crash landed on the frozen tundra of Toronto's Pearson Airport, clipping a wing, flipping upside down, and skidding down the runway to a full stop.
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Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
It was a shocking image seeing this plane flipped on its head, but even more shocking was that there were no fatalities among the 80 people on board, and 19 of the 21 people sent to the hospital with injuries have been released. Canada's Aviation Safety Agency has begun an investigation into how this plane ended up belly up. The conditions were not good at the airport.
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Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
Toronto got dumped with a ton of snow over the weekend and wind gusts topped 30 miles per hour. However, no other pilots reported problems breaking on the runway. Aviation experts credited the aircraft's design and the training of the crew for getting all the passengers out safely.
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Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
The plane, an Embraer CRJ900 regional jet, was designed with features to be, quote, survivable in case of an accident, such as having seats that lock into tracks that can withstand 16 Gs of force. The flight attendants were also hailed by local officials as heroes for their composure under duress. Toby, it's been an ominous start to the year for the U.S. aviation industry.
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Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, how did everyone manage to survive the upside-down plane crash in Toronto?
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Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
As people pointed out on social media, it's no longer cringe to clap when your plane lands.
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Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
And the crew, the flight attendants, you know, we think about them as people who serve us peanuts and pretzels and take our drink orders, but their number one mandate is safety, and they are trained and trained and trained to get people off the plane in an event like this in 90 seconds or less. They're also trained when...
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Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
When panic happens like this, people are in a state of shock and you're supposed to tell them simple instructions like unfasten your seatbelt. And so videos show them shouting simple instructions, which is what people need to hear to get out of the plane safely. They can't handle anything more in a state of shock. So it was an absolute textbook response from this crew as well.
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Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
And those accidents, I mean, there's been four this year already in United States and Toronto's just across the border. January 29th, that American Airlines regional jet collided with a U.S. Army helicopter, killing 67 people on both aircraft. And then a few days later, there's a medevac plane that crashed in northeast Philadelphia, killing seven people.
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Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
Remember that asteroid they found that has a very small chance of hitting Earth seven years from now? That very small chance is now a small chance. Yesterday, NASA upgraded the probability of a collision by 2032 to 3.1%, or 1 in 32, up from just 1% in January. It's the highest probability given to an asteroid strike since 2004. If If this thing does impact Earth, still a remote possibility.
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Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
And then on February 6th, there was a plane crash in Alaska, killing 10 people. So this is the fourth you know, major incident. So, you know, obviously amazing, remarkable, very thankful that no one, no one ended up dead on this particular crash, but it's certainly been a spooky few months for air travel.
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Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
I think you missed one word in your intro, Toby. Women. This is absolutely key for Nike to get more customers as women. Right now, 40% of its client base is women. Most apparel brands want that to be way over 50% because women shop more, they spend more money. So if you're an apparel brand and you're seeing 40-60 breakdown and 40 is women, that's not in a position where you want to be.
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Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
So linking up with Nike, Kim Kardashian and Skims is a way to get that over the 50 percent mark. And that Super Bowl commercial, their first in decades, was also geared towards women, women's sports, which are having an absolute moment right now. Like you said, they're seeing double digit growth in that particular area.
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Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
So this is a bold move into that space by inking a, you know, a brand partnership that has never done before.
Morning Brew Daily
Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
And we should talk about skims. This company is absolutely blowing up. Kim Kardashian. I don't know. Don't bet against her. Don't bet against her. She is an incredible entrepreneur. They did $880 million in just direct-to-consumer sales alone last year. That was up from $725 million a year earlier. They're valued at $4 billion. So what does this Nike partnership mean for them?
Morning Brew Daily
Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
Looks like maybe they could... exit at some point. Kim Kardashian wants to get paid out. She owns 5% of the company. Maybe it's leading to an acquisition by Nike or another company by getting the strategic partner on board, or it's an IPO. We could see a Skims IPO. The leadership team has hinted at it a little bit.
Morning Brew Daily
Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
So there's perhaps an end game in sight by getting Nike on board and doing this particular brand partnership with them and saying, look, we've made it. We are a mature company. Now it's time to take that next step.
Morning Brew Daily
Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
SpongeBob and Squidward are about to get a new neighbor, Mark Zuckerberg. On Friday, Meta announced plans to build the world's longest underwater cable, a 31,000-mile project that aims to connect the U.S., India, South Africa, and other regions across five continents. For context, 31,000 miles of cable is long, longer than the Earth's circumference. Why is Meta building a cable under the sea?
Morning Brew Daily
Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
Because that is the foundation of the modern internet. For all the images you might have of cyberspace and digital ones and zeros, there are actual physical cables crisscrossing the globe, think a really long ethernet cord, that allow you to log on. An estimated 95% of the world's internet traffic flows through these undersea data superhighways.
Morning Brew Daily
Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
It could wipe out a city. The asteroid would make impact at 38,000 miles per hour with the equivalent of around 8 million tons of TNT or about 500 times the power of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. 3.1%, Toby, it keeps climbing.
Morning Brew Daily
Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
For years, telecom companies built these cables in partnership with tech firms, but that power dynamic has shifted Now it's big tech that's in charge. And this initiative called Project Waterworth is the first subsea cable project Meta is developing on its own without any outside help. Toby, the only thing getting in Zuck's way now is bikini bottom zoning laws.
Morning Brew Daily
Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
Yeah, undersea cables have become a vulnerability for tech companies, for countries, and they've become flashpoints in geopolitical arenas. I mean, if you look at Tonga, this was not a geopolitical sabotage per se, but Tonga is this island in the Pacific that was hit with this massive underwater volcanic eruption and an ensuing tsunami in 2022.
Morning Brew Daily
Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
It was basically blacked out for five weeks because that eruption underneath the water disrupted a cable that was bringing them Internet and cell service. And they were five weeks they were in the dark from the rest of the world.
Morning Brew Daily
Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
So, you know, it really makes you think of when you hear news like this about how much our connectivity and cyberspace, things like that is actually tied together by these undersea cables that Meta is building right now.
Morning Brew Daily
Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
At Tasty Trade, you can explore the opportunities to make smarter moves. Maybe you're the type to hunker down on your desktop for hours. Maybe you breeze by on your browser. Or maybe you just need that top-rated app right by your side.
Morning Brew Daily
Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
You'll also find low pricing, lots of education, and backup from a support team that really gets how traders trade.
Morning Brew Daily
Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
Genius loves company, so get moving at tastytrade.com slash ride with us. That's tastytrade.com slash ride with us. Tasty Trade Inc. is a registered broker dealer and member of FINRA, NFA, and SIPC. Tasty Trade Inc. and Morning Brew are separate and unaffiliated companies.
Morning Brew Daily
Boeing Caught in US-China Crossfire & Zuckerberg Takes The Stand
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Morning Brew Daily
Boeing Caught in US-China Crossfire & Zuckerberg Takes The Stand
LinkedIn will even give you a $100 credit on your next campaign so you can try it yourself. Just go to LinkedIn.com slash MBD. That's LinkedIn.com slash MBD. Terms and conditions apply only on LinkedIn ads.
Morning Brew Daily
Boeing Caught in US-China Crossfire & Zuckerberg Takes The Stand
is a very sensitive issue right now because of what generative AI is doing and how it is trained. I mean, just the concept of IP rights, let's just take a step back. Why are they important? Why are they established? It's because they encourage creativity and innovation. You have to give inventors and creators exclusive rights to their work. They need to know that
Morning Brew Daily
Boeing Caught in US-China Crossfire & Zuckerberg Takes The Stand
It will be protected in order to make that, and they will be able to make money by licensing that. If you don't have any copyright protections, what's the incentive for you to make something if it's just going to be stolen? That is the argument of IP law to begin with, and it actually dates back to the U.S. Constitution. The U.S.
Morning Brew Daily
Boeing Caught in US-China Crossfire & Zuckerberg Takes The Stand
Constitution says establish copyright and patents in order to promote the progress of science and useful arts. So Doing what Jack Dorsey and Elon Musk are saying by deleting all IP law is certainly an uphill climb, but it has sparked a discussion about whether copyright protections could be loosened in order to give AI companies an easier pathway to train models.
Morning Brew Daily
Boeing Caught in US-China Crossfire & Zuckerberg Takes The Stand
They say it's a national security issue because China doesn't care about that, and the U.S. has these stringent laws, and so does the U.K., but it's certainly coming up in governments and legislators right now.
Morning Brew Daily
Boeing Caught in US-China Crossfire & Zuckerberg Takes The Stand
Oh, that sweet little snap. I'd like to add a little tap, tap, tap for good measure. That's the sound of destiny.
Morning Brew Daily
Boeing Caught in US-China Crossfire & Zuckerberg Takes The Stand
On the other hand, artists, inventors, creators on the other side, you know, could not be more upset about this and say that, you know, we will produce less. We will just, they're like the impacts of people creating less if IP law is scrapped or watered down.
Morning Brew Daily
Boeing Caught in US-China Crossfire & Zuckerberg Takes The Stand
as these AI executives want will just be so catastrophic for the artistic community, for the creator community, for anyone who wants to invent something. Huge ripple effects across the economy. Let's sprint to the finish with some final headlines. American Airlines is finally joining the Mile High Wi-Fi Club, announcing plans to offer free internet on flights starting in January.
Morning Brew Daily
Boeing Caught in US-China Crossfire & Zuckerberg Takes The Stand
It will be the last of the major U.S. airlines to let you browse the web at no charge while up in the air. JetBlue has offered it for years. Delta started free Wi-Fi in 2023. And United is currently outfitting its fleet with satellite Wi-Fi from Starlink. Americans will be powered by Intelsat and Viasat and made available to members of its A-Advantage loyalty program, which is free.
Morning Brew Daily
Boeing Caught in US-China Crossfire & Zuckerberg Takes The Stand
Toby, free Wi-Fi is no longer a perk from airlines. It's table stakes.
Morning Brew Daily
Boeing Caught in US-China Crossfire & Zuckerberg Takes The Stand
The crazy part of the story for me was when they said that they're going to introduce this in January. That's January 2026. Yeah, we're getting there. Speaking of the progression of time.
Morning Brew Daily
Boeing Caught in US-China Crossfire & Zuckerberg Takes The Stand
Rich, creamy, smooth. The unsweetened version comes with zero grams of sugar and still somehow tastes delicious.
Morning Brew Daily
Boeing Caught in US-China Crossfire & Zuckerberg Takes The Stand
I mean, the one rule for naming is don't make it bad. It doesn't need to be good. Just don't make it bad and confusing where you're actively harming yourself. And it seems like that is exactly what OpenAI does. I don't think he even likes the name ChatGPT. In fact, Sam Altman has said...
Morning Brew Daily
Boeing Caught in US-China Crossfire & Zuckerberg Takes The Stand
No marketer ever would have picked ChatGPT as the name for this, but we may be stuck with it because of how ubiquitous it is. Now, I really hope OpenAI gets its act together before it releases a new product that is rumored.
Morning Brew Daily
Boeing Caught in US-China Crossfire & Zuckerberg Takes The Stand
Yesterday, multiple reports said that it is going to be launching a social media competitor to Instagram and X. And obviously, the subtext of that is that Sam Altman and Elon Musk haven't hate each other. So if Sam Allman launches a product that goes against or that competes against X, I mean, that could even lead to more fireworks.
Morning Brew Daily
Boeing Caught in US-China Crossfire & Zuckerberg Takes The Stand
But, you know, do not name it anything that you've named any of your other models.
Morning Brew Daily
Boeing Caught in US-China Crossfire & Zuckerberg Takes The Stand
Very cool. And it's always a breath of fresh air when an athlete doesn't launch an alcohol brand like so many have. So very cool for Ken Griffey. He said he was really nervous. He said... You know, how would these guys feel if he's talking about other photographers? How would these guys feel if we all got into a batting cage and I was sitting there critiquing them?
Morning Brew Daily
Boeing Caught in US-China Crossfire & Zuckerberg Takes The Stand
So, you know, he had butterflies going into this Masters. It was his first one. He has photographed all of these other events. But, you know, Sunday at the Masters is just another level. He's also not the only one. a former baseball player, former MLB player, to take up photography. Randy Johnson, the big unit, that big lefty, has also taken up photography in his post-baseball life.
Morning Brew Daily
Boeing Caught in US-China Crossfire & Zuckerberg Takes The Stand
He is, you know, I've seen him take pictures of wildlife and other things. So you can see Randy Johnson in the prairie photographing gazelles. Very cool for these guys. And the thing is, they are good at it, which is super awesome. Let's wrap it up there. Thanks so much for starting your morning with us, and have a wonderful Wednesday. You're well over 29% through this week.
Morning Brew Daily
Boeing Caught in US-China Crossfire & Zuckerberg Takes The Stand
For any questions, comments, or feedback, send an email to morningbrewdaily at morningbrew.com. Let's roll the credits. Emily Milliron is our executive producer. Raven Liu is our producer. Our associate producers are Olivia Graham and Olivia Lake. Garrett Peck is on audio. Hair and makeup would be Zuck and Catan. Devin Emery is our president, and our show is a production of Morning Brew.
Morning Brew Daily
Boeing Caught in US-China Crossfire & Zuckerberg Takes The Stand
To bring the poker metaphor back, this is China sitting next to the United States and maybe bleeding a little bit, showing its cards that it can play because these are extremely powerful cards. Boeing is the largest exporter by dollar value in the United States. Nearly a quarter of all of its output went to China, which is a huge aviation market.
Morning Brew Daily
Boeing Caught in US-China Crossfire & Zuckerberg Takes The Stand
Bank of America strategist came out yesterday and said, we see this. We don't see this. as sustainable. The Trump administration can't ignore Boeing. Boeing stock fell on the news yesterday. It looks like this is just going to be part of a broader negotiation. It's a bargaining chip that says we can block Boeing now. It might not last that long and it'll be part of broader negotiations.
Morning Brew Daily
Boeing Caught in US-China Crossfire & Zuckerberg Takes The Stand
But it would just be so devastating for Boeing, which, yes, has had its own internal issues. But if it can't sell its planes to China, a massive market, I mean, that would be a huge financial blow.
Morning Brew Daily
Boeing Caught in US-China Crossfire & Zuckerberg Takes The Stand
Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, Jack Dorsey and Elon Musk want to eliminate all IP law, but should we?
Morning Brew Daily
Boeing Caught in US-China Crossfire & Zuckerberg Takes The Stand
And the U.S. does have one rare earths mine, just one. It's in California. But as you said, we can extract the rare earths from that particular mine, but they still need to send it to China in order to get refined into magnets that are used in all of these various products. So they are working, this mine in California is working on developing a refining process, but it's going to take years.
Morning Brew Daily
Boeing Caught in US-China Crossfire & Zuckerberg Takes The Stand
The big question here is what this means for national security. and the military because defense contractors are warning that if there's no supply of rare earths, then they won't be able to make weapons. Obviously, China is a big geopolitical adversary.
Morning Brew Daily
Boeing Caught in US-China Crossfire & Zuckerberg Takes The Stand
One incredible stat is that every F-35 fighter contains around 900 pounds of rare earth materials, and some submarines need more than 9,200 pounds of the materials. So you can't really make these things without China, which is a huge problem.
Morning Brew Daily
Boeing Caught in US-China Crossfire & Zuckerberg Takes The Stand
Meta's landmark antitrust trial against the government kicked off on Monday in federal court, and it unearthed some past emails Mark Zuckerberg would probably not want everyone to see. As a reminder, the FTC is accusing Meta of illegally stifling competition in social media through its acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp back in 2012 and 2014, and wants those two behemoths spun off.
Morning Brew Daily
Boeing Caught in US-China Crossfire & Zuckerberg Takes The Stand
This is pretty much existential for Meta, given that Instagram accounts for over half of its ad revenue, and WhatsApp is the most popular messaging app on planet Earth. As the trial kicked off, a surprise witness took the stand, Zuck himself.
Morning Brew Daily
Boeing Caught in US-China Crossfire & Zuckerberg Takes The Stand
The government's lawyer presented him with a binder of past correspondence, and like anyone who's scrolled many years back on their Instagram feed, he probably thought, well... I regret sending this.
Morning Brew Daily
Boeing Caught in US-China Crossfire & Zuckerberg Takes The Stand
One of the key emails called a smoking gun by the government was a message sent to then COO Sheryl Sandberg in which Zuck talked about the rise of Instagram and the importance of, quote, neutralizing a potential competitor. In another email to Sandberg post Instagram acquisition, he wrote Messenger isn't beating WhatsApp.
Morning Brew Daily
Boeing Caught in US-China Crossfire & Zuckerberg Takes The Stand
Instagram was growing so much faster than us that we had to buy them for one billion dollars. That's not exactly killing it. The FTC claims these comments were a crystal clear example of Meta pursuing a buy or bury strategy that cemented its unfair dominance in social media. And Toby, these emails weren't the only big revelation so far from the trial.
Morning Brew Daily
Boeing Caught in US-China Crossfire & Zuckerberg Takes The Stand
So our coworkers found this fun website that tells you how much progress we've made in the year so far and puts that into context in other areas. As of this morning, we are 29% of the way through 2025, which means in a 40-hour work week, it would be 12.33 p.m. on a Tuesday. In a marathon, you'd have about 19.2 miles left to run.
Morning Brew Daily
Boeing Caught in US-China Crossfire & Zuckerberg Takes The Stand
These emails were honestly only just about the only good news that the FTC has so far in this trial. It's been two days because legal experts say this is going to be an uphill battle to get meta to spin off Instagram and WhatsApp. And one of the biggest challenges that has come to the fore so far is the definition of the social media market that meta represents.
Morning Brew Daily
Boeing Caught in US-China Crossfire & Zuckerberg Takes The Stand
plays in with Instagram and WhatsApp. The FTC says that the market is a personal social network. So you just communicate with your friends and your family. So that means Meta doesn't compete with TikTok or YouTube or iMessage. It competes with only Snapchat and a company called MeWe, which even Zuck said he hadn't heard of. So it's this tiny competitor.
Morning Brew Daily
Boeing Caught in US-China Crossfire & Zuckerberg Takes The Stand
So it is accusing Meta of playing in this very small sandbox. Meta has responded by saying, Come on. Like we compete with TikTok. We compete with YouTube. And for an example of this, the lawyer for Meta showed that in January when TikTok was down for 12 hours, he pulled out data that showed that Instagram got a huge spike. And he's like, this is exactly we directly compete with them. No TikTok.
Morning Brew Daily
Boeing Caught in US-China Crossfire & Zuckerberg Takes The Stand
Then people go over to Instagram.
Morning Brew Daily
Boeing Caught in US-China Crossfire & Zuckerberg Takes The Stand
The king of luxury has been dethroned. Yesterday, France's LVMH was surpassed by Hermes as the most valuable luxury company in the world. The abdication of the Golden Throne came after LVMH had a howler of an earnings report, reporting that revenue dropped 2% from the same period last year, much lower than expectations.
Morning Brew Daily
Boeing Caught in US-China Crossfire & Zuckerberg Takes The Stand
That caused its stock to drop 8%, its worst one-day performance since March 2020, clearing the way for Crosstown rival Hermes to take the top spot. This is about more than a changing of the luxury guard, though. It's a warning shot across the entire sector and perhaps the economy more broadly. LVMH, because it owns 75 brands, is seen as the industry bellwether.
Morning Brew Daily
Boeing Caught in US-China Crossfire & Zuckerberg Takes The Stand
It sells champagne, Tag Heuer watches, Dior jackets, Tiffany engagement rings. If there's something you want to buy but a store manager needs to grab a key to go unlock the case, it's probably LVMH. To be sure, luxury has been stumbling ever in the years following the pandemic, but now it's facing a potentially daunting double whammy.
Morning Brew Daily
Boeing Caught in US-China Crossfire & Zuckerberg Takes The Stand
And in the book, The Hobbit, Bilbo would be performing riddles in the dark.
Morning Brew Daily
Boeing Caught in US-China Crossfire & Zuckerberg Takes The Stand
Chinese consumers, a key clientele, are pulling back, and President Trump's trade war has injected a massive dose of uncertainty across the economy. LVMH's CFO said tariffs put the company in quote, unknown territory.
Morning Brew Daily
Boeing Caught in US-China Crossfire & Zuckerberg Takes The Stand
Meanwhile, I mean, let's just talk about Hermes because now it's the most valuable luxury company in the world. It's running a stellar playbook. I was very surprised by this because LVMH has 75 brands. And I was I was saying, like, does Hermes have any other brands? But no, it's literally that. But they sell the Birkin bag. They sell the Kelly bag, which, you know, is very high end.
Morning Brew Daily
Boeing Caught in US-China Crossfire & Zuckerberg Takes The Stand
And you have to they've maintained this. aura of exclusivity around these products. We have to wait months and interview to get these these bags that cost, you know, more than eight thousand dollars. And so kudos to them and just running the luxury playbook super well.
Morning Brew Daily
Boeing Caught in US-China Crossfire & Zuckerberg Takes The Stand
And the final note on this story, which is, you know, somewhat adds to the lore, is that Bernard Arnault, who is the godfather of LVMH, tried to buy Hermes back in 2010. He was unsuccessful and now he's getting laughed by them.
Morning Brew Daily
Boeing Caught in US-China Crossfire & Zuckerberg Takes The Stand
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Morning Brew Daily
Boeing Caught in US-China Crossfire & Zuckerberg Takes The Stand
You'll also find low pricing, lots of education, and backup from a support team that really gets how traders trade.
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Boeing Caught in US-China Crossfire & Zuckerberg Takes The Stand
Genius loves companies, so get moving at tastytrade.com slash ride with us. That's tastytrade.com slash ride with us. Tasty Trade Inc. is a registered broker dealer and member of FINRA, NFA, and SIPC. Tasty Trade Inc. and Morning Brew are separate and unaffiliated companies. The best B2B marketing sometimes ends up in front of the wrong people. It's like advertising fishing gear to a fish.
Morning Brew Daily
Southwest Scraps Free Checked Bags & Tariffs Hit Steel and Aluminum
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Morning Brew Daily
Southwest Scraps Free Checked Bags & Tariffs Hit Steel and Aluminum
Taxes and fees extra. See Mint Mobile for details. Talk to any well-traveled skier and they'll tell you that the country with possibly the world's best snow is Japan. Light, fluffy, and abundant, Japan's snow has attracted a record number of skiers and snowboarders this winter who marvel at the fresh powder and unique cultural experience offered by Japan's 500 ski resorts.
Morning Brew Daily
Southwest Scraps Free Checked Bags & Tariffs Hit Steel and Aluminum
But this year, there was too much of a good thing. Last month, record-breaking snowfall 122 inches on one mountain has caused chaos on the slopes, leading to closed resorts, dozens of stranded skiers, and burnout for staff as they've had to shovel out to make their mountains operable.
Morning Brew Daily
Southwest Scraps Free Checked Bags & Tariffs Hit Steel and Aluminum
A spokesperson for Gala Yuzawa Snow Resort, which had to close for a day for the first time in more than 30 years, called this season's snowfall honestly disaster level, or to put a number on it, two and a half time last year's snowpack. The tumble is unlikely to dissuade more foreigners from skiing in Japan. In fact, it may only galvanize it.
Morning Brew Daily
Southwest Scraps Free Checked Bags & Tariffs Hit Steel and Aluminum
I have tickets to that. All right, that is your thing. That looks amazing.
Morning Brew Daily
Southwest Scraps Free Checked Bags & Tariffs Hit Steel and Aluminum
Once under the radar, Japan's ski mountains centered on the northern island of Hokkaido have officially hit the mainstream as European, Aussie, and North American tourists head there in droves to escape the long lines, steep prices, and lack of snow that characterize their home mountains. And the Gossamer Wagyu Strips Apre Ski doesn't hurt.
Morning Brew Daily
Southwest Scraps Free Checked Bags & Tariffs Hit Steel and Aluminum
A lot of people who skied this summer in North America or Europe are about to wince, but the most expensive lift ticket in Japan is around $75. Many cost much less. So essentially, if you pay the international airfare and you get there, you can have a really good time on the cheap. The snow is so abundant. It's just this
Morning Brew Daily
Southwest Scraps Free Checked Bags & Tariffs Hit Steel and Aluminum
swirl of climate factors where you have the winds blowing across Siberia, mixing with the warmer temperatures above the Sea of Japan, and then it slams into these mountains and creates a really, really abundant snowfall. Another factor that makes Japan attractive is that if you're afraid of altitude or get sick from the altitude.
Morning Brew Daily
Southwest Scraps Free Checked Bags & Tariffs Hit Steel and Aluminum
Many of these mountains are below 1,000 feet in elevation, so there's no altitude sickness going on. Yes, there may be smaller slopes, smaller runs, but it makes up for it in terms of the experience.
Morning Brew Daily
Southwest Scraps Free Checked Bags & Tariffs Hit Steel and Aluminum
Let's sprint to the finish with some final headlines. The mass layoffs at the federal government roll on with the education department saying it plans to shed more than 1300 of its employees, about half of its staff, previewing President Trump's stated goal of dismantling the agency entirely.
Morning Brew Daily
Southwest Scraps Free Checked Bags & Tariffs Hit Steel and Aluminum
Jeez, Toby, getting a little personal here. I'd like to think I straddled both worlds. I was on the tennis squad, but also on our quiz bowl team, and we were elite.
Morning Brew Daily
Southwest Scraps Free Checked Bags & Tariffs Hit Steel and Aluminum
Officials insisted the education department would continue to fulfill key functions such as delivering federal aid to schools. managing student loans and overseeing Pell grants. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said the downsizing was intended to reduce bloat and send more money to state school authorities. She has acknowledged that only Congress has the power to completely abolish the agency.
Morning Brew Daily
Southwest Scraps Free Checked Bags & Tariffs Hit Steel and Aluminum
Yeah, this stadium is going, this new stadium is going to be huge, 100,000 person capacity. That would be the biggest stadium in the UK. It's going to cost $2.5 billion. So the big question is where they're going to find the money. Are they going to sell the naming rights? But just to put this in context, this stadium has been around for hundreds of years. 115 years.
Morning Brew Daily
Southwest Scraps Free Checked Bags & Tariffs Hit Steel and Aluminum
It's like Fenway Park getting demolished to get a new Boston Red Sox stadium. It's kind of similar to what happened with Yankee Stadium, where they took down the old one, built a new one. I mean, as a Man U fan, what do you feel about this?
Morning Brew Daily
Southwest Scraps Free Checked Bags & Tariffs Hit Steel and Aluminum
You're kind of like the Invesco QQQ ETF. Does it have a nasty one-handed backhand and know every capital city in the United States?
Morning Brew Daily
Southwest Scraps Free Checked Bags & Tariffs Hit Steel and Aluminum
For the second straight spring, Major League Baseball is dealing with a merch fiasco weeks before the season starts. Last year, players complained about newly designed jerseys from Nike and Fanatics. This year, fans are mocking special edition new era hats for showing nonsensical and sometimes inappropriate words on the cap.
Morning Brew Daily
Southwest Scraps Free Checked Bags & Tariffs Hit Steel and Aluminum
New Era recently released overlap hats that superimposes each franchise's logo over its wordmark, but it worked better in the brainstorm session than in practice because the Houston Astros hat reads Ashos and the Texas Rangers hat looks like it says Tetas, which you can Google what that means in Spanish.
Morning Brew Daily
Southwest Scraps Free Checked Bags & Tariffs Hit Steel and Aluminum
After getting roasted on social media, the Rangers hat is no longer being sold, but it seems baseball cannot get out of its own way when rolling out new merchandise.
Morning Brew Daily
Southwest Scraps Free Checked Bags & Tariffs Hit Steel and Aluminum
I mean, panting, pacing, pacing back and forth, wanting to curl up with someone that sounds like me when I watch this. So so it's very understandable that a dog would be exhibiting these behaviors as well. It's just very unsettling experience for both human and animals. Let's wrap it up there. Thanks so much for starting your morning with us and have a wonderful Wednesday.
Morning Brew Daily
Southwest Scraps Free Checked Bags & Tariffs Hit Steel and Aluminum
For any questions, comments, or feedback, send an email to morningbrewdaily at morningbrew.com. And if you're enjoying the show, share it with a friend, family member, or coworker, Toby, who should everyone share it with today?
Morning Brew Daily
Southwest Scraps Free Checked Bags & Tariffs Hit Steel and Aluminum
Let's roll the credits. Emily Milliron is our executive producer. Raymond Liu is our producer. Olivia Graham and Olivia Lake are our associate producers. Euchenowa Ogu is our technical director. Scoops Dardaris is on audio. Hair and Makeup is scarfing down Nagiri after a long day on the Japanese slopes. Devin Emery is our chief content officer and our show is a production of Morning Brew.
Morning Brew Daily
Southwest Scraps Free Checked Bags & Tariffs Hit Steel and Aluminum
Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, tariffs go heavy metal as the U.S. hits trading partners with a 25% steel and aluminum tax.
Morning Brew Daily
Southwest Scraps Free Checked Bags & Tariffs Hit Steel and Aluminum
Let's go back to September 2024. Just a few months ago, Southwest praised its two-free-bags policy as far and away the top feature distinguishing the airline. This guy, Ryan Green, who was the chief transformation officer at the time, did a study. He found that bag charges would bring in about $1.5 billion in revenue a year, but also cost Southwest everything.
Morning Brew Daily
Southwest Scraps Free Checked Bags & Tariffs Hit Steel and Aluminum
$1.8 billion in lost market share as customers would go to other airlines if they made this change. So he said, guys, it is not worth it. Let's just say that Southwest is not employing this man anymore. They got rid of him and they made this change in a bid to survive in the cutthroat in the cutthroat market for airlines right now.
Morning Brew Daily
Southwest Scraps Free Checked Bags & Tariffs Hit Steel and Aluminum
But now that Southwest has fallen in line with the rest of the industry, the question is, how does it differentiate itself from Delta, American, and United? And the answer is very unclear. Southwest doesn't have those premium cabin spots that have really been the profit driver of all of those major airlines in recent years. It only flies Boeing 737s.
Morning Brew Daily
Southwest Scraps Free Checked Bags & Tariffs Hit Steel and Aluminum
It doesn't have a differentiated aircraft base where it can fly to different routes at more profitable speeds. And then in terms of distribution and where people find Southwest, only recently it showed up in places like Expedia or Google Flights. For many years, it wanted you to go to Southwest.com to book a flight.
Morning Brew Daily
Southwest Scraps Free Checked Bags & Tariffs Hit Steel and Aluminum
Now it's changing course because it realized that that's just another lever it could pull to move in line with the rest of the industry. But there are major concerns that Southwest cannot differentiate itself right now.
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Southwest Scraps Free Checked Bags & Tariffs Hit Steel and Aluminum
Delta CEO Ed Bastian called Q1 a parade of horribles. Who knew that the brawls at the U.S.-Canada hockey game earlier this year would be a preview of their much larger economic war to come? President Trump ramped up his fight against Canada yesterday, saying he would double plan tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum from 25% to 50% effective today.
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Southwest Scraps Free Checked Bags & Tariffs Hit Steel and Aluminum
Trump said the tariffs would be raised after Ontario's Premier Doug Ford imposed a 25% surcharge on electricity from the province to people living in New York, Michigan, and Minnesota, affecting 1.5 million households and businesses. But by mid-afternoon, the 50% tariff on Canadian metals had been called off. That came after Ford and U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick
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Southwest Scraps Free Checked Bags & Tariffs Hit Steel and Aluminum
said Ontario would suspend its plans for a surcharge on electricity going into the U.S. and that the pair would meet in Washington on Thursday to discuss trade. With any negotiation that we have, Ford said, there's a point that both parties are heated and the temperature needs to come down. The temperature may be coming down, but the tariffs aren't.
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Southwest Scraps Free Checked Bags & Tariffs Hit Steel and Aluminum
A hot new play is setting fire to Broadway. Well, it's actually a very old play. Shakespeare's Othello, starring Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal, brought in $2.8 million last week over eight performances, making it the highest weekly gross for a Broadway play in history.
Morning Brew Daily
Southwest Scraps Free Checked Bags & Tariffs Hit Steel and Aluminum
Starting at midnight, 25% tariffs on aluminum and steel went into effect against all the U.S. 's trading partners, including Canada, which could boost American metals producers but raise prices for manufacturers who use steel and aluminum as inputs to make other goods. The on-again, off-again tariff threats continued to give traders a headache.
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Southwest Scraps Free Checked Bags & Tariffs Hit Steel and Aluminum
A day after posting its worst session of the year, the S&P 500 tumbled another 0.75%.
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Southwest Scraps Free Checked Bags & Tariffs Hit Steel and Aluminum
Yeah. And this is not the first time that Trump has input imposed tariffs on steel and aluminum. He did it back in 2018 during his first term. And that might be instructed to see what the impacts might be this time around. Prices for both metal, steel and aluminum rose significantly.
Morning Brew Daily
Southwest Scraps Free Checked Bags & Tariffs Hit Steel and Aluminum
two percent and imports fell by a quarter that is probably the intended uh effect of tariffs it's supposed to raise prices to help out uh domestic manufacturers who are competing with foreign metals at the same time it raised prices uh companies like caterpillar uh raised prices for customers citing a hundred million dollar loss loss and profit from from those tariffs.
Morning Brew Daily
Southwest Scraps Free Checked Bags & Tariffs Hit Steel and Aluminum
So you see the give and the take from tariffs last time those President Biden actually kept those tariffs on for many of the U.S. trade partners, rolled them back a little bit. So steel and aluminum tariffs have been with us for a while and they're just coming back to the entire world right now.
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Southwest Scraps Free Checked Bags & Tariffs Hit Steel and Aluminum
The average ticket price was $338, but hearing Denzel recite, excellent wretch, perdition, catch my soul, but I do love thee, and when I love thee not, chaos is come again. Seems worth it.
Morning Brew Daily
Southwest Scraps Free Checked Bags & Tariffs Hit Steel and Aluminum
The stage is set for an absolute gold rush onto Greenland right now. It contains an estimated 43 of the 50. critical minerals that the U.S. considers vital to national security. It's hosted some of the largest rare earth resources known to exist anywhere around the world.
Morning Brew Daily
Southwest Scraps Free Checked Bags & Tariffs Hit Steel and Aluminum
People like Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos and even Howard Lutnick, the Commerce Secretary, have invested in companies that are prospecting in Greenland. It is very strategic for Western powers as a way to box China out of its encroachment into their territory. However, only two mines currently exist in Greenland. There are a litany of challenges that prevent companies from investing there.
Morning Brew Daily
Southwest Scraps Free Checked Bags & Tariffs Hit Steel and Aluminum
So there is a ton of treasure to be had in Greenland. The accessing part is quite difficult.
Morning Brew Daily
Southwest Scraps Free Checked Bags & Tariffs Hit Steel and Aluminum
Top scorers will receive a custom prize, a $200 Amex gift card, and a newsletter feature.
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Southwest Scraps Free Checked Bags & Tariffs Hit Steel and Aluminum
If you have the answer, go to www.morningbrew.com slash morning-market-trivia to test your stuff with the morning market trivia quiz. Who knows? You could end up on the leaderboard. Like I said, top scorers will receive prizes and a feature in the Morning Brew newsletter. I scored a 12 out of 15. I got 11 out of 15.
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Southwest Scraps Free Checked Bags & Tariffs Hit Steel and Aluminum
Head on over to www.morningbrew.com slash morning-market-trivia and see if you can beat our scorers and win some goodies. You know how some wireless plans promote a great deal and then you never see it again past your first bill? All too well, unfortunately. Well, in comes Mint Mobile to the rescue with premium wireless plans starting at $15 a month.
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Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
And with a variable 4.46% APY, VO Bank's Money Market Savings Account offers exactly that. Voted as the best money market account by GoBankingRates, its interest rate paid is 10 times the national average.
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Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
All of this means you have the flexibility to grow your money and access it whenever you want or need to.
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Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
Now to a page-turner of a story that you won't be able to put down. It truly is a tour de force that redefines how we think about the genre. I, of course, am talking about the controversy sweeping the publishing world around book blurbs. You know, those short, cliche-heavy sentences you see plastered on books from other authors goading you into buying it.
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Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
Well, maybe they're not as permanent a fixture as we thought. Earlier this month, Simon & Schuster generated a storm when publisher Sean Manning wrote an essay, a gripping read if you ask me, railing against the book blurb industrial complex and stated that the company would no longer require authors to solicit blurbs for their books.
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Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
I believe the insistence on blurbs has become incredibly damaging to what should be our industry's ultimate goal, producing books of the highest possible quality, he wrote. That tremor followed another literary earthquake in December when bestselling author Rebecca McKay said she'd stop blurbing books for at least the next two years, calling it a drain on her time and energy.
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Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
Toby, blurbs are an incredibly touchy topic among authors. No one actually likes to ask for them or receive requests to write them, but you seemingly should do it because this is what the industry has demanded. Can the blurb economy be reformed?
Morning Brew Daily
Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
It's for the gatekeepers, right? Right. But it was interesting to me to learn how this process comes together, because I guess I didn't really think about it that much. When you see a blurb on a book, you don't really think about how it got there. But apparently, before a book is published, the authors of books who don't have
Morning Brew Daily
Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
massive marketing behind them, which is most of them, just literally cold email thousands of other authors asking them to read their book and blurb it. And oftentimes it is their teachers from their MFA programs. But anyway, so they send these, they do this like grind, you know, hit the pavement for three weeks trying to get these blurbs. So that does not sound fun, but you have to do it.
Morning Brew Daily
Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
At the other end, if you're an author, you are getting all of these requests going into you at the same time you're sending them out. So this is very painful for everyone involved. A huge time suck. So that's sort of why everyone hates doing it, even though they feel they must. At the same time, it's unclear whether these blurbs actually move the needle in terms of sales.
Morning Brew Daily
Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
That is also the first time I've heard of a dog named Neil, and I feel bad for that dog, to be honest.
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Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
Catch-22. Catch-22. Had zero blurbs when it came up. Okay, let's sprint to the finish with some final headlines. The DEI rollback continues apace across corporate America, with more major companies reversing pledges on diversity, equity, and inclusion under the directives of the new Trump administration. The U.S.
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Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
arm of consulting behemoth Deloitte told its employees working on government contracts to remove gender pronouns from their email signatures. and they scrapped broader DEI programs, citing the need to, quote, align with emerging government client practices and requirements.
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Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
Also yesterday, Goldman Sachs abandoned ship on its pledge to refuse to work on IPOs for companies that had all-white male boards. It made a rule back in 2020 that it would only take a company public in the U.S. if it had at least two diverse board members, including one woman. A spokesperson said, as a result of legal developments related to board diversity requirements,
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Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
we ended our formal board diversity policy.
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Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
Yeah, you've heard this from a bunch of CEOs that these tariff threats and reversals are creating a lot of uncertainty. And Griffin cited multinationals and in particular that you need to plan 5, 10, 15, 20 years in the future because you're about to sink tens of billions of dollars into a factory or another kind of investment.
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Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
It requires a lot of planning, requires a lot of money, and you just simply can't make those kind of investments when you're uncertain of the trade policy that the U.S. is going to engage with with the rest of the world. So uncertainty, bad for corporate America, and that's what Ken Griffin is saying. Gulf of America slash Mexico drama at the White House.
Morning Brew Daily
Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
The Trump administration barred an Associated Press reporter from entering the Oval Office for an executive order signing ceremony because the AP style still uses the name Gulf of Mexico instead of Gulf of America, despite Trump's renaming of the body of water.
Morning Brew Daily
Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
The news service said it was alarming that the White House would punish AP or independent journalism and that, quote, it not only severely impedes the public's access to independent news, it plainly violates the First Amendment. The AP's guidance states that it will refer to that Gulf by its original name while acknowledging the new name Trump has chosen.
Morning Brew Daily
Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
And that's because the Gulf of Mexico name has been around for 400 years and people internationally where the AP disseminates news do not recognize the change.
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Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
Well, I'm not an international business owner. I'm just a humble puzzler.
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Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
You'll never be the same. My life is now divided into two parts. Before, I knew that fatbergs existed, and now that I know that they exist, they are pretty terrifying, and they do make sense on the surface. You're like, oh, yeah, that probably would happen over time as all of these non-degradable things mesh together in our sewer system and create blockages.
Morning Brew Daily
Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
My question is, how has a fatberg, anthropomorphized fatberg, not been a villain in a movie yet? Like, you know... Flushed away or something like that.
Morning Brew Daily
Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
Let's wrap it up there. Thanks so much for starting your morning with us and have a wonderful Wednesday. For any questions, comments, or feedback, send an email to morningbrewdaily at morningbrew.com. And if you're enjoying the show, share it with a friend, family member, or coworker. Toby, who should people with share it with today?
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Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
Let's roll the credits. Emily Milliron is our executive producer. Raymond Liu is our producer. Olivia Graham is our associate producer. Uchenna Waogu is our technical director. Garrett Peck is on audio. Hair and makeup is the voice of their generation spinning a heart-wrenching tale of love and woe. Neil Freiman, host of Morning Brew Daily.
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Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
Devin Emery is our chief content officer, and our show is a production of Morning Brew.
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Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
OpenAI right now is trying to pull off a routine of Simone Biles-level difficulty. What they're trying to do right now is one of the most complex maneuvers in American commercial history. It's got this $500 billion data center project called Stargate with Oracle and SoftBank. At the same time, it's raising $40 billion at a $300 billion valuation.
Morning Brew Daily
Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, Sam Altman called Elon Musk not a happy person. Let's go inside the billionaire battle over the future of AI.
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Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
That would be the largest venture capital round by orders of magnitude in American history. For those to happen, it needs to be able to convert from this nonprofit for-profit structure that it's in right now to streamline that into one cohesive for-profit company that allows it to raise money. Right now, it is, you know, handcuffed, uh, to raise money because of this weird structure that it's in.
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Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
So it needs to be able to execute this deal. And Elon Musk, as Sam Altman is probably correctly saying, is trying to throw a wrench in it and slow it down, even if he's not able to stop it. Elon OpenAI has a lot on their agenda, a lot of mouths to feed this very complex maneuver. And Elon Musk is certainly making that more difficult.
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Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
And there's also a chance this is a complete smokescreen because OpenAI board director Larry Summers, who's the former treasury secretary, said he had not received any formal outreach from Elon Musk and that consortium of investors who put forward this nearly $100 billion bid. Sam Altman also told employees that he hasn't received anything official from the Musk team.
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Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
So we'll see whether this is bluster or actually a real bid in the first place.
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Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
This is very all soap opera-y, obviously. But there is so much at stake, billions of dollars, but also the future of AI. OpenAI is one of the leading AI companies in the world. Every corporate exec and technology leader says this is the next industrial revolution. So who controls what happens going forward with this technology is of crucial importance to everyone around the world.
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Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
And right now, these two guys are duking it out to be that person. Is milk the future of Coke? And by that, I don't mean milk flavored Coke, which would try. But Coca-Cola, the drinks conglomerate, which is leaning into the white stuff to become a, quote, total beverage company amid declining soda sales.
Morning Brew Daily
Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
In its earnings call yesterday, Coca-Cola touted the milk brand Fairlife for continuing to perform well throughout the year. That is an understatement. It's Coca-Cola. Coke's fastest growing brand in the United States and the centerpiece of its plan to diversify away from soda into beverages that people, you know, drink. On the surface, milk might seem like a bad choice. U.S.
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Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
per capita milk consumption has plunged nearly 30% since 2010 as Americans have turned to plant-based alternatives. But Fairlife is not ordinary milk. It's milk, but fancy. It filters milk to create higher levels of protein while cutting sugar by half and getting rid of lactose altogether for happier stomachs.
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Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
The Super Bowl wasn't the only contest that everyone you know is talking about this week. The Westminster Dog Show was held last night, and best in show went to a giant schnauzer named Monty. It's the most prestigious prize in the U.S. dog show world, where dogs are judged according to how closely they match the ideal for their breed.
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Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
Fans worship its creaminess, propelling sales to grow 1000% from 90 million in 2015 to seven years later when it became a billion dollar brand for the first time. Toby, food and drink companies are under a lot of pressure from changing consumer trends, high inflation, and the Ozempic craze. So here's the big question. Is it milk or milk?
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Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
knew what they were getting into. This deal has a very interesting history. Back in 2012, they entered a joint venture with a milk co-op, a dairy co-op, which created the Fairlife brand in response to declining milk sales. And their initial outlays were about $320 million. But this deal had some performance-based payments that continued through this year.
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Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
And the performance was really good for Fairlife. So they kept having to pay over these performance-based So now at this point, they forked, which started as a $320 million deal, has now morphed into a $7.4 billion deal over five years. And that's now the largest acquisition in Coke's 133 year history. So it's cost them a lot, but it seems like it is. They're getting their return back.
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Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
Monty's owner and handler could barely hold back tears on the podium. Puppy did the damn thing, and I'm so proud of him, she said. Having been named the top dog, Monty will now be retiring from competition. Toby, what did you accomplish when you were five years old?
Morning Brew Daily
Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
Yeah, my first question for this was also how did this commercial pass mustard to air? I mean, we didn't see it because we were watching in the New York market, but apparently he bought 32nd spot on three Fox owned channels. And if the ad, which many people in America did not see, but many people did. Did see was him in a seemingly dentist chair filming on an iPhone.
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Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
And, you know, this has to go through legal approval. So these station directors looked at this and said, OK, well, I guess there's nothing apparently wrong or illegal here. And when he did direct people to this Web site during the Super Bowl itself, but during the Super Bowl itself, This this store sold very generic, non-branded merchandise, nothing like the swastika shirts.
Morning Brew Daily
Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
And then hours after is when he flipped it, leaving these studio execs being like, what did we just do? But it speaks to the fact that Super Bowl commercials are also not always national. And these very slick productions, sometimes they're local car businesses and lawyers and often more controversial advertisers will buy, you know, spots in local markets for hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Morning Brew Daily
Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
It's still very expensive, but kind of skirt the national spotlight. It seems like this is kind of what Kanye did.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Bumps China Tariffs to 104% & People Are Panic-Buying iPhones
Tasty Trade Inc. and Morning Brew are separate and unaffiliated companies. The best B2B marketing sometimes ends up in front of the wrong people. It's like advertising fishing gear to a fish.
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Trump Bumps China Tariffs to 104% & People Are Panic-Buying iPhones
That's what LinkedIn ads is built for. LinkedIn has grown to a network of over 1 billion professionals. Of those, 130 million are decision makers. You can target your buyers by job title, industry, company role, seniority, revenue, so many options all in one place. Don't waste precious budget on the wrong audience. Tap into LinkedIn ads to find your people.
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Trump Bumps China Tariffs to 104% & People Are Panic-Buying iPhones
LinkedIn will even give you a $100 credit on your next campaign so you can try it yourself. Just go to LinkedIn.com slash MBD. That's LinkedIn.com slash MBD. Terms and conditions apply only on LinkedIn ads.
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Trump Bumps China Tariffs to 104% & People Are Panic-Buying iPhones
Yeah, it's funny that Zara is the poster child of San Francisco's perhaps rebirth. There does seem to be a little bit of momentum around San Francisco's downtown comeback right now. There's a business-friendly new mayor who's the Levi Strauss heir who has a lot of connections. There are a lot of wealthy people who live in the Bay Area.
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Trump Bumps China Tariffs to 104% & People Are Panic-Buying iPhones
So if you round them up into a coalition and get them investing in San Francisco, some good things could happen. It seems like there have been developments in that arena. David Stiebelman is the co-founder of Sixtry, which is a huge private equity company based in San Francisco. He's just started this new thing called the San Francisco Downtown Development Corporation.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Bumps China Tariffs to 104% & People Are Panic-Buying iPhones
He's got people like Meg Whitman, you know, the former CEO of eBay on his board, some real heavy hitters. They're trying to marshal private capital to invest in downtown spaces. And, you know, I don't think they were responsible for bringing Zara back, but they can probably mobilize a lot of investors to come in and say like, look, You know, it's all about narratives, right?
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Bumps China Tariffs to 104% & People Are Panic-Buying iPhones
So if you can say San Francisco is coming back, crime is going down, this is something that we believe is happening, we're long San Francisco, invest here, and then it's a self-fulfilling prophecy.
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Trump Bumps China Tariffs to 104% & People Are Panic-Buying iPhones
Yeah. And I think San Francisco's fortunes will ride or die with the tech industry. And during 2021 and 2022, those were some foul years for the tech industry. They were cutting jobs left and right with high interest rates. But then all of a sudden, ChatGPT is released. And this new tech wave is cresting.
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Trump Bumps China Tariffs to 104% & People Are Panic-Buying iPhones
And you see companies like OpenAI and Anthropic, some of the biggest AI leaders, they are based in downtown San Francisco. A new report found that the Bay Area had 11 of the largest U.S. office leases in 2024. Tech companies have committed more than 8 million square feet to office leases.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Bumps China Tariffs to 104% & People Are Panic-Buying iPhones
So as you mentioned, the vacancy rate is still high, but they're hoping to ride the AI wave and some continued momentum into the future.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Bumps China Tariffs to 104% & People Are Panic-Buying iPhones
Yeah, they're saying, the Justice Department is saying that we shouldn't, we're not a financial regulator. We shouldn't be going over after crypto companies for things like violating securities, commodities, or banking secrecy laws. That should be left for the financial regulators that we have. We're the DOJ. This is not our... purview.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Bumps China Tariffs to 104% & People Are Panic-Buying iPhones
And it comes after the SEC has dropped more than a dozen cases that they were pursuing against crypto firms like Coinbase and Kraken. So you're seeing, yes, a little more relaxing of oversight of crypto with the hopes that it will let this industry flourish.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Bumps China Tariffs to 104% & People Are Panic-Buying iPhones
I think the theaters are willing to take the good with the bad here, because it opened to over 160 million domestically in North America, and it was just a huge savior. And it might be because of these memes. We saw this happen with the Minions movie, The Rise of Gru, where you had Mr. Beast and all of these hordes of young kids dressing up as suits and creating a whole experience around it.
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Trump Bumps China Tariffs to 104% & People Are Panic-Buying iPhones
If your answer is that it's time to get TaxAct, their deduction maximizer helps make sure you don't leave any money on the table because missed deductions are free money getting up and walking away.
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Trump Bumps China Tariffs to 104% & People Are Panic-Buying iPhones
One older person said, I haven't seen anything like this. since Rocky Horror. So when you create an experience around a film, that is one reason to not queue up a streaming service and go to a movie, because it is this collective experience. Obviously, they're getting a little rowdy.
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Trump Bumps China Tariffs to 104% & People Are Panic-Buying iPhones
But I think what theaters are going to start to do is have these separate chicken jockey showings, like they had the separate Taylor Swift heiress tour things where, hey, you want to sing along, Wicked? Go over here. If you just want to actually watch the Minecraft movie, which sounds, honestly, a lot more boring, just go over here.
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Trump Bumps China Tariffs to 104% & People Are Panic-Buying iPhones
Finally, White Lotus may have wrapped up its divisive third season, but the drama off the set is still piping hot. In an interview with Howard Stern, the HBO show's creator, director, and writer Mike White blasted composer Cristobal Tapia de Vere, who left the show and told the New York Times days before the finale that he had major problems with White. White called it kind of a bleep.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Bumps China Tariffs to 104% & People Are Panic-Buying iPhones
move and i knew he wasn't a team player and that he wanted to do it his way the subtext here is that devere was an integral part of the show's identity composing the famous theme song to the white lotus which has become a hit in its own right he's won three emmys for white lotus and the theme song has been remixed by djs like tiesto and sophie tucker
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Trump Bumps China Tariffs to 104% & People Are Panic-Buying iPhones
Meanwhile, the show has just become an absolute juggernaut for HBO. Sunday season finale drew 6.2 million viewers. That broke a series record set the week before by 30%. So it started out as this very small pandemic niche show has become one of the biggest properties in HBO. in HBO's stable.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Bumps China Tariffs to 104% & People Are Panic-Buying iPhones
Finally, here's a feel-good story about a tourist taking a wrong turn and ending up with the experience of a lifetime. Evan Johnston, a 21-year-old from Arizona, was in London and boarded a boat near Tower Bridge thinking it was the classic touristy hop-on, hop-off tour of the city. It was not the right boat.
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Trump Bumps China Tariffs to 104% & People Are Panic-Buying iPhones
Instead, it was a party boat chartered by around 150 supporters of the low-level English soccer club South End United, who were sailing to attend a high-stakes match against Sutton United. Johnson said he suspected something wasn't quite right. They seemed to know each other and were making chants I didn't understand, he said.
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Trump Bumps China Tariffs to 104% & People Are Panic-Buying iPhones
And if you run into a tricky question like whether your home office counts as a work expense or if your 12-month-old is an employee yet, they've got real tax experts ready to help, credentialed, U.S.-based, standing by.
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Trump Bumps China Tariffs to 104% & People Are Panic-Buying iPhones
But when the South End fans caught wind that they had a lost American stowaway on board, they embraced him, and eventually he was drinking and dancing with everyone. He ultimately attended the game, had a blast, and says, I'm a South End fan till I die now. One of the South End supporters told a UK publication that...
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Trump Bumps China Tariffs to 104% & People Are Panic-Buying iPhones
Just a really good feel-good story. Taking a boat with a bunch of fans to a game sounds amazing. And I know you can do that up to West Point for an Army game from New York City. So maybe that's something we put on the calendar for the fall. Let's wrap it up there. Thanks so much for starting your morning with us and have a wonderful Wednesday.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Bumps China Tariffs to 104% & People Are Panic-Buying iPhones
For any questions, comments, or feedback, send an email to morningbrewdaily at morningbrew.com. Let's roll the credits. Emily Milliron is our executive producer. Raymond Lute is our producer. Our associate producers are Olivia Graham and Olivia Lake. Garrett Peck is on audio. Hair and makeup is Team Mike White. Devin Emery is our president. And our show is a production of Morning Brew.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Bumps China Tariffs to 104% & People Are Panic-Buying iPhones
Visit TaxAct.com and file before April 15th. Let TaxAct help you find what's yours. You are waking up to a whole new world, and it's anything but a magic carpet ride. Just after midnight, President Trump's so-called reciprocal tariffs went into effect against 86 countries, including more than 104% tariffs on China, the world's second-largest economy.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Bumps China Tariffs to 104% & People Are Panic-Buying iPhones
This brings America's average effective tariff rate well north of 20%, the highest in more than 100 years. Trump and his economic advisors argue a trade war is necessary to level scores with bad actors and bring back manufacturing jobs to the U.S., and this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to do that. At a Senate hearing yesterday, Trump's top trade official, Jameson Greer, said the U.S.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Bumps China Tariffs to 104% & People Are Panic-Buying iPhones
economy was facing a moment of drastic, overdue change. Wall Street leaders have forcefully disagreed, criticizing the size of the tariffs and the bizarre way they were calculated. Banks like JPMorgan are now predicting a recession. and financial markets have lost trillions in value in the past week alone.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Bumps China Tariffs to 104% & People Are Panic-Buying iPhones
Even as stocks spent most of the yesterday in the green, they tanked into the close, ending deep into negative territory. The S&P 500 is now at its lowest point in more than a year. So a new economic order has arrived, closing an era of free trade and opening a chapter where the U.S., the world's largest economy, has built high walls around itself.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Bumps China Tariffs to 104% & People Are Panic-Buying iPhones
Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, the U.S. hit China with tariffs of 104% and neither side is backing down.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Bumps China Tariffs to 104% & People Are Panic-Buying iPhones
The implications are enormous and will affect an untold number of companies and billions of people around the planet. For just one example, I'm going to cite Mr. Beast of all people. Yesterday, he posted on X that because of the tariffs, it will now be cheaper to make chocolate bars for his Feastables brand, not in America, because other countries don't have a high tariff on his goods.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Bumps China Tariffs to 104% & People Are Panic-Buying iPhones
He said, we'll figure it out. I feel for small businesses, though, could really be a nail in the coffin for them.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Bumps China Tariffs to 104% & People Are Panic-Buying iPhones
Neither side is blinking on the U.S. side. Treasury Secretary Scott Bassett said that, you know, China is playing a losing hand. Quote, I think it was a big mistake, the Chinese escalation, because they're playing with a pair of twos. What do we lose by the Chinese raising tariffs on us? We export one fifth to them. of what they export to us.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Bumps China Tariffs to 104% & People Are Panic-Buying iPhones
So that is a losing hand for them, even as the Trump administration officials have said in recent days that they're holding calls with more than 50 countries. They cited a good call with South Korea. They're trying to throw markets a bone here by saying that these are part of a larger negotiation with China, which is the big kahuna. It looks like the gloves are absolutely off.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Bumps China Tariffs to 104% & People Are Panic-Buying iPhones
Quick check in on the markets as these reciprocal so-called reciprocal tariffs go into effect. We mentioned China, 104 percent, but they're across 86 countries, 46 percent on Vietnam, 26 percent on India. The implications will be huge right now after selling off for four days. The S&P is about flat at 615 a.m. Eastern. The other indexes are a little in the red, so we'll have to
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Bumps China Tariffs to 104% & People Are Panic-Buying iPhones
keep a watch on that oil is continuing to sink down to 57 which is you know a sign that the economy may be weakening because you know demand will dry up for fuel and the one thing that we will talk about tomorrow actually is the 10-year yield because this is the biggest story in the markets the 10-year yield is spiking and that is not a good sign because when things go haywire like the U.S.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Bumps China Tariffs to 104% & People Are Panic-Buying iPhones
Obviously a huge day for the global economy. But before we get to that, let's head to Humboldt Teaneck, New Jersey, where two teams staged what has been called the worst baseball game in history. Lehman College and Yeshiva University, both D3 schools, met after having lost a combined 141 games in a row, 42 straight losses for Lehman and 100 games for Yeshiva.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Bumps China Tariffs to 104% & People Are Panic-Buying iPhones
and China in a trade where typically investors go to safe haven assets like government bonds, like U.S. government bonds. Those have been the biggest safe haven asset ever. And the fact that those are selling off is a really interesting development that we'll dive into tomorrow morning.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Bumps China Tariffs to 104% & People Are Panic-Buying iPhones
It is, and it also is a sign of how companies have tried to diversify their supply chains from over-reliance on China to other Southeast Asian countries, but that has essentially backfired as these tariffs go into effect. India, where Apple increasingly makes iPhones and AirPods, has a 26% tariff. Vietnam, Apple makes AirPods, iPads, Apple Watches, and Macs. max there now, 46% tariff.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Bumps China Tariffs to 104% & People Are Panic-Buying iPhones
Malaysia, where Apple makes max, 24% tariff. Thailand, where the company also makes a max, 37% tariffs. So those aren't as bad as the China tariff. The problem is that as Apple has diversified its products across Southeast Asia, they've kind of kept the iPhone in China 90% of their of the iPhones are still made in China, even as some move to India.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Bumps China Tariffs to 104% & People Are Panic-Buying iPhones
So that's why they're rushing to get iPhones here and create a stockpile for as many months as they can and why consumers are rushing to max Apple stores.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Bumps China Tariffs to 104% & People Are Panic-Buying iPhones
So what could Apple do? What are its options besides getting an exemption, which seems like a Hail Mary? There are probably three things that it will do. It could squeeze its suppliers to say, hey, you have to eat. Some of this cost can't be on us. So that is one way it could share the burden. Another is to just eat it. Morgan Stanley estimates that Apple has
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Bumps China Tariffs to 104% & People Are Panic-Buying iPhones
could eat $34 billion of these added costs because it does have a typical hardware margin of around 45%. So it is in a position to absorb that. And then the final one is price hikes. Analysts do expect that we could see iPhone price hikes. It It varies depending on which bank you listen to. JP Morgan says 6 percent. Morgan Stanley says 16 to 17 percent.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Bumps China Tariffs to 104% & People Are Panic-Buying iPhones
So when they met, someone was going to snap an epic losing streak. It certainly wasn't pretty to watch, but Lehman College won 7-6 in extra innings, their first victory since 2023. But all was not lost for Yeshiva. These two teams actually played a doubleheader, and Yeshiva beat Lehman in the second game, winning for the first time since 2022. So a fairytale ending.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Bumps China Tariffs to 104% & People Are Panic-Buying iPhones
And Apple has really tried to hold the line on $999 flagship smartphone starting price. And it looks like that will have to go. The final option that Trump administration people want is for Apple to start making iPhones in the United States. But if you actually crunch the numbers, that is economically not feasible.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Bumps China Tariffs to 104% & People Are Panic-Buying iPhones
The deadline to file your taxes is less than a week away, and a new report found that your chances of being audited by the IRS are at their lowest level in at least 75 years. The New York Times' upshot found that the IRS's effective audit rate was below 0.5% between 2020 and 2023. a drop of two-thirds since 2010. Just how low is 0.5%?
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Bumps China Tariffs to 104% & People Are Panic-Buying iPhones
In 1980, the IRS's published audit rate was over 2%, and in 1960, it was over 3%. The reason for the decline in auditing is perhaps the simplest. There's fewer people to do it. The IRS hemorrhaged workers from 2010 to 2020, cutting its headcount by about 20% over the decade. And in addition to having fewer people,
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Bumps China Tariffs to 104% & People Are Panic-Buying iPhones
the IRS got an even bigger workload with other programs like the Affordable Care Act and the Child Tax Credit getting foisted onto it. Since the IRS collects 95% of federal revenue each year, fewer audits could mean less tax collections for the government and widen the national deficit. That already seems to be happening.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Bumps China Tariffs to 104% & People Are Panic-Buying iPhones
For 2010 returns, the IRS collected $11 billion in additional revenue through personal income audits. For 2019 returns, which are still not yet finalized, the agency collected just $4.5 billion. Toby, some celebrate fewer audits saying they constitute harassment of taxpayers. Others say it's necessary to catch tax dodgers, especially for high income households and corporations.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Bumps China Tariffs to 104% & People Are Panic-Buying iPhones
What's interesting is if you dive into the numbers, you know, Americans maybe have your reputation for being anti-establishment. But we pay our taxes voluntarily. Maybe it's because of the threat of an audit. But Americans pay about 85 percent of what they owe and direct IRS collections add 2 percent. These are levels that are way above European countries.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Bumps China Tariffs to 104% & People Are Panic-Buying iPhones
So, you know, overall, voluntary tax compliance in the U.S. is quite high.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Bumps China Tariffs to 104% & People Are Panic-Buying iPhones
Both teams got their first dub in years.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Bumps China Tariffs to 104% & People Are Panic-Buying iPhones
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CEOs Warn of Price Bumps From Tariffs & Waymo Rolls Out in Austin
It's another major milestone moment for self-driving cars. And it is a very unlikely partnership because if you go back to 2016, Uber and Waymo hated each other. Waymo sued Uber and its subsidiary, Otto, for stealing trade secrets. Two years later, five days into that trial, which was a really big deal encapsulating the self-driving car industry, the two sides settled.
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Warn of Price Bumps From Tariffs & Waymo Rolls Out in Austin
And now they're, you know, linking back up with each other in a very interesting partnership that shows how maybe we're seeing the fledgling business model of a self-driving robotaxi fleet would work.
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Warn of Price Bumps From Tariffs & Waymo Rolls Out in Austin
It's kind of insane to think about that self-driving cars are here. Right. They're literally here. You can take a self-driving car in Phoenix, Austin now, San Francisco and Los Angeles. I mean, after years and years of saying that these things are coming or they're not coming, they're literally here. We are in a self-driving world now.
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Warn of Price Bumps From Tariffs & Waymo Rolls Out in Austin
Let's sprint to the finish with some final headlines. BlackRock may have prevented a geopolitical spat from escalating at the Panama Canal. The asset management giant agreed to buy two major ports along the canal from their Hong Kong-based owner as part of a $23 billion deal, perhaps placating President Trump, who threatened to take back control of the canal over Chinese encroachment. C.K.
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Warn of Price Bumps From Tariffs & Waymo Rolls Out in Austin
Hutchinson, the Hong Kong company in question, owned ports at either end of the Panama Canal, a key trade route used by many American ships as a shortcut between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. It maintained that the transaction was, quote, purely commercial in nature and wholly unrelated to recent political news reports concerning the Panama Ports. But you're allowed to be skeptical since U.S.
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Warn of Price Bumps From Tariffs & Waymo Rolls Out in Austin
pressure was building on Panama to cancel its contract with C.K. Hutchinson over its control of the ports. Thanks to the deal, C.K. Hutchinson now has billions of fresh cash in its pockets. An American company is taking over and maybe everyone can move on with their day.
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Warn of Price Bumps From Tariffs & Waymo Rolls Out in Austin
It's certainly one of a number of companies who are just scrolling on social media every day and saying, hey, what are people doing with our products? And then making that product for them in the hopes of selling it and boosting sales. We've seen Chipotle do this, a number of fast food companies, seeing Starbucks, seeing what...
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Warn of Price Bumps From Tariffs & Waymo Rolls Out in Austin
What concoctions that people are making and then posting on TikTok and then creating that product themselves. We'll see if it sells. Kraft Heinz needs this to work because they have declining sales for five consecutive quarters. It's Lunchables brand is not doing well. It's other consumer package brands are not doing so great.
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Warn of Price Bumps From Tariffs & Waymo Rolls Out in Austin
So hopefully Crystallite, which has been around for many decades, will spur a little growth here.
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Warn of Price Bumps From Tariffs & Waymo Rolls Out in Austin
Not all heroes wear capes. Some get poked by a needle thousands of times and save millions of babies' lives in the process. I'm talking about James Harrison, one of the world's most prolific blood donors, who died at age 88 last month after being credited with saving the lives of more than 2 million babies. Known as the man with the golden arm, Harrison has a rare antibody in his blood, anti-D,
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Warn of Price Bumps From Tariffs & Waymo Rolls Out in Austin
that is used to make medication given to pregnant mothers whose immune systems may attack their unborn babies. Harrison started giving blood at age 18, and get this, didn't miss a single appointment, which happened every two weeks, until he was 81, getting pricked a total of 1,173 times. An amazing story. In case you're wondering, though, he hated needles.
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Warn of Price Bumps From Tariffs & Waymo Rolls Out in Austin
Finally, a new version of Monopoly is coming out, and it's going to be a lot harder to cheat by volunteering to be the banker. That's because the new addition, Monopoly App Banking, includes a mobile app that handles all of the game's transactions for you, eliminating the need for a banker and that famous Monopoly cash.
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Warn of Price Bumps From Tariffs & Waymo Rolls Out in Austin
Hasbro says the goal is to attract a new generation of younger players and speed up the notoriously slow gameplay. But at the same time, it introduces screens to one of the last analog holdouts, board games, and it'll probably make kids even worse at math by not requiring them to do any. Toby, I say throw them straight in jail. Do not pass. Go.
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Warn of Price Bumps From Tariffs & Waymo Rolls Out in Austin
Let's wrap it up there. Thanks so much for starting your morning with us and have a wonderful Wednesday. For any questions, comments, or feedback, send an email to morningbrewdaily at morningbrew.com. And if you're enjoying the show, share it with a friend, family member, or coworker. Toby, who should everyone listening share it with today?
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Warn of Price Bumps From Tariffs & Waymo Rolls Out in Austin
I've never met a single person who is great at explaining rules of a board game.
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Warn of Price Bumps From Tariffs & Waymo Rolls Out in Austin
Let's roll the credits. Emily Milliron is our executive producer. Raymond Liu is our producer. Olivia Graham is our associate producer. Uchenna Waogu is our technical director. Garrett Peck is on audio. Hair and Makeup is just visiting. Devin Emery is our chief content officer. And our show is a production of Morning Brew. Great show today, Neil. Let's run it back tomorrow.
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Warn of Price Bumps From Tariffs & Waymo Rolls Out in Austin
Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, day one of the trade war sent stocks tumbling, businesses scrambling, and Canadians ditching their politeness.
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Warn of Price Bumps From Tariffs & Waymo Rolls Out in Austin
No, economists have warned forever that they've been around that tariffs will lead to price increases for consumers, for businesses. And that's what we saw from the earnings reports from Target and Best Buy yesterday. Trump did acknowledge that prices may go up due to his tariffs in that unofficial State of the Union last night.
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Warn of Price Bumps From Tariffs & Waymo Rolls Out in Austin
He said tariffs are making America rich again and making America great again and will happen rather quickly. There will be a little disturbance, but we're okay with that. It won't be much. So there's Trump acknowledging that prices may go up for Americans due to these tariffs on the three largest U.S. trading partners. How much is the typical U.S. family might see price increases?
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Warn of Price Bumps From Tariffs & Waymo Rolls Out in Austin
Well, the Peterson Institute calculated that the average U.S. household will pay more than $1,200 a year under the current tariff regime.
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Warn of Price Bumps From Tariffs & Waymo Rolls Out in Austin
a lot at this point but the auto industry has a very complicated supply chain a lot of parts go back and forth over the border so that is expected to be especially vulnerable to these tariffs yeah for some numbers on that the average pickup truck is expected to cost 10 000 more that is sold in the united states and that's why you saw shares of ford and general motors take a beating
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Warn of Price Bumps From Tariffs & Waymo Rolls Out in Austin
Yesterday, the average crossover utility vehicle will rise by at least $4,000. That's according to the Anderson Economic Group, while the cost of an electric vehicle will rise three times as much. So that's $12,000. That's why you have auto industry executives basically calling Howard Ludnick, the Commerce Secretary, calling President Trump and saying, please stop.
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Warn of Price Bumps From Tariffs & Waymo Rolls Out in Austin
We need an exemption here, because without that... Our production is going to shrivel up and estimates say that in the next few weeks, a third of U.S. North American auto production could halt altogether because all of the flow of all of these parts across Canada, the United States and Mexico will essentially stop.
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Warn of Price Bumps From Tariffs & Waymo Rolls Out in Austin
So definitely you saw some pushback from the United States alleys. So looking ahead, we had these comments from the Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick yesterday saying that maybe Trump will meet Canada and Mexico in the middle. We might get an announcement today about some rolling back of tariffs.
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Warn of Price Bumps From Tariffs & Waymo Rolls Out in Austin
2025 is quickly becoming the year of the very long speech. Days after Adrian Brody set the record for the longest Oscars acceptance speech in history, President Trump last night delivered the longest speech ever before a joint session of Congress.
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Warn of Price Bumps From Tariffs & Waymo Rolls Out in Austin
But a vibe of uncertainty is still permeating the markets, is still permeating businesses who, these auto manufacturers especially, who need to figure out where they're setting up plants. This is a multi-year process. When you make a large capital expenditure, where are you going to do it? Are you going to do it at all.
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Warn of Price Bumps From Tariffs & Waymo Rolls Out in Austin
So the uncertainty is going to lead to just essentially a regime of savings where people just don't spend money because they don't know what U.S. policy will be.
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Warn of Price Bumps From Tariffs & Waymo Rolls Out in Austin
And you saw that even before tariffs were implemented in that manufacturing survey that we talked about yesterday, where manufacturing in the United States is almost at a state of contraction because manufacturers are just not investing when they don't know what the tariff policy will be one day to the next.
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Warn of Price Bumps From Tariffs & Waymo Rolls Out in Austin
And we'll see, maybe tomorrow we have a completely different story to tell. For eight decades, gross domestic product, or GDP, has been the standard for measuring economic growth in countries around the world. But some Trump administration officials say they want to change how it's calculated in the United States.
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Warn of Price Bumps From Tariffs & Waymo Rolls Out in Austin
Over the weekend, Commerce Secretary Howard Ludnick, he's getting a lot of airplay today, mentioned he wants to strip out government spending from GDP, saying that governments have historically messed with the figure and that removing it from the ingredient mix would lead to more transparency.
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Warn of Price Bumps From Tariffs & Waymo Rolls Out in Austin
That remark came a few days after Elon Musk said that a, quote, more accurate measure of GDP would exclude government spending, adding that governments can artificially inflate GDP to make it seem like the economy is doing better than it actually is. These comments raised a lot of eyebrows among economists who went to bat for the current way GDP is measured. Their defense had two main points.
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Warn of Price Bumps From Tariffs & Waymo Rolls Out in Austin
Number one, GDP is already sliced and diced in numerous ways. So if you want to get a sense of economic growth without government spending, you can easily do that. Number two, it would set a concerning precedent for lawmakers to meddle in what is supposed to be an independent economic statistic.
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Warn of Price Bumps From Tariffs & Waymo Rolls Out in Austin
The unofficial State of the Union lasted one hour and 39 minutes, topping the previous record set by President Bill Clinton in 2000, who spoke for one hour and 29 minutes. No one longs for the days of Richard Nixon, but he gave the shortest State of the Union on record, clocking out after 29 minutes in 1972, or just about a Curb Your Enthusiasm episode.
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CEOs Warn of Price Bumps From Tariffs & Waymo Rolls Out in Austin
In the word of David Wilcox, a former director of research and statistics at the Federal Reserve, the implication is that it is okay to manipulate economic data for political gain. Toby, never before has three letters caused so much drama.
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Warn of Price Bumps From Tariffs & Waymo Rolls Out in Austin
Yeah, Lutnick, here's how Lutnick put it. He said, if the government buys a tank, that's GDP. But paying 1,000 people to think about buying a tank is not GDP. That is wasted inefficiency, wasted money. And cutting that while it shows in GDP, we're going to get rid of that. So he's saying, essentially, the government...
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Warn of Price Bumps From Tariffs & Waymo Rolls Out in Austin
if they wanted to inflate GDP numbers to make it look better, they could just pay a thousand people to sit there and play solitaire. The pushback on that is that GDP in and of itself does not make any value judgments about how money it's spent. If you pay for something and you buy something, that should be counted in GDP.
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Warn of Price Bumps From Tariffs & Waymo Rolls Out in Austin
If the company buys pencils or the government buys pencils, pencils were bought and that should be accounted for and you don't make any value judgments. But Maybe somebody makes a horrible movie. What's his name? Francis Ford Coppola spent $250 million of his own money making Megalopolis. No one watched it. You could make the case that that was extremely inefficient.
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Warn of Price Bumps From Tariffs & Waymo Rolls Out in Austin
But did he spend that $250 million? Yes, and that should be counted as GDP.
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Warn of Price Bumps From Tariffs & Waymo Rolls Out in Austin
And I just watched Apocalypse Now on the plane coming back. It was so good. So no smear to him, but he may have thrown a lot of his money in the trash.
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CEOs Warn of Price Bumps From Tariffs & Waymo Rolls Out in Austin
And with a variable 4.46% APY, VO Bank's Money Market Savings Account offers exactly that. Voted as the best money market account by GoBankingRates, its interest rate paid is 10 times the national average.
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CEOs Warn of Price Bumps From Tariffs & Waymo Rolls Out in Austin
All of this means you have the flexibility to grow your money and access it whenever you want or need to.
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CEOs Warn of Price Bumps From Tariffs & Waymo Rolls Out in Austin
So one day as I was scrolling the web, I got hit with an ad for patio furniture. Dude, I live in a small New York City apartment, not relevant. So if that's happening to me, imagine the incorrect spaces your B2B marketing could be ending up. If you want to reach the right professionals, start with LinkedIn ads.
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CEOs Warn of Price Bumps From Tariffs & Waymo Rolls Out in Austin
LinkedIn has grown to a network of over 1 billion professionals and 130 million decision makers. And in this vast pool of potential, you can target your buyers by job title, industry, company role, skills, seniority, and more if you can believe it. If you think you're wasting budget on the wrong audiences, stop that first and foremost and start targeting the right people with LinkedIn ads instead.
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CEOs Warn of Price Bumps From Tariffs & Waymo Rolls Out in Austin
LinkedIn will even give you a $100 credit on your next campaign. so you can take LinkedIn ads for a spin. Just go to linkedin.com slash MBD. That's linkedin.com slash MBD. Terms and conditions apply only on LinkedIn ads.
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CEOs Warn of Price Bumps From Tariffs & Waymo Rolls Out in Austin
This is the big time. You know that this date was circled on their calendar saying we need to release this partnership, this robo taxi service before South by Southwest. So all of these techies and media people can come in, take some rides and then go back to their respective cities and, you know, brag about how they took a self-driving taxi and how great it was.
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Warn of Price Bumps From Tariffs & Waymo Rolls Out in Austin
And we should mention that you're not guaranteed to get a robo taxi. You can change your preferences in your Uber profile so that you are more likely to to get a Waymo robo taxi to ride in. So you can't just select one or the other. And then in the other case, if you don't want one, you can also select preferences that won't let you. But this is live.
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Americans Won’t Quit... Their Jobs & Spotify Has First Profitable Year, Ever
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Americans Won’t Quit... Their Jobs & Spotify Has First Profitable Year, Ever
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Americans Won’t Quit... Their Jobs & Spotify Has First Profitable Year, Ever
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Morning Brew Daily
Americans Won’t Quit... Their Jobs & Spotify Has First Profitable Year, Ever
If you like your money, Mint Mobile is for you. Shop plans at mintmobile.com slash morningbrew. That's mintmobile.com slash morningbrew.
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Americans Won’t Quit... Their Jobs & Spotify Has First Profitable Year, Ever
Yesterday, we led the show by sharing the grim news that Waffle House was adding a 50 cent surcharge for every egg they sell. If only it were that over easy. Egg slingers everywhere are being stung by record high prices, leading not only to increased costs for consumers, but also shortages and limits on how many cartons can be bought at a time.
Morning Brew Daily
Americans Won’t Quit... Their Jobs & Spotify Has First Profitable Year, Ever
In Chicago, some grocers like Aldi have limited purchases to two cartons of eggs. Whole Foods in New York, where prices have reached up to $12 for a dozen cage-free eggs, have placed a three-carton purchase limit.
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Americans Won’t Quit... Their Jobs & Spotify Has First Profitable Year, Ever
A Bloomberg reporter that tried to find eggs at a ShopRite in Brooklyn last weekend found the shelves almost completely bare, and the cartons that remained were priced at about $1 per egg. The egg crisis is also forcing restaurants, not just Waffle House, to adapt.
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Americans Won’t Quit... Their Jobs & Spotify Has First Profitable Year, Ever
Here was a company that wasn't just chasing the next big AI breakthrough, but actually stopped to ask, how do we do this right? Yada, yada, yada. I'd love to join a team where getting it right matters more than getting it first. Let's talk about how I could contribute to Anthropic's mission.
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Americans Won’t Quit... Their Jobs & Spotify Has First Profitable Year, Ever
The chain Biscuit Belly is planning to swap out carton eggs with liquid eggs for breakfast staples such as omelets and scrambled eggs, but not for sunny-side up. That sounds gross and impossible. Toby, this is a real shock to the egosystem. Wholesale prices for a dozen large eggs in the Midwest are now about seven times their price from two years ago.
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Americans Won’t Quit... Their Jobs & Spotify Has First Profitable Year, Ever
And it's leading to people going in search of alternatives, not just restaurants substituting carton eggs with liquid eggs. But you've seen an uptick perhaps in people going to the farmer's market. And Morning Brew Slack blows up with people saying, hey, I got four dollars from the four dollar eggs from the farmer's market. Look at me. I'm so cool.
Morning Brew Daily
Americans Won’t Quit... Their Jobs & Spotify Has First Profitable Year, Ever
Also, we've seen an uptick and this has been a trend over the past few years. The number of people having a backyard chicken coop as a way to cope with the rising egg costs, we saw that rise during COVID and is still continued. It's very interesting if you are thinking about having an egg coop in your backyard. It's something I would consider, but the startup costs are quite high.
Morning Brew Daily
Americans Won’t Quit... Their Jobs & Spotify Has First Profitable Year, Ever
It can run you about $2,500. And make sure to check in with your local zoning board, too, because your town may not allow for a chicken coop in your backyard. Now, a few years ago, maybe it was a decade ago, in my town in western Massachusetts, there was a huge drama about someone trying to put chickens in their backyard. Their neighbors saying, absolutely no way. It went to the town board.
Morning Brew Daily
Americans Won’t Quit... Their Jobs & Spotify Has First Profitable Year, Ever
Who won? Who won? Who won? I don't remember. I'm guessing the chicken person did not win.
Morning Brew Daily
Americans Won’t Quit... Their Jobs & Spotify Has First Profitable Year, Ever
Let's sprint to the finish with some final headlines. President Trump stunned the world last night when he floated the idea that the US should take long-term ownership of the devastated Gaza Strip and turn it into a, quote, Riviera of the Middle East. At a press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump said he'd encourage the two million Palestinians who live in Gaza
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Americans Won’t Quit... Their Jobs & Spotify Has First Profitable Year, Ever
to leave for neighboring countries so the U.S. could rebuild the enclave and create jobs for, quote, the world's people. He did not rule out putting American troops on the ground there. After picking their jaws up off the floor, critics from around the world called this plan ethnic cleansing, incomprehensible, illegal and indicative of a president who only thinks in real estate deal terms.
Morning Brew Daily
Americans Won’t Quit... Their Jobs & Spotify Has First Profitable Year, Ever
It was also resoundingly dismissed by Palestinian leaders and major Middle Eastern powers, including Saudi Arabia, an influential force in the region.
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Americans Won’t Quit... Their Jobs & Spotify Has First Profitable Year, Ever
Music playlist that uses Apple photos or music and Android users who have tested out say it's pretty obvious that you aren't getting the whole Experience but still Neil who wants to hang out with Android users anyway Wouldn't be me the one The one company that got there that was a little rankled by this announcement was a company called part of full I think a lot of people in
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Americans Won’t Quit... Their Jobs & Spotify Has First Profitable Year, Ever
New York Know Partiful, which is an invite app, very similar to what Apple introduced. They were very angry. They posted on X the developer guide for Apple, which states, copycats, come up with your own ideas. We know you have them, so make yours come to life. They were angry that Apple was ripping off their app, which it does seem like Apple was kind of doing.
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Americans Won’t Quit... Their Jobs & Spotify Has First Profitable Year, Ever
Lots of lore around Uncle Ogrimacy. Rumor has, and I should say this is a rumor, Uncle Ogrimacy wasn't used publicly after an actor who played the mascot in Philly made comments in support of the IRA. Now, there's no evidence of this, but Uncle Ogrimacy has not been seen for many decades. Now he's back to promote the Shamrock Shake. And what is the Shamrock Shake?
Morning Brew Daily
Americans Won’t Quit... Their Jobs & Spotify Has First Profitable Year, Ever
Is this about the time you borrowed my charger and it mysteriously never returned? I will plead the fifth on ChargerGate.
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Americans Won’t Quit... Their Jobs & Spotify Has First Profitable Year, Ever
Well, it is an Irish dessert made with reduced-fat vanilla ice cream, light whipped cream, and special Shamrock Shake sauce. syrup. Have you had it?
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Americans Won’t Quit... Their Jobs & Spotify Has First Profitable Year, Ever
If the Chiefs beat the Eagles on Sunday, it'd be their third consecutive Super Bowl win, something no team has done before. And fans would expect to be able to buy shirts and hats with the term three-peat on it, which is a classic phrase used in the sports world for three consecutive trophies. Not so fast.
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Americans Won’t Quit... Their Jobs & Spotify Has First Profitable Year, Ever
Turns out the Miami Heat team president, Pat Riley, has owned the trademark to the term three-peat since 1988 after the Lakers won their second straight title. Luckily, he's graciously allowed the NFL to use the term three-peat if the Chiefs win this Sunday, probably in exchange for a large sum. The man was a visionary.
Morning Brew Daily
Americans Won’t Quit... Their Jobs & Spotify Has First Profitable Year, Ever
Let's wrap it up there. Thanks so much for starting your morning with us and have a wonderful Wednesday. For any questions, comments, or feedback, send an email to morningbrewdaily at morningbrew.com. And if you're enjoying the show, pass it along to a friend, family member, or coworker who's trying to make sense of all the news happening right now.
Morning Brew Daily
Americans Won’t Quit... Their Jobs & Spotify Has First Profitable Year, Ever
For some advice and guidance on who specifically to share with, here's Life Coach Toby.
Morning Brew Daily
Americans Won’t Quit... Their Jobs & Spotify Has First Profitable Year, Ever
That didn't sound simple to me. Let's roll the credits. Emily Milliron is our executive producer. Raymond Liu is our producer. Olivia Graham is our associate producer. Uchenua Ogu is our technical director. Scoops Dardaris is on audio. Hair and makeup would never think about job hopping. Devin Emery is our chief content officer, and our show is a production of Morning Brew.
Morning Brew Daily
Americans Won’t Quit... Their Jobs & Spotify Has First Profitable Year, Ever
Perfect for visionaries like yourselves. Now, give me back my charger.
Morning Brew Daily
Americans Won’t Quit... Their Jobs & Spotify Has First Profitable Year, Ever
Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, the US-China trade war has kicked off and Barbie is caught in the crossfire.
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Americans Won’t Quit... Their Jobs & Spotify Has First Profitable Year, Ever
It is a labor market that is bending but not breaking. As you mentioned, the unemployment rate is low. People are still hiring, but the number of job openings is much lower than it was. The great resignation of 2021 and 2022, where people were job hopping because they could get bigger salaries at every other place, just seems like very much a distant memory.
Morning Brew Daily
Americans Won’t Quit... Their Jobs & Spotify Has First Profitable Year, Ever
1.1 job openings for every unemployed worker. That is half of... what it was at its peak. So we're in a cooling labor market now where if you're laid off, which we should mention has stayed steady, it's not, layoffs are not increasing. That rate has stayed the same at a pretty low level for four months.
Morning Brew Daily
Americans Won’t Quit... Their Jobs & Spotify Has First Profitable Year, Ever
The thing is, if you're one of those people laid off, finding a new job, especially in professional services in those high wage, white collar positions is getting much tougher.
Morning Brew Daily
Americans Won’t Quit... Their Jobs & Spotify Has First Profitable Year, Ever
Right. Axios reported that 20,000 federal workers have accepted this deferred resignation. The deadline is tomorrow. So we could see whether that number creeps up. The White House was targeting 5 to 10 percent of the entire federal workforce of 2.3 million. Remember, this is a doge program from Elon Musk endorsed by President Trump to reduce substantially the amount of federal workers.
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Americans Won’t Quit... Their Jobs & Spotify Has First Profitable Year, Ever
It doesn't look like that many people have taken it, 1% of the federal workforce, 20,000 people. So we'll keep an eye on that as this deadline comes up on Thursday. While the U.S., Canada and Mexico pulled back from the brink of a trade war on Monday, a trade skirmish has still broken out between America and China.
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Americans Won’t Quit... Their Jobs & Spotify Has First Profitable Year, Ever
Midnight on Tuesday, the Trump administration slapped 10 percent tariffs on all Chinese imports and a sign of its displeasure over fentanyl shipments into the country. China waited all but a few seconds to punch back, hitting U.S. products like gas, coal and farm machinery with retaliatory tariffs.
Morning Brew Daily
Americans Won’t Quit... Their Jobs & Spotify Has First Profitable Year, Ever
It also launched an antitrust investigation into Google and banned the export of some key minerals used in high-tech products. In all, though, it was a carefully calibrated response by Beijing, one designed to gently prod the bear, not poke it. The retaliatory tariffs apply to just $14 billion worth of American products, which is a fraction of the tariffs the US placed on Chinese goods.
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Americans Won’t Quit... Their Jobs & Spotify Has First Profitable Year, Ever
It appears to be an attempt by Xi Jinping to show he can spar with Trump while acknowledging this is just the first volley in a much longer negotiation around trade and other disputes the two countries have. Still, while it won't have the impact of a potential North American trade war, China is the US's third largest trading partner And these two-way tariffs will have some impacts.
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Americans Won’t Quit... Their Jobs & Spotify Has First Profitable Year, Ever
For instance, yesterday, Mattel said it was considering raising the price of Barbie and Hot Wheels toys to offset the tariffs. Forty percent of Mattel's products are sourced in China.
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Americans Won’t Quit... Their Jobs & Spotify Has First Profitable Year, Ever
Right, because this is part of a much broader negotiation between the two countries. What's happening here is basically the U.S. and China are building the most powerful deck of cards that they have so that when they go into the casino... to have a card game, they can lay down the best hand possible for whatever concessions they might want from the other country.
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Americans Won’t Quit... Their Jobs & Spotify Has First Profitable Year, Ever
They can say, OK, well, you want TikTok? Well, I want tariffs off of I want tariffs off of coal or I want I want export controls off of tech. So there are so many issues going on between these two countries, from the Panama Canal, which we talked about yesterday, to TikTok, to working on the Russia-Ukraine war, to trade as well.
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Americans Won’t Quit... Their Jobs & Spotify Has First Profitable Year, Ever
So this is they're building the deck of cards so they can go into the negotiating room and
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Americans Won’t Quit... Their Jobs & Spotify Has First Profitable Year, Ever
Investors were pretty hype about what Alex Karp said about his relationship with the Trump administration, too. He said that Doge federal budget cuts would actually be good for the company, which I guess is a little confusing because they get a lot of their. revenue from government contracts. But he said, quote, disruption at the end of the day exposes things that aren't working.
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Americans Won’t Quit... Their Jobs & Spotify Has First Profitable Year, Ever
There will be ups and downs. There's a revolution. Some people are going to get their heads cut off. We're expecting to see really unexpected things and to win. So this guy has always been a bit of an iconoclast in Silicon Valley. They moved their company from to Colorado from Silicon Valley because he didn't really mesh with the culture there. But he's extremely bullish going forward.
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Americans Won’t Quit... Their Jobs & Spotify Has First Profitable Year, Ever
Investors are best company in the S&P 500 last year, already the best company this year. It is a rocket ship. Our next stock of the week is Meta. Yesterday, Zucks Baby closed higher for the 12th consecutive trading session, which is its longest winning streak ever. Over the past two weeks, it's added more than $235 billion to its market cap, catapulting it to a valuation of almost $1.8 trillion.
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Americans Won’t Quit... Their Jobs & Spotify Has First Profitable Year, Ever
Nothing's a meta with this company right now. It's firing on all cylinders. Last week, Meta reported record fourth quarter revenue, jumping 21% from a year earlier, which has allowed it to spend tens of billions of dollars developing AI products. Speaking of, Meta was the rare company to get a
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Americans Won’t Quit... Their Jobs & Spotify Has First Profitable Year, Ever
boost from deep seek's breakthrough because like the chinese rival it too has made its ai models open source so deep seek success is seen as a validation of that strategy toby i remember the days everyone was making fun of meta for trying to make the metaverse happen zuck has managed to pivot from that pivot to something that appears to be far more lucrative
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Americans Won’t Quit... Their Jobs & Spotify Has First Profitable Year, Ever
Yeah, I would just encourage people to think about when they open up Spotify now, are they listening to music or are they listening to a podcast? Are you listening to an audio? There are so many different ways to consume audio in the Spotify app. That is exactly what their strategy was set forth a few years ago, and they're executing on it because of
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Americans Won’t Quit... Their Jobs & Spotify Has First Profitable Year, Ever
Very ironic, very funny. But what if Claude did write a cover letter for Anthropic Financial Times, asked Claude to do it? And I'm going to read a few excerpts and I want to tell everyone to ask you if you'd hire me. Dear Anthropic hiring team, when I first encountered Claude and learned about the philosophy behind its development, something clicked.
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Americans Won’t Quit... Their Jobs & Spotify Has First Profitable Year, Ever
Many years ago, people were like, Spotify is just not going to be a good business. Every single time you stream something, they have to pay a royalty to the music business. And that is a bad business model because your costs grow as your users grow. You know, very few people thought that Spotify could square the circle and they absolutely have done.
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Americans Won’t Quit... Their Jobs & Spotify Has First Profitable Year, Ever
The bad problem for the rest of us is that when this strategy has worked, it means that Spotify is going to raise prices because they did that last year for the first time in a long time. They saw very few defections. Not good to hear that. So that means that we probably will see another price hike in the future. Up next, Neil and I talk eggs. Attention investors, new and seasoned.
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Americans Won’t Quit... Their Jobs & Spotify Has First Profitable Year, Ever
If you're looking for an investing platform with a broad range of asset classes and tools, Public.com is ready when you are.
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World Braces for Trump's Tariffs & Practice Flirting with Tinder’s AI
The best B2B marketing sometimes ends up in front of the wrong people. It's like advertising fishing gear to a fish.
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World Braces for Trump's Tariffs & Practice Flirting with Tinder’s AI
That's what LinkedIn ads is built for. LinkedIn has grown to a network of over 1 billion professionals. Of those, 130 million are decision makers. You can target your buyers by job, title, industry, company, role, seniority, revenue, so many options all in one place. Don't waste precious budget on the wrong audience. Tap into LinkedIn ads to find your people.
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World Braces for Trump's Tariffs & Practice Flirting with Tinder’s AI
LinkedIn will even give you a $100 credit on your next campaign so you can try it yourself. Just go to LinkedIn.com slash MBD. That's LinkedIn.com slash MBD. Terms and conditions apply only on LinkedIn ads.
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World Braces for Trump's Tariffs & Practice Flirting with Tinder’s AI
Wise Business can help. Your Wise account has everything you need to operate your global business. With Wise Business, you can process payments, get paid, and manage your money internationally.
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World Braces for Trump's Tariffs & Practice Flirting with Tinder’s AI
Setting up your account is super easy, and it takes just a few seconds to make payments in over 40 different currencies.
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World Braces for Trump's Tariffs & Practice Flirting with Tinder’s AI
It is. I think Tinder is telling its users and everyone saying, ha ha, this is kind of a joke, like we're taking you through rom-com scenarios. But underneath it all, you know, AI is infusing dating apps, and these companies, Match Group, have been completely forward about this, saying that we think AI is a way to make dating better. And underneath that surface is that they are hemorrhaging users.
Morning Brew Daily
World Braces for Trump's Tariffs & Practice Flirting with Tinder’s AI
Match lost— for nine straight quarters match group, which owns Tinder and hinge has lost users. It used to have a market cap of $50 billion in late 2021. That is under $8 billion today. It doesn't expect revenue to start growing again until 2027. So it's losing users. And it thinks that AI is a way to get people back on and having better outcomes on their apps.
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World Braces for Trump's Tariffs & Practice Flirting with Tinder’s AI
And they're looking to the surging AI companion industry, which has been one of the most popular use cases. I
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World Braces for Trump's Tariffs & Practice Flirting with Tinder’s AI
Yeah. RFK Jr., who leads the HHS, said you signaled these these cuts were coming last week. But as they happened yesterday and these top leaders of the FDA, CDC, tobacco regulators were fired, it became a huge global economy story, too, because former FDA officials warned that if you remove these people at the top, then this will slow down drug approvals.
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World Braces for Trump's Tariffs & Practice Flirting with Tinder’s AI
So that's why the S&P biotech ETF fell as much as 2.4% on Tuesday. It fell 3.9% on Monday after top vaccine official was fired. Moderna dropped like 8%. It was an absolute bloodbath in the biotech sector. And you had former FDA officials saying that the FDA, as we've known it, is failing.
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World Braces for Trump's Tariffs & Practice Flirting with Tinder’s AI
A lot of people with institutional knowledge and a deep understanding of product development and safety are no longer employed. The FDA commissioner during Trump's first administration said it threatens to slow down drugs discovery. So that is sort of what the what we're dealing with at the FDA and the CDC yesterday from these massive cuts.
Morning Brew Daily
World Braces for Trump's Tariffs & Practice Flirting with Tinder’s AI
OpenAI has officially closed the largest private tech funding round on record, and it's almost an incomprehensible amount of money. The chat GPT maker raised $40 billion at a $300 billion valuation, making it the second most valuable private company in the world. tied with TikTok owner Bykedance and just behind SpaceX.
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World Braces for Trump's Tariffs & Practice Flirting with Tinder’s AI
The round was led by Japanese conglomerate SoftBank, who will pour in $30 billion, and joined by a group of other backers, including Microsoft. OpenAI said it will use the money to, quote, push the frontiers of AI research even further and boost its computing infrastructure. Toby, nothing for podcast ads?
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World Braces for Trump's Tariffs & Practice Flirting with Tinder’s AI
I was being chased by a giant angry tax form. You really got to stop taking melatonin before bed. But good news, Tax Act has expert assist, real live tax experts, 100% credentialed and based in the United States, ready to answer all your tax questions.
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World Braces for Trump's Tariffs & Practice Flirting with Tinder’s AI
I mean, if... You're looking at the Mount Rushmore of young UK actors. I mean, these four are it. Harris Dickinson, who has played Kidman's love interest in Baby Girl, is one of the favorites to be the next James Bond. Paul Mezcal has become a household name. So has Barry. And this is the first time that all four Beatles members and their estates have granted full life story and music rights.
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World Braces for Trump's Tariffs & Practice Flirting with Tinder’s AI
for a film. Peter Jackson's documentary of Get Back was really big during COVID when he unearthed a lot of footage of the Beatles recording. And I am just very excited for this. Cory Booker just set the record for the longest Senate speech in history. The New Jersey senator spoke on the floor of the chamber from 7 p.m. Monday to 8.05 p.m.
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World Braces for Trump's Tariffs & Practice Flirting with Tinder’s AI
Tuesday, a duration of 25 hours and five minutes, 46 minutes longer than the previous record holder, Strom Thurmond, in 1957. Framed as an emergency call to action against the Trump administration, Booker took zero bathroom breaks and only paused his talking when taking questions from fellow Democrats.
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World Braces for Trump's Tariffs & Practice Flirting with Tinder’s AI
Toby, I know Jokic posted a 60 point triple double last night, but this might be an even more impressive athletic achievement.
Morning Brew Daily
World Braces for Trump's Tariffs & Practice Flirting with Tinder’s AI
Let's wrap it up there. Thanks so much for starting your morning with us and have a wonderful Wednesday. For any questions, comments, or feedback, send an email to morningbrewdaily at morningbrew.com. Let's roll the credits. Emily Milliron is our executive producer. Raymond Liu is our producer. Olivia Graham and Olivia Lake are our associate producers. Uchenna Waogu is our technical director.
Morning Brew Daily
World Braces for Trump's Tariffs & Practice Flirting with Tinder’s AI
Tax Act helps individuals and businesses of every size find every deduction and credit possible.
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World Braces for Trump's Tariffs & Practice Flirting with Tinder’s AI
Scoops Dardaris is on audio. Hair and Makeup is going to be insufferable talking about Smoot Hawley today. Devin Emery is our chief content officer and our show is a production of Morning Brew.
Morning Brew Daily
World Braces for Trump's Tariffs & Practice Flirting with Tinder’s AI
File now at TaxAct.com and make sure you beat that April 15th deadline. Well, it has finally arrived. Liberation Day, President Trump's name for his announcement of sweeping tariffs on the U.S. 's trading partners. It is a historic inflection point that will reverse a decades-long shift toward globalization led by the United States after World War II.
Morning Brew Daily
World Braces for Trump's Tariffs & Practice Flirting with Tinder’s AI
Yes, Trump has imposed tariffs before, and so have many other presidents, but the size of the package being discussed is unlike anything we've seen in modern history, likely raising American trade barriers to their highest levels since the 1930s, 90 years ago. Remember Smoot-Hawley from AP U.S. History? Yeah, that is what this is being compared to. We are entering a new era of protectionism.
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World Braces for Trump's Tariffs & Practice Flirting with Tinder’s AI
Trump and his economic team say the tariffs are necessary in order to rebuild the American manufacturing base, raise loads of money for the government by collecting import taxes, and rebalance American trade deficits with the rest of the world. While tariffs may raise prices in the short term, Trump argues, it'll leave the country better off in the long run.
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World Braces for Trump's Tariffs & Practice Flirting with Tinder’s AI
There has been short-term turmoil already, even before Liberation Day. With all the uncertainty around tariffs, the S&P 500 posted its worst first quarter since 2022, and consumer sentiment has fallen off a cliff. Speaking of uncertainty, the big outstanding question is, what tariffs will Trump announce today?
Morning Brew Daily
World Braces for Trump's Tariffs & Practice Flirting with Tinder’s AI
Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, we're talking tariffs ahead of President Trump's big Liberation Day announcement this afternoon.
Morning Brew Daily
World Braces for Trump's Tariffs & Practice Flirting with Tinder’s AI
The president initially signaled reciprocal tariffs on other countries, which means, in his words, Whatever they charge us, we charge them. But earlier this week, reports emerged that Trump was considering another plan, a blanket 20 percent tariff on virtually all of the three trillion dollars in goods the U.S. imports.
Morning Brew Daily
World Braces for Trump's Tariffs & Practice Flirting with Tinder’s AI
So, Toby, we don't know exactly what Trump is teeing up, but in either scenario, he's taking out driver.
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World Braces for Trump's Tariffs & Practice Flirting with Tinder’s AI
Yeah, I mean, even go even further back to the founding of the country, Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton railed against other countries who taxed the United States. And they wanted to build up the domestic manufacturing. It wasn't really manufacturing back then, but the domestic industry by putting tariffs. However, since then. World War II ended in 1947.
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World Braces for Trump's Tariffs & Practice Flirting with Tinder’s AI
The United States led this big effort among all of the many countries in the world, our trading partners, to lower tariffs across the board and spread globalization. The concept was, we do things well here, you do things well there, And because shipping is so cheap now with the rise of container ships, then this will lead to better prosperity for all.
Morning Brew Daily
World Braces for Trump's Tariffs & Practice Flirting with Tinder’s AI
So we signed this general agreement on tariffs and traded with two dozen other countries in 1947 after the war and tariff rate across the world. came down. Average tariffs among major economies fall from about 22 percent in 1947 to 14 percent in 1964 to just three percent in 1999. So you see countries all over the world lowering their trade barriers in this postwar era. And I mean, this has been
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World Braces for Trump's Tariffs & Practice Flirting with Tinder’s AI
generally good for a lot of industries and companies just look at Nike you know Nike is a global company that has headquarters in Beaverton Oregon they don't make their shoes there they make their shoes in factories that are spread throughout Southeast Asia because in Oregon you have talent that can do things like marketing and branding and you have the CFO there and that's where
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World Braces for Trump's Tariffs & Practice Flirting with Tinder’s AI
Sort of the high level decisions are made, but it doesn't make economic sense to make actual sneakers in the United States. That is better done where labor and land is cheaper in Southeast Asia. And so that's been, you know, the era, you know, Nike just encapsulates the era of globalization that we've been having for the past 30, 40, 50 years with lower tariffs.
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World Braces for Trump's Tariffs & Practice Flirting with Tinder’s AI
Another April Fool's Day, another year of brands making mostly harmless, sometimes clever pranks online. Here are some of the highlights and lowlights from yesterday's shenanigans. The state of New Jersey said it had finalized plans to construct Mount Jonas, a replica of Mount Rushmore with the faces of the New Jersey-bred Jonas Brothers, Kevin, Joe, and Nick.
Morning Brew Daily
World Braces for Trump's Tariffs & Practice Flirting with Tinder’s AI
And that looks like, you know, that concept, that general economic philosophy is going to be reversed today.
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World Braces for Trump's Tariffs & Practice Flirting with Tinder’s AI
I think there might be. I mean, if you look at the way Hooters operates now, it's kind of two separate companies. There's the P.E. owned restaurants and then there are the founder owned restaurants. They own, you know, not many of the global footprint, but they own a little more than 20 in Florida and Illinois. And they say that they are running the restaurants worldwide.
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World Braces for Trump's Tariffs & Practice Flirting with Tinder’s AI
really well, and they have criticized the PE guys for running their restaurants into the ground. So they are going to buy over 100 stores through this bankruptcy deal and think that they can put their secret founder sauce back on Hooters, which made it a massive chain back in the 1980s when it started. Right.
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World Braces for Trump's Tariffs & Practice Flirting with Tinder’s AI
Duolingo and That Obscene Owl announced they were launching a five-year world cruise with where you visit 195 countries and learn to speak like a local in all of them. Perhaps the prank that made the most waves, Tiger Woods, who ruptured his left Achilles a few weeks ago, said he had miraculously healed after sleeping in a hyperbaric chamber and would be playing in the Masters next week.
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World Braces for Trump's Tariffs & Practice Flirting with Tinder’s AI
I mean, you know, he could also look at himself and say, I created a restaurant named Hooters. So, you know, he is maybe partially to blame. But, you know, this is a major uphill climb for a company in a restaurant chain like Cooters because all of the trends are pointing in the opposite direction. Chipotle, Fast Casual and Quick Service Casual are hammering these casual restaurant chains.
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World Braces for Trump's Tariffs & Practice Flirting with Tinder’s AI
I mean, you could go down the list of all these companies that filed for bankruptcy. TGI Fridays, Red Lobster, Rubio's Coastal Grill on the border. They all filed for bankruptcy because people just aren't sitting down at these chains anymore. The only one that is doing OK is Chili. So they are facing headwinds More generally, they're facing inflation, higher labor costs.
Morning Brew Daily
World Braces for Trump's Tariffs & Practice Flirting with Tinder’s AI
Restaurant prices are up 30 percent in the last five years, which is way more than already soaring inflation. They are seem to be adopting a very similar playbook to the new CEO of Red Lobster, which is focusing on fresh ingredients, better service, investing in stores. So, yes, Hooters filed for bankruptcy. It's not going away. We'll see if this turnaround plan works.
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World Braces for Trump's Tariffs & Practice Flirting with Tinder’s AI
Here's a wild story involving a vindictive NBA owner, cutting-edge technology, and a T-shirt. Last week, a man named Frank Miller was going through security at New York's Radio City Music Hall for a concert with his parents when he was stopped by security guards who whisked him to a separate part of the venue where he was handed a piece of paper titled Trespass Notice.
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World Braces for Trump's Tariffs & Practice Flirting with Tinder’s AI
The letter explained that Miller had been banned from every venue owned by Madison Square Garden Entertainment, which includes Radio City Music Hall. But why was he banned and how did security at Radio City even identify him as he was in line?
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World Braces for Trump's Tariffs & Practice Flirting with Tinder’s AI
Miller thinks the venue ban likely stems from an incident in 2021 when one of his friends went viral for wearing a shirt to a Knicks game that said ban Dolan. A not so nice message referring to James Dolan, the owner of the team and the CEO of Madison Square Garden Entertainment. Miller, a graphic designer, was the person who created that shirt.
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World Braces for Trump's Tariffs & Practice Flirting with Tinder’s AI
And even though he wasn't at the game that day four years ago, he believed that Dolan's team identified him in social media posts surrounding the incident. And get this, use facial recognition technology deployed at MSG venues to pick him out of the crowd at Radio City and block him from entering. Toby, there's good reason to think that is exactly how it went down.
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World Braces for Trump's Tariffs & Practice Flirting with Tinder’s AI
None of those were real, sadly, but they put a smile on your face. Toby, did you see any brands that took it a little too far yesterday?
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World Braces for Trump's Tariffs & Practice Flirting with Tinder’s AI
Yeah. So is this legal? In New York City, it is. New York City law allows companies to use biometric technology as long as they notify customers. So if you're going to a Madison Square Garden entertainment venue, MSG, Beacon Theater, Radio City, you probably will see signs posted that we are monitoring you for your safety, etc. If you go to another MSG property in Chicago, the Chicago Theater,
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World Braces for Trump's Tariffs & Practice Flirting with Tinder’s AI
You actually won't be surveilled by facial technology, so they might nab you another way if you are involved in litigation against James Dolan or have hurt him in any way, hurt his feelings in any way in the past. They also own the Sphere in Las Vegas, so they own this sprawling entertainment empire, and James Dolan is out for his enemies.
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23andMe Files for Bankruptcy & Sesame Street’s Rocky Finances
Yeah, it's pretty interesting to see what they're going to do. This is lightning in a bottle where literally everybody on the internet is talking about this one particular video in which your product is a star. And Saratoga's star has been rising for a couple years now since it was bought by Primo Brands in 2021.
Morning Brew Daily
23andMe Files for Bankruptcy & Sesame Street’s Rocky Finances
It went from $13 million in sales to $71 million in sales in 2020 for 76% compound annual growth over that time span. So This mineral fancy water has been enjoying an upsurge over the past few years. And now, you know, maybe this rocket ship could take off, but we'll see whether it translate to sales. At the very least, it translated to a lot of brand awareness.
Morning Brew Daily
23andMe Files for Bankruptcy & Sesame Street’s Rocky Finances
That owns like Poland Springs.
Morning Brew Daily
23andMe Files for Bankruptcy & Sesame Street’s Rocky Finances
But when you go to a fancy restaurant, you're probably going to see Saratoga water there and you might be a little bit more interested in what it's all about. Now, they had this really buzzy partnership with Bravo's Top Chef and they're trying to get more into those high end restaurants and bars and work with mixologists and sommeliers and things like that. So the the
Morning Brew Daily
23andMe Files for Bankruptcy & Sesame Street’s Rocky Finances
High-end mineral water industry is kind of booming right now, but just when a server comes over, I'm just going tap straight up.
Morning Brew Daily
23andMe Files for Bankruptcy & Sesame Street’s Rocky Finances
It's hard to believe. And Signal is... a consumer app that is used by journalists and Washington officials because it's end to end encrypted. You can send disappearing messages. You can create aliases. It's a pretty secretive social app. But when you are planning something like an airstrike, it is custom and for
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23andMe Files for Bankruptcy & Sesame Street’s Rocky Finances
u.s officials to go into the situation room which is known as a sensitive compartmented information facility and even when you're texting or communicating via mobile device you basically do a mobile scif do a mobile uh version of that so truly a stunning thing to include uh not just a random person but the editor of an influential magazine in your group chat and this is sure to dominate conversation in washington uh in the week to come
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23andMe Files for Bankruptcy & Sesame Street’s Rocky Finances
On the tariff front, it was another day of more head fakes than a Peyton Manning snap count. In the morning, President Trump vowed to slap a 25 percent tariff on all U.S. imports from countries that buy oil and gas from Venezuela, which would target China and India in particular. Then later in the day, Trump signaled that he might dial back.
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23andMe Files for Bankruptcy & Sesame Street’s Rocky Finances
planned reciprocal tariffs on April 2nd, which he's dubbed Liberation Day for rebalancing trade deficits. After Trump said he may give a lot of countries breaks, stocks rallied for their second straight day of big gains. Still, no one really knows what tariffs will be announced on April 2nd.
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This is basic supply and demand. Demand for these lounges is through the roof right now. There are long lines just to even get into the lounges, which is pretty cringy. So United and other airlines are saying, okay, well, we're seeing a huge demand. Let's just jack up the price, get fewer people in there, and we'll make more money. It comes at a time when these...
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23andMe Files for Bankruptcy & Sesame Street’s Rocky Finances
Co-branded credit cards and other sources of revenue are becoming an even bigger part of airlines business. Aside from just, you know, selling airfare, they United brought in three point five billion dollars in other revenue last year, which was up 10 percent from the year before. So this is a huge moneymaker for United.
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23andMe Files for Bankruptcy & Sesame Street’s Rocky Finances
They're seeing the long lines and they're saying, well, I think we can raise the prices. Finally, the people of Paris looked at New York's congestion pricing and said, that's an urban planning scheme for ants. On Sunday, they voted by a large margin to block 500 streets to vehicle traffic entirely and replace the asphalt with plants and trees.
Morning Brew Daily
23andMe Files for Bankruptcy & Sesame Street’s Rocky Finances
It's a non-binding vote, but it sets into motion a process in which the city will study which streets should be decarified that could last three years. If it happens, it'd be another victory for Mayor Anne Hidalgo, who has spearheaded a number of projects over her tenure that aim to make Paris a city that's more friendly to pedestrians and less welcoming to cars.
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23andMe Files for Bankruptcy & Sesame Street’s Rocky Finances
Already, measures such as slapping a fee on SUVs and eliminating tens of thousands of parking spots have reduced vehicle traffic in Paris by 40% since 2011. Toby, what would Emily think of this?
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23andMe Files for Bankruptcy & Sesame Street’s Rocky Finances
Sophos is like having a smoke detector that warns you of fires before there's even smoke. Its AI-powered tech constantly evolves, detecting threats in real time.
Morning Brew Daily
23andMe Files for Bankruptcy & Sesame Street’s Rocky Finances
Let's wrap it up there. Thanks for starting your morning with us and have a wonderful Tuesday. For any questions, comments, or feedback, send an email to morningbrewdaily at morningbrew.com. Let's roll the credits. Emily Milliron is our executive producer. Raymond Liu is our producer. Olivia Graham and Olivia Lake are our associate producers. Uchenua Ogu is our technical director.
Morning Brew Daily
23andMe Files for Bankruptcy & Sesame Street’s Rocky Finances
Scoops Dardaris is on audio. Hera Makeup wants to be included in your group chat. Devin Emery is our chief content officer and our show is a production of Morning Brew. Great show today, Neil. Let's run it back tomorrow.
Morning Brew Daily
23andMe Files for Bankruptcy & Sesame Street’s Rocky Finances
Head to Sophos.com today and make your cybersecurity proactive, not reactive. That's S-O-P-H-O-S dot com. 23andMe couldn't walk the double helix tightrope any longer. The long-struggling DNA testing company filed for bankruptcy late Sunday night and announced that its CEO, Ann Wojcicki, would be stepping down from her role.
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23andMe Files for Bankruptcy & Sesame Street’s Rocky Finances
In a statement, Wojcicki took responsibility for the collapse of the once high-flying startup, but said she still believed in its long-term vision and would be making a bid to buy it out of bankruptcy. 23andMe had been a cast member of The Walking Dead for a few years now, founded in 2006.
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23andMe Files for Bankruptcy & Sesame Street’s Rocky Finances
It was all the rage in Silicon Valley for selling popular at-home DNA testing kits that help people learn about their family histories and genetic profiles. The problem is once you know that, you don't really need to buy anything more from the company and
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23andMe Files for Bankruptcy & Sesame Street’s Rocky Finances
Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, 23andMe went bankrupt.
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23andMe Files for Bankruptcy & Sesame Street’s Rocky Finances
And after failing to create another product that caught on with consumers, 23andMe's $6 billion valuation in 2021 plunged to essentially nothing today. While the bankruptcy process gets going, one question is sure to dominate the conversation. What will happen to the 15 million DNA samples that 23andMe is sitting on?
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23andMe Files for Bankruptcy & Sesame Street’s Rocky Finances
It collected a nearly unprecedented treasure trove of human genetic information through its spit tests. Is that now going to be up for sale to the highest bidder? Looks like chapter 11 is just the first of many chapters in this unfolding saga.
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23andMe Files for Bankruptcy & Sesame Street’s Rocky Finances
Here's how you delete your 23 and me data. It's pretty easy You just log on to your account go to settings account information and And then you should see something called delete your account. 23andMe is going to prompt you to confirm your decision that it's permanent and irreversible. Well, maybe it's bankruptcy is permanent and irreversible.
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23andMe Files for Bankruptcy & Sesame Street’s Rocky Finances
So you can go ahead and delete your information that way. But also, this not the first time that a company with biogenetic information, very sensitive personal information on humans, has gone bankrupt. We've had a lot of those. YouBiome was one example a few years ago.
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23andMe Files for Bankruptcy & Sesame Street’s Rocky Finances
What happened during that bankruptcy proceeding is that the judge appointed a budsman, who's this third-party observer, to make sure that nothing super sketchy was going on with the sale of this biome. uh, biologic information. And he said the, the, the, uh, Bunsman weird word said that, uh, said that the sale could go through with certain restrictions.
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23andMe Files for Bankruptcy & Sesame Street’s Rocky Finances
So we'll see what happens, uh, with 23andMe, but their privacy, uh, policy does state that, uh, in the event of a sale bankruptcy merger acquisition reorganization, that customer's personal information may be accessed, sold or transferred.
Morning Brew Daily
23andMe Files for Bankruptcy & Sesame Street’s Rocky Finances
March Madness hasn't even gotten to its second weekend yet, and a bracket savant is already walking away with a $1 million prize, courtesy of Warren Buffett. An anonymous employee of Flight Safety International, a subsidiary of Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway, won the $1 million after correctly picking 31 of the 32 games in the first round today. of the men's college basketball tournament.
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23andMe Files for Bankruptcy & Sesame Street’s Rocky Finances
Totally makes sense. U.S. Customs and Border Protection intercepted egg products on 3,200 occasions this January and February. That is compared to 130 incidents of them seizing fentanyl. There's a lot more egg smuggling going on than drug smuggling, but that is very understandable because a dozen eggs cost American consumers $5.90 in February. That's double what it was.
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23andMe Files for Bankruptcy & Sesame Street’s Rocky Finances
In 2024, you're seeing a little arbitrage play happen. Unfortunately, there are border protections because the United States does not import a lot of eggs due to concerns of even more disease spreading from other—from eggs from other countries. But you're seeing those restrictions loosened as the Trump administration goes full pedal to the metal to try to alleviate this crisis.
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23andMe Files for Bankruptcy & Sesame Street’s Rocky Finances
And I have some good news and some bad news on the egg price front. The good news is that wholesale egg prices have fallen by half in the past few months. So you might see some relief there. The bad news is that that may not translate directly
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23andMe Files for Bankruptcy & Sesame Street’s Rocky Finances
to your grocery store shelves because at the same time that wholesale prices are increasing, there's going to be a surge in demand right now around Easter time for eggs. So Brooke Rollins, who's the USDA secretary, said it's good that we're seeing wholesale prices come down, but the demand side of the equation is likely to push prices up even further as we head into the Easter season.
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23andMe Files for Bankruptcy & Sesame Street’s Rocky Finances
Now would not be a good time to ask Mr. Snuffleupagus why the long face. Sesame Street is in a painful spot financially. According to the New York Times, the nonprofit behind the beloved kids show Sesame Workshop is facing a perfect storm of financial problems that may require significant changes and time to recover from. The storm has three fronts.
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23andMe Files for Bankruptcy & Sesame Street’s Rocky Finances
For one, the organization recently lost its distribution contract with HBO, which ended a decade-long deal that paid it up to $35 million each year for the rights to the show. Second, the Trump administration's cuts to USAID means fewer grants for the nonprofit, a financial hit it had not seen coming or prepared for. And third is the changing winds in children's TV programming.
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23andMe Files for Bankruptcy & Sesame Street’s Rocky Finances
The battle for kids' attention is getting a lot more competitive, and Bluey. So as the show kicks off production for its 56th season next month, things are looking bleaker than they have been in years. Is Cookie Monster going to start driving for Uber?
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23andMe Files for Bankruptcy & Sesame Street’s Rocky Finances
Buffett has been running this bracket contest for years, but relaxed the rules this March because he desperately wanted someone to win while he was still up and at them. It worked, and interestingly, this employee was one of 12 Berkshire employees in total to pick 31 of the 32 games, but he took home the top prize because he correctly chose 29 games consecutively before a loss.
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23andMe Files for Bankruptcy & Sesame Street’s Rocky Finances
And HBO told Sesame Workshop that it was just not interested in doing kids' programming anymore. They wanted to focus more on family and adults, and so they ended the contract. So now Sesame Street is now shopping around with other streamers for a distribution deal in a financial windfall that it absolutely needs. They're also making some programmatic changes to the show itself in order to get...
Morning Brew Daily
23andMe Files for Bankruptcy & Sesame Street’s Rocky Finances
kids watching again because there are so many other shows that are more popular than Sesame Street at this point, which is sad but true. Bluey Cocomelon, then YouTube, Miss Rachel is huge over there. So they're changing the show a little bit. They're going to have two 11-minute stories to open and close the show and have a shorter animated feature in between. They're going to try to add
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23andMe Files for Bankruptcy & Sesame Street’s Rocky Finances
more comedic elements. They want you to laugh. We want kids to laugh out loud a little bit more, and they're also introducing a signature song for each episode. So they're trying to raise up the dopamine levels here with Sesame Street. We know it's very educational. It's very pleasant to watch, but that just doesn't cut it in today's kids' entertainment field.
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23andMe Files for Bankruptcy & Sesame Street’s Rocky Finances
Thinking about expanding your business? Lean on one of retail's most trusted names when you sell your products on Walmart.com.
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23andMe Files for Bankruptcy & Sesame Street’s Rocky Finances
Toby, I've never seen someone so happy to give away a Millie.
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23andMe Files for Bankruptcy & Sesame Street’s Rocky Finances
When you sell on Walmart Marketplace, you get access to a network of millions of customers and programs to help you scale your biz. And it just takes a few clicks to get started.
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US Dollar Falls to 3-Year Low & Prediction Markets Take on the Next Pope
Factor's two-minute meals make it easy to prepare healthy dishes without the prep time or dishes to wash.
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US Dollar Falls to 3-Year Low & Prediction Markets Take on the Next Pope
Choose your meals from menus like Calorie Smart, Protein Plus, Keto, and more. Power up in the morning with satisfying breakfasts, grab an on-the-go lunch, and enjoy premium dinners, plus guilt-free snacks and desserts. I really like the chorizo chili with sour cream and cheddar cheese. What about you, Neil?
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US Dollar Falls to 3-Year Low & Prediction Markets Take on the Next Pope
Also, just for some more perspective on this Tuesday morning, if Earth's four and a half billion year history was squeezed into a 24 hour clock, humans, you, me, Neil, your neighbor, Paul, everyone you ever know or have known showed up at 11.59, 59 p.m. So remember, we're guests who just got here. So take your shoes off, compliment the decor, and let's try not to leave a mess.
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US Dollar Falls to 3-Year Low & Prediction Markets Take on the Next Pope
Creamy, crunchy, exacerbating a worldwide shortage of pistachios, Dubai chocolate is the latest TikTok trend that is leading to real world consequences. And it's also the latest Toby's trend that I wanna talk about today. Dubai chocolate is a sweet treat that consists of a milk chocolate bar stuffed with a creamy green pistachio filling
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US Dollar Falls to 3-Year Low & Prediction Markets Take on the Next Pope
and shredded pastry known as katafi or kanafe, first made by an Emirati chocolatier, Fix. It initially debuted to modest success back in 2021, but that modest success gradually turned into smashing success due to a single TikTok. A video posted in December of 2023
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features a girl just eating dubai chocolate in her car the asmr vibes combined with the clearly delicious looking treat has since racked up over 120 million views and it has put some serious strain on its key ingredient one nut trader told the financial times the pistachio world is basically tapped out at the moment with the craze pushing prices to over 10 a pound a 34% rise in just a year.
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US Dollar Falls to 3-Year Low & Prediction Markets Take on the Next Pope
And one chocolate shop in the UK sells Dubai chocolate at more than double the price of its other bars. It does look like the only thing that can slow Dubai chocolate's roll now is shortages. The US pistachio industry is coming off a poor harvest, and now it's got to contend with half of TikTok clamoring for this delicious new treat, Neil.
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One interesting aspect of this is the U.S. is actually pistachios, the world leader in exporting pistachios. That's one thing we do export. And when I say that the U.S. crop, the U.S., the most recent U.S. crop had a shortage, it was actually because they had a higher quality than usual crop, leaving fewer of the cheaper, you know, shell-free kernels that
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US Dollar Falls to 3-Year Low & Prediction Markets Take on the Next Pope
usually are used as ingredients in stuff like baking or chocolate. So it was almost too good of a harvest season for the United States. And also it's coming off of a year where there was a supply glut in 2023. So suddenly there was like this global supply exceeding demand back in 2023. So maybe that coincided with the fact that a lot of chocolatiers were experimenting around with this ingredient.
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US Dollar Falls to 3-Year Low & Prediction Markets Take on the Next Pope
And so it's been like the worst of both worlds where they're like, all right, there's going to be a lot of pistachios because we're in this supply glut environment. Now there's a supply shortage and prices are kind of skyrocketing and leading to Dubai chocolate being very expensive as well.
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US Dollar Falls to 3-Year Low & Prediction Markets Take on the Next Pope
And now a word from our sponsor, Planet O. Neil, have you ever noticed how the right lighting can make a room feel totally different?
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Yeah, after Harvard took this stand and filed this lawsuit, over 150 university leaders from other U.S. universities signed this joint statement where they were pushing back against what they see as government overreach on college campuses. They specifically called out the use of federal funding as this sort of pressure lever to get these universities to do what the administration wants.
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So it's big names, MIT, Princeton, Yale, Brown, Tufts, Duke, you name it, they were among the signers. So you're seeing higher ed kind of rally behind Harvard here. as they fight what they see as overreach from this administration. For our next headline, Airbnb users rejoice. The short-term rental company is finally being transparent about the fees it charges. You know the feeling.
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You're cruising around on Airbnb's search function, find the perfect little cottage upstate for a weekend getaway for the right price, and then you click it and boom! hit in the face by taxes and fees galore, pushing it right out of your price range.
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It was always a huge pain point for users, but that changed as of Monday, with the platform now displaying the total price, fees and all, right from the outset and by default. This change aligns with the new USFTC rule, which requires rental platforms and hotels to disclose all fees transparently before purchase to prevent hidden junk fees. Neil, feels like a big win for consumers.
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Ah, thank goodness you said lamp. Team, no overhead lights here. What the right warm lamp does for a room, that's what Planet O does for your morning. Coffee, cereal, smoothie, whatever it touches, it softens the edges, warms things up, makes everything better.
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US Dollar Falls to 3-Year Low & Prediction Markets Take on the Next Pope
Yeah, they already created this dedicated investment vehicle to kind of back AI-related projects. It's called MGX, and they have an AI observer on its own board kind of figuring out how to deploy money into AI companies. So it's AI all the way down when you look at UAE. Also, the tongue twister of UAE AI has been something that we've been grappling with over the past few hours. So
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US Dollar Falls to 3-Year Low & Prediction Markets Take on the Next Pope
Yes, clearly the most bold plan yet. They do think it just speeds everything up. How it's going to be managed and what pitfalls it could face is something that they're willing to try. Again, more autocratic leaning states have the ability to work fast and break things when it comes to experimenting with government, less so than a democracy like the
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US Dollar Falls to 3-Year Low & Prediction Markets Take on the Next Pope
what is going to be the result of giving AI the reins of laws that govern their country. Finally, researchers at UC Berkeley have figured out how to hijack your eyeballs, but they're not forcing teens to stop rolling their eyes. Instead, they figured out how to show people a brand new, never-before-seen color called Olo. Now, of course, it's impossible to imagine a color you've never seen before.
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Seriously, try it. But the lucky few who have seen Olo describe it as a blue-green of unprecedented saturation. The new technique researchers use is called OZ and uses lasers to zero in on specific cones in your eyes in isolation to unlock hues beyond our natural comprehension. The cones in question are those most sensitive to green light, hence the name OZ, because Emerald City, you get it.
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Beyond unlocking new color magic, the controlling of the retina on such a granular level is a totally new way to study vision. For example, you could play around with the technique to try and bring back full color vision to colorblind people by compensating for any missing or defective light receptors.
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US Dollar Falls to 3-Year Low & Prediction Markets Take on the Next Pope
But Neil, I'm personally excited to walk into a hair salon and ask them to hook me up with some olo-colored locks for the summer.
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US Dollar Falls to 3-Year Low & Prediction Markets Take on the Next Pope
Yeah, if you want to weigh in on this debate as well, obviously you can't see the actual color, but we link the article in the show description. We also flash it on our YouTube. It does look like kind of a turquoise vibe, but I think it's not it. That's clearly not it. It has to be beamed in your eye via laser.
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US Dollar Falls to 3-Year Low & Prediction Markets Take on the Next Pope
So I am bullish on Olo, and I'm going to get my hair colored Olo if it's the last thing I do.
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US Dollar Falls to 3-Year Low & Prediction Markets Take on the Next Pope
So if your morning routine's feeling a little cold and clinical, this is your warm, soft, glow-up moment.
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US Dollar Falls to 3-Year Low & Prediction Markets Take on the Next Pope
Great show today, Neil. Let's run it back tomorrow.
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US Dollar Falls to 3-Year Low & Prediction Markets Take on the Next Pope
Get your hands on the oat milk that has it all. Visit planetoat.com for more.
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US Dollar Falls to 3-Year Low & Prediction Markets Take on the Next Pope
Not a fun combo whatsoever. So what does a weaker dollar actually mean? There are some pros if you're sitting as someone who thinks that U.S. exports should get cheaper. American-made goods cost less overseas, which can technically boost sales for U.S. companies, help domestic factories, farmers, manufacturers, you name it. So it could support U.S.
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US Dollar Falls to 3-Year Low & Prediction Markets Take on the Next Pope
manufacturing, which is a stated goal of this administration. Companies may start making more things domestically if foreign goods aren't as cheap comparatively, that is a big argument for driving the US dollar down.
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US Dollar Falls to 3-Year Low & Prediction Markets Take on the Next Pope
Some other less prominent arguments are technically tourism to the US might go up, although we've seen the opposite happen just because of the general attitude that we've adopted towards other countries. And then finally can help pay down foreign debt if the U.S. has debt in dollars, which it does. Paying it off is cheaper relative to other currencies.
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US Dollar Falls to 3-Year Low & Prediction Markets Take on the Next Pope
But there are also a lot of cons to a weaker dollar. One, imports get more expensive. Stuff made abroad, electronics, clothes, cars, food gets pricier. Remember, we import a lot more than we export. That's the whole basis of this trade war we're conducting. So that can fuel inflation. Then also traveling abroad gets more expensive now. The opposite is true.
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US Dollar Falls to 3-Year Low & Prediction Markets Take on the Next Pope
Remember how everyone was going to Japan earlier in the year because there was a weaker yen? No more Japan trips for you as the dollar gets cheaper. And then also it just shakes investor confidence. As you said, as this sell America trade keeps percolating through the markets, you're just less confident in the U.S. economy. So that manifests as more volatility and less foreign investment.
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US Dollar Falls to 3-Year Low & Prediction Markets Take on the Next Pope
So when you hear the dollar is weaker, the dollar just hit a three year low. Hopefully this provides a little more context around what that actually means.
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US Dollar Falls to 3-Year Low & Prediction Markets Take on the Next Pope
Then in the wake of the Pope's death, people are taking to prediction markets to bet on the outcome of the upcoming conclave. It's Tuesday, April 22nd. Let's ride.
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US Dollar Falls to 3-Year Low & Prediction Markets Take on the Next Pope
What ties the bow on what we've been talking about together is gold this year because, I mean, gold is ripping. It is behaving like the Magnificent Seven. So far, gold has outperformed the stock market by 42.5% so far this year. Gold has always been that safe haven asset, but... So Bitcoin has come along and tried to say, hey, we could be a safe, heavy asset.
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US Dollar Falls to 3-Year Low & Prediction Markets Take on the Next Pope
But that usually kind of correlates more closely with the actual stock market, specifically NASDAQ. So gold, the oldest metal, it is a store of value right now. And it's massively outperforming all these other asset classes that we've been talking about.
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US Dollar Falls to 3-Year Low & Prediction Markets Take on the Next Pope
Yeah, this is certainly not a new thing. The technology is new, but the fact that there was a gambling culture that existed around this is not new. There was a big gambling culture in Renaissance Rome. There were these things called sensalis, which are essentially your bookie who you send memos to on the weekend.
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US Dollar Falls to 3-Year Low & Prediction Markets Take on the Next Pope
They took bets on everything from the identities of new cardinals to who actually would become a pope. There was also newspapers and newsletters that would spring up around conclaves. People kind of liken it to the comment section on the Polymarket right now. So it shouldn't shock us that there has been this kind of long tradition of gambling around it.
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US Dollar Falls to 3-Year Low & Prediction Markets Take on the Next Pope
And obviously the spread of information at that time did impact the process of the new Pope. I wonder if we'll see a similar thing Today, there was this very egregious example back in 1555 when some rumor mongers spread this idea that one of the top candidates had died that lowered that candidate's chances in wagering, which probably led to a nice little profit on the side.
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US Dollar Falls to 3-Year Low & Prediction Markets Take on the Next Pope
So you can draw parallels to modern-day markets where some rumors are going to fly. Polymarket odds might change very quickly based on those rumors, and someone might stand to make a profit. So Nothing is new under the sun. We've been seeing this all the way back in the 1500s. Now we just have polymarket.
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US Dollar Falls to 3-Year Low & Prediction Markets Take on the Next Pope
Yeah, and by the way, if you think you're going to predict the next Pope, you're probably not because Pope Francis started at 55 to 1 odds and never had better than 32 to 1 odds. So if you think you're going to nail the next papacy, you probably are not. Chipotle is opening a store where no one will mispronounce their name in the very country that inspired its cuisine, Mexico.
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The burrito chain is partnering with a restaurant operator who has experience running brands like Domino's and Starbucks. to begin opening outposts in Mexico by 2026.
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US Dollar Falls to 3-Year Low & Prediction Markets Take on the Next Pope
The hope is that the familiar ingredients will make it a success south of the border, as the company eyes growth outside of the U.S., but just because Chipotle's carnitas, guac, and other offerings take their cues from Mexican dishes, it doesn't mean that Mexicans will actually turn out. No one knows that better than another Mexican-inspired chain, Taco Bell.
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It tried to enter the market back in 1992, but was essentially laughed at for its inauthentic naming conventions like Tacostadas, especially when it was juxtaposed next to Mom and Pop Taquerias. It packed up its cheesy gordita crunches and shut down every location just two years later. It's like bringing ice to the Arctic, historian Carlos Montesivas told the AP at the time.
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US Dollar Falls to 3-Year Low & Prediction Markets Take on the Next Pope
But sometimes the US-ified versions of traditional food and beverage do find success. Starbucks entered the Italian market in 2017 by leaning into humility and a proprietary coffee blend tailor-made for Italian tastes. And now it has 30 stores in operation. So Neil, on a scale of Taco Bell to Starbucks, where do we think Chipotle is going to land?
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US Dollar Falls to 3-Year Low & Prediction Markets Take on the Next Pope
And then maybe it won't be something as sexy as their brand positioning that will make or break its fortunes in Mexico. Maybe it's just the cost of importing food to Mexico because it makes sense that to open a chain in Mexico because a lot of their avocados come from south of the border. Now they won't have to pay those import fees.
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So technically, they should be able to keep their menu prices a little bit lower than you see. I mean, they're not going to be $16, $17, $18 burrito bowls like I'm loading up in New York City because I'm getting extra guac. So potentially, they will be able to fit in more with their supply chain and their prices to say that we're not like this Americanized chain with Americanized prices.
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Or maybe they won't be able to pull that off. So it could just be pricing power that ends up dictating the fortunes of Chipotle in Mexico.
Morning Brew Daily
US Dollar Falls to 3-Year Low & Prediction Markets Take on the Next Pope
I think just lean into the quality aspect. Don't try to be anything you're not. Just say, hey, we make quality ingredients right there in front of you. Come try it if you want it. Up next, we got Toby's Trends. TastyTrade puts traders first.
Morning Brew Daily
US Dollar Falls to 3-Year Low & Prediction Markets Take on the Next Pope
However you do it, TastyTrade's got the advanced tools you need to tackle stocks, options, futures, and more all in one place.
Morning Brew Daily
US Dollar Falls to 3-Year Low & Prediction Markets Take on the Next Pope
It's no wonder Investopedia named Tasty Trade the best broker for options in 2024.
Morning Brew Daily
Forever 21 Goes Bankrupt & ChatGPT Can Have Anxiety?
Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, nothing lasts forever, even retailers named Forever 21.
Morning Brew Daily
Forever 21 Goes Bankrupt & ChatGPT Can Have Anxiety?
Yeah, just for an example of what you can do when you vibe code, that same New York Times reporter asked one of these twos Bolt to build an app that could help him pack a school lunch for his son based on an uploaded photo of just the content in his fridge. Less than 10 minutes later, this app created what is called Lunchbox Buddy, and it suggested a generic turkey sandwich.
Morning Brew Daily
Forever 21 Goes Bankrupt & ChatGPT Can Have Anxiety?
He posted the link here for everyone to try. It is a legit app. It was built in under 10 minutes, zero coding required by the person who wanted to create it. Basically, he just described what he wanted, and it built code. I don't think vibe coding is actually coding, but you can tell me wrong. You've been playing around with some vibe coding.
Morning Brew Daily
Forever 21 Goes Bankrupt & ChatGPT Can Have Anxiety?
Certainly lowers the barrier to coding. And the question is for vibe coding, will it replace computer programmers? We already know that Google said that 25% of its code is already written by AI. And then in terms of programming jobs, more than a quarter of all computer programming jobs. have just vanished in the past two years. It's the worst downturn that this industry has ever seen.
Morning Brew Daily
Forever 21 Goes Bankrupt & ChatGPT Can Have Anxiety?
So if you're a computer programmer or a developer, you know, thinking about your future job prospects, you're also thinking about whether vibe coding will eliminate the need for your position now that any randos like us can build something. There is a huge but in that we are very much in the early stages.
Morning Brew Daily
Forever 21 Goes Bankrupt & ChatGPT Can Have Anxiety?
Most people playing around with vibe coding are building hobbyist projects and it is not in a professional setting at all.
Morning Brew Daily
Forever 21 Goes Bankrupt & ChatGPT Can Have Anxiety?
Slid in right as the mimosas were being poured. Nicely done. If you want top-notch security without compromise, visit Sophos.com. That's S-O-P-H-O-S dot com. Rough day for millennial women as your favorite mall destination 15 years ago, Forever 21, filed for bankruptcy and is going to be closing all of its stores in the United States.
Morning Brew Daily
Forever 21 Goes Bankrupt & ChatGPT Can Have Anxiety?
Yeah, Harvard, this is seen as a way to expand the diversity of their enrollment. It also comes at a time when, you know, you said Harvard's endowment is $50 billion, but there is a big financial squeeze. Days before this announcement, Harvard said it was freezing hiring because of the White House's threats.
Morning Brew Daily
Forever 21 Goes Bankrupt & ChatGPT Can Have Anxiety?
funding cuts and tax increases JD Vance the vice president is also planning or at least floating an increase in the endowment tax right now endowments are taxed at 1.4 percent per year Vance has proposed raising it to as much as 35 percent so precarious times for higher education institutions like Harvard like Yale like Princeton and they want to get ahead of this and expand and
Morning Brew Daily
Forever 21 Goes Bankrupt & ChatGPT Can Have Anxiety?
their applicant base by making college tuition free for people making under 200K. Imagine if you could charge your vehicle as quickly as filling up a tank of gas. BYD, the Chinese electric vehicle giant taking on Tesla, said it'll let you do just that. The company revealed a new system for electric cars that can provide 292 miles of range in just five minutes.
Morning Brew Daily
Forever 21 Goes Bankrupt & ChatGPT Can Have Anxiety?
That is far faster than a Tesla supercharger's capabilities, which can add up to 171 miles of range in 15 minutes. BYD said vehicles with a new charging technology will roll out next month. Toby, this news is electric.
Morning Brew Daily
Forever 21 Goes Bankrupt & ChatGPT Can Have Anxiety?
Yeah, Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev has been on the prediction markets train for a long time. He called them the future of not just trading, but also information. He said he was a big believer in the power of these markets for a long time, a student of them.
Morning Brew Daily
Forever 21 Goes Bankrupt & ChatGPT Can Have Anxiety?
There have been some false starts in the past around the Super Bowl, but now they think that partnering with an established player like Kalshi will kind of allow them to avert regulators' gaze. I just find it funny that the two things you're going to be able to trade on right now are... March Madness and the scintillating upper bound of the federal funds rate.
Morning Brew Daily
Forever 21 Goes Bankrupt & ChatGPT Can Have Anxiety?
It's the chain's second bankruptcy in six years, but this time around, don't expect anyone to swoop in to save it. After hitting a peak of $4 billion in sales in 2015, the fast fashion pioneer went out of fashion fast.
Morning Brew Daily
Forever 21 Goes Bankrupt & ChatGPT Can Have Anxiety?
I wonder which one people are going to choose. Finally, call it beginner's luck or the perfect man for the job. But just a few weeks after he hosted the Oscars for the first time, Conan O'Brien was hired to emcee next year's Academy Awards in one of the earliest renewals ever for an Oscar host.
Morning Brew Daily
Forever 21 Goes Bankrupt & ChatGPT Can Have Anxiety?
Conan earned high marks for his generally apolitical, smooth debut on the mic, and ratings for the Oscars rose to a five-year high. In a statement, Conan explained why he accepted the gig. The only reason I'm hosting the Oscars next year is that I want to hear Adrian Brody finish his speech.
Morning Brew Daily
Forever 21 Goes Bankrupt & ChatGPT Can Have Anxiety?
usually you pin it on the host back so it makes sense that you want a pro like conan up there just doing his thing because he did his thing very well this past this past oscar season i think a lot of people liked it so oscars are like why overthink it let's just bring him right back let's wrap it up there thanks so much for starting your morning with us and have a wonderful tuesday for any questions comments or feedback send an email to morning brew daily at morning brew.com and if you're enjoying the show share it with a friend family member or co-worker
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Forever 21 Goes Bankrupt & ChatGPT Can Have Anxiety?
Toby, who should everyone listening share it with today?
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Forever 21 Goes Bankrupt & ChatGPT Can Have Anxiety?
Let's roll the credits. Emily Milliron is our executive producer. Raymond Liu is our producer. Olivia Graham and Olivia Lake are our associate producers. Uchenua Ogu is our technical director. Scoops Dardaris is on audio. Hair and Makeup is filling out their bracket. Any advice is welcome. Devin Emery is our chief content officer in our shows of production of Morning Brew.
Morning Brew Daily
Forever 21 Goes Bankrupt & ChatGPT Can Have Anxiety?
The pandemic accelerated the shift to online shopping, where foot traffic focused Forever 21 was at a disadvantage, and inflation jacked up costs and led shoppers to pull back on buying clothes. But the death blow may have been dealt by the new titans of fast fashion, Taimou and Shein.
Morning Brew Daily
Forever 21 Goes Bankrupt & ChatGPT Can Have Anxiety?
Forever 21 execs blame the two Chinese-linked marketplaces for their company's demise, saying that the shockingly low prices advertised on those apps made it hard for Forever 21 to hold on to its core customer base. What happens next? Liquidation sales are expected to begin immediately before a, quote, orderly wind down of the company's 350 stores in the United States.
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Forever 21 Goes Bankrupt & ChatGPT Can Have Anxiety?
Good morning and happy Tuesday. There's something we need to tell you, and it's that you should buy a Morning Brew Daily mug. Mug plug, mug plug, mug plug. Thank you, Toby. What he's trying to say is that we've got these beautiful, sturdy MBD mugs that can handle any type of coffee from a Keurig to a pour over even tea.
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Forever 21 Goes Bankrupt & ChatGPT Can Have Anxiety?
They're saying that they made mistakes, perhaps, but they're also blaming these two Chinese-linked marketplaces, Taimu and Xi'an, for kind of killing their business. They specifically identified this de minimis exemption, which is an exemption to the tariff code in the United States, which has allowed Taimu and Xi'an, these super bargain apps, to flourish. That allows you to ship in goods
Morning Brew Daily
Forever 21 Goes Bankrupt & ChatGPT Can Have Anxiety?
packages to the United States from China. If they're under $800 in value, then they are not subject to tariffs. And so in their bankruptcy filing, the execs at Forever 21 said that, you know, this re this exemption is the reason we are going out of business and urged policymakers to get rid of it, to help out other American apparel companies.
Morning Brew Daily
Forever 21 Goes Bankrupt & ChatGPT Can Have Anxiety?
And unfortunately, this is probably not the only store closure story we are going to talk about this year. Last year, more than 7,300 retail locations shuttered in the United States, which was a 57% increase from the year before last. This year is looking way worse. Approximately 15,000 store closures are expected, which is nearly double the 7,300 stores that closed in 2024.
Morning Brew Daily
Forever 21 Goes Bankrupt & ChatGPT Can Have Anxiety?
So certain chains, Party City, Bed Bath & Beyond, Joann's, now Forever 21, are in a lot of pain right now.
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Forever 21 Goes Bankrupt & ChatGPT Can Have Anxiety?
And they're the perfect addition to the mug collection in your cabinet, which between us is getting a little stale. Mug plug, mug plug, mug plug. I believe in Toby's. That translates to head to shop.morningbrew.com and look for the Morning Brew Daily collection where you'll find the mugs we use to start every single morning.
Morning Brew Daily
Forever 21 Goes Bankrupt & ChatGPT Can Have Anxiety?
Well, this is the American dream, isn't it? This woman, Alison Ellsworth, loved soda but didn't like the way it made her feel. So back in 2015, she tried making her own soda in her kitchen with a new recipe, apple cider vinegar, sparkling water, prebiotics, then started to sell the drink at farmer's markets. It caught on.
Morning Brew Daily
Forever 21 Goes Bankrupt & ChatGPT Can Have Anxiety?
Then she and her husband, three years later in 2018, went on Shark Tank, picked you on the show, got an investor, Rohan Oza. And that partnership led to this flourishing brand, which has inspired many copycats. And then fast forward a few years, 2025, you sell it to Pepsi for nearly $2 billion. I don't think you could chart it out any better.
Morning Brew Daily
Forever 21 Goes Bankrupt & ChatGPT Can Have Anxiety?
The next time you unload your personal life problems onto an AI chat bot, you might want to consider how all that trauma is impacting its feelings. Not a joke, a new study published by a group of international researchers found that when subjected to traumatic narratives, OpenAI's GPT-4 large language model reported much higher levels of anxiety.
Morning Brew Daily
Forever 21 Goes Bankrupt & ChatGPT Can Have Anxiety?
This is such a great way to treat yourself or give a gift to the Morning Brew Daily super fans in your life.
Morning Brew Daily
Forever 21 Goes Bankrupt & ChatGPT Can Have Anxiety?
And perhaps even more interesting, the chatbot's stress levels decrease significantly when given mindfulness exercises to complete. Just to be clear, a chatbot doesn't have feelings or emotions. It's a computer program. But it is a computer program that is trained on reams of data created by humans with all our warts and is designed to mimic how a human would respond to a particular input.
Morning Brew Daily
Forever 21 Goes Bankrupt & ChatGPT Can Have Anxiety?
So when the researchers fed it disturbing stories of things like war, crime, and car accidents, its anxiety score ripped higher than when it digested more benign content like the manual of a vacuum cleaner. The research has potentially major implications for the booming field of AI mental health care.
Morning Brew Daily
Forever 21 Goes Bankrupt & ChatGPT Can Have Anxiety?
Given a severe shortage of trained mental health professionals, people are increasingly turning to AI models like ChatGPT and Claude to work through their issues, and a number of startups have emerged pitching the AI equivalent of Dr. Melfi. We're only just beginning to learn how these AI therapists behave.
Morning Brew Daily
Forever 21 Goes Bankrupt & ChatGPT Can Have Anxiety?
Yeah. What's the, what are the main problems that the researchers identified with turning to AI chatbots for mental health advice, which so many people are doing now is that if they get stressed, if they get anxious, which they do as these researchers found, then it can lead to biased responses. So it can lead to
Morning Brew Daily
Forever 21 Goes Bankrupt & ChatGPT Can Have Anxiety?
snappy, emotional advice, whereas a human might recognize that they are feeling, a human therapist might recognize that they're feeling stressed or anxious and would self-regulate their responses in order to do their job, which is to provide an ear or advice to their client. And LLMs do not have that ability yet. So the researchers say because we know that they do,
Morning Brew Daily
Forever 21 Goes Bankrupt & ChatGPT Can Have Anxiety?
get stressed when they hear traumatic stories and that would lead to biased responses. We should inject mindfulness exercises into the prompts to begin with, which is a controversial thing to do because it has been used in the past to subvert security apparatuses.
Morning Brew Daily
Forever 21 Goes Bankrupt & ChatGPT Can Have Anxiety?
So that is what the researchers are saying is that we need to inject these prompts with mindfulness exercises to mitigate the biased responses that would come with higher levels of anxiety.
Morning Brew Daily
Forever 21 Goes Bankrupt & ChatGPT Can Have Anxiety?
Top scorers will receive a custom prize, a $200 Amex gift card, and a newsletter feature.
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Forever 21 Goes Bankrupt & ChatGPT Can Have Anxiety?
If you have the answer, go to www.morningbrew.com slash morning-market-trivia to test your stuff with the morning market trivia quiz. Who knows? You could end up on the leaderboard. Like I said, top scorers will receive prizes and a feature in the Morning Brew newsletter. I scored a 12 out of 15. I got 11 out of 15.
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Forever 21 Goes Bankrupt & ChatGPT Can Have Anxiety?
Head on over to www.morningbrew.com slash morning-market-trivia and see if you can beat our scorers and win some goodies.
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Forever 21 Goes Bankrupt & ChatGPT Can Have Anxiety?
Ah, classic case of trade-offs. Extra rest or delicious pancakes. What did you choose?
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Forever 21 Goes Bankrupt & ChatGPT Can Have Anxiety?
I hate having to choose. Same, which is why Sophos is such a great company. It doesn't make you choose between an elite defense or an expert offense. It keeps you protected while also having 500 plus experts standing by 24-7 to help you strike down threats.
Morning Brew Daily
Nvidia To Make AI Supercomputers in Texas & Goldman Sachs Cashes In for Q1
Well, the first thing to know about this is Coachella is not the only music festival that gets a majority of its tickets through these payment plans. Lollapalooza, Electric Daisy, Carnival, Rolling Loud all sell a majority of their tickets using some kind of payment plan system. And then to your question of whether these people are financially illiterate, I think the opposite. I think they're
Morning Brew Daily
Nvidia To Make AI Supercomputers in Texas & Goldman Sachs Cashes In for Q1
I don't know if that's a good thing for caviar, though, because the interesting thing about luxury goods like this is that they become less desirable as the price point goes down. I mean, Hermes handbag, right? If it's cheaper, then you're probably like, well, I don't know if I want it because it's more of a. Mass market thing. So it's very interesting study in pricing strategy.
Morning Brew Daily
Nvidia To Make AI Supercomputers in Texas & Goldman Sachs Cashes In for Q1
If you're a restaurant owner and you are now able to get caviar on the cheap, it's how you present that in your menu and what your price point is to, you know, sort of maximize, you know, you have a bountiful amount of caviar that maybe you don't use to. How do you deploy that in the most strategic way?
Morning Brew Daily
Nvidia To Make AI Supercomputers in Texas & Goldman Sachs Cashes In for Q1
It's a very Instagrammable food. In economics, revealed preference theory states that you should look at what people buy rather than what they say they want to buy to learn about human behavior. And we are seeing that play out crystal clear at movie theaters. Everyone complains about how Hollywood makes too many sequels and not enough originals.
Morning Brew Daily
Nvidia To Make AI Supercomputers in Texas & Goldman Sachs Cashes In for Q1
But if this year's box office is any indication, people don't want to watch the originals. Drop and The Amateur, two movies based on fresh ideas, flopped hard at the box office this weekend, bringing in $7.5 million and $15 million domestically, The Wall Street Journal reported. This severe underperformance follows miserable box office hauls recently.
Morning Brew Daily
Nvidia To Make AI Supercomputers in Texas & Goldman Sachs Cashes In for Q1
by other originals such as Mickey 17, Novocaine, Fly Me to the Moon, and Red One. Meanwhile, movies based on well-known IP are killing it. A Minecraft movie, for instance, brought in another $80 million at theaters this weekend, bringing its global total to $550 million. Toby, we say we don't want sequels or familiar stories, but turns out that's exactly what we want. Any follow-up?
Morning Brew Daily
Nvidia To Make AI Supercomputers in Texas & Goldman Sachs Cashes In for Q1
Finance experts, because back in college, I did learn a few things, and one of them was the time value of money. A dollar today is worth more than a dollar tomorrow. So if you can get an interest-free plan to keep money now instead of spending it now, that is savvy.
Morning Brew Daily
Nvidia To Make AI Supercomputers in Texas & Goldman Sachs Cashes In for Q1
You do what you want. But luckily this summer, I guess luckily, there are a lot of, or unluckily, There are a lot of sequels coming through the pipe. We have a new Superman movie. There's another Jurassic World movie. There's another Mission Impossible. And then in the family film arena, there's the live action remake of How to Train Your Dragon.
Morning Brew Daily
Nvidia To Make AI Supercomputers in Texas & Goldman Sachs Cashes In for Q1
There's the SpongeBob movie, another one, and a new Smurfs. So they're rolling out the sequels. I mean, they know that during the summer, people want to see these familiar blockbusters forever.
Morning Brew Daily
Nvidia To Make AI Supercomputers in Texas & Goldman Sachs Cashes In for Q1
Okay, let's sprint to the finish with some final headlines. The Trump administration and Harvard University have taken the gloves off in a high stakes battle over $9 billion in funding. Yesterday, Harvard President Alan Garber said the university refused to agree to a list of government demands to combat antisemitism on campus.
Morning Brew Daily
Nvidia To Make AI Supercomputers in Texas & Goldman Sachs Cashes In for Q1
saying that the list went far beyond its original purpose and amounted to direct government regulation of the, quote, intellectual conditions at Harvard, such as fundamentally changing its governance and admissions processes.
Morning Brew Daily
Nvidia To Make AI Supercomputers in Texas & Goldman Sachs Cashes In for Q1
No government, regardless of which party is in power, should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and what areas of study and inquiry they can pursue, he said. The Trump administration responded to this defiance hours later by saying it would freeze $2.2 billion in multi-year grants to Harvard
Morning Brew Daily
Nvidia To Make AI Supercomputers in Texas & Goldman Sachs Cashes In for Q1
It said earlier it was reviewing up to $9 billion in federal grants and contracts to Harvard. The school had played nice for weeks, until now setting up a major legal showdown.
Morning Brew Daily
Nvidia To Make AI Supercomputers in Texas & Goldman Sachs Cashes In for Q1
Yeah, I mean, Waymos are turning into community bulletin boards, and I think it is fun and cute and clever. Now, you just wonder, since it went so viral, if these cars are going to become, you know, one giant trash heap, which is possible. Waymo says that it endorses this for now.
Morning Brew Daily
Nvidia To Make AI Supercomputers in Texas & Goldman Sachs Cashes In for Q1
It says it's proud to be driving mobility both personally and professionally, but it's unclear how long they're going to be admitting this.
Morning Brew Daily
Nvidia To Make AI Supercomputers in Texas & Goldman Sachs Cashes In for Q1
I think it's compatibility. Having the same hobbies, interests, goals. You got to be on the same page.
Morning Brew Daily
Nvidia To Make AI Supercomputers in Texas & Goldman Sachs Cashes In for Q1
It's going to be great. And the WNBA, after a record viewing season last year, is just reloading with another major star. So they're super excited and good for them. Beckers has the potential to be a superstar. She already has been in college. She was the first college athlete to have her own Nike player edition shoe.
Morning Brew Daily
Nvidia To Make AI Supercomputers in Texas & Goldman Sachs Cashes In for Q1
She was the first college athlete to sign a name image likeness deal NIL deal with Gatorade. So she has a large presence and she will have a massive amount of marketing power as she goes to the pros. Let's wrap
Morning Brew Daily
Nvidia To Make AI Supercomputers in Texas & Goldman Sachs Cashes In for Q1
it up there thanks so much for starting your morning with us and have a wonderful Tuesday for any questions comments or feedback send an email to morningbrewdaily at morningbrew.com let's roll the credits Emily Milliron is our executive producer Raymond Liu is our producer our associate producers are Olivia Graham and Olivia Lake Garrett Peck is on audio hair and makeup is looking for love in a robo taxi Devin Emery is our president and our show is a production of Morning Brew great show Daniel let's run it back tomorrow
Morning Brew Daily
Nvidia To Make AI Supercomputers in Texas & Goldman Sachs Cashes In for Q1
Not only is it compatible with a nice cup of joe or a bowl of cereal, but it also elevates the entire experience.
Morning Brew Daily
Nvidia To Make AI Supercomputers in Texas & Goldman Sachs Cashes In for Q1
They even have an unsweetened version with zero grams of sugar.
Morning Brew Daily
Nvidia To Make AI Supercomputers in Texas & Goldman Sachs Cashes In for Q1
Gives a nice boost to a relationship.
Morning Brew Daily
Nvidia To Make AI Supercomputers in Texas & Goldman Sachs Cashes In for Q1
manufacturing and American manufacturing has certainly been a hot topic of discussion in the past few weeks as Trump launched this trade war in a bid to reshore manufacturing to the United States. His Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick was sort of the forefront of this push when he said that his ambition was an
Morning Brew Daily
Nvidia To Make AI Supercomputers in Texas & Goldman Sachs Cashes In for Q1
army of millions and millions of human beings screwing in little screws to make iPhones. That kind of thing is going to come to America. Critics kind of seized on that comment and said, that is not sort of what American industry should be doing now. That's not what I want to be doing now in that Cato Institute study that you cited.
Morning Brew Daily
Nvidia To Make AI Supercomputers in Texas & Goldman Sachs Cashes In for Q1
Many, the vast majority of Americans said America would be better off if more Americans worked in manufacturing. About 80 percent said that, but just over 20 percent said I would be better off if I worked in a factory. And that's the chasm that we have or this nostalgia that we have over this golden age of American manufacturing. Right now, far fewer Americans work in manufacturing.
Morning Brew Daily
Nvidia To Make AI Supercomputers in Texas & Goldman Sachs Cashes In for Q1
Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, Blue Origin's all-women space flight with Katy Perry made history, controversy, and memes.
Morning Brew Daily
Nvidia To Make AI Supercomputers in Texas & Goldman Sachs Cashes In for Q1
We do it pretty well what we do, but it's just a smaller share of the overall economic pie. But that nostalgia still holds.
Morning Brew Daily
Nvidia To Make AI Supercomputers in Texas & Goldman Sachs Cashes In for Q1
And even critics of Trump's tariff policies would say, you know, I think it's pretty good if we have certain manufacturing operations here, things for national security like chips, AI supercomputers. So they'll say, yeah, maybe we don't need to make iPhones here because that is a global trade that is mutually beneficial for both the United States and
Morning Brew Daily
Nvidia To Make AI Supercomputers in Texas & Goldman Sachs Cashes In for Q1
consumers and chinese producers uh and apple uh real large because it reduces their cost but certain industries we should reshore and i think nvidia is probably a good example of the types of industries that we'd want to do here they command higher wages but you're right the problem is there aren't enough workers here or there aren't enough skilled workers here
Morning Brew Daily
Nvidia To Make AI Supercomputers in Texas & Goldman Sachs Cashes In for Q1
to work in the current manufacturing jobs that are out there or those high value added in February 2025, there were 482,000 open jobs in manufacturing. So there are jobs. People are just not seeking them out. Deloitte, in an analysis from last year, said that there would be 1.9 million unfilled jobs in manufacturing by 2033.
Morning Brew Daily
Nvidia To Make AI Supercomputers in Texas & Goldman Sachs Cashes In for Q1
So if you're a manufacturer and you're looking at across the globe where you're going to set up your shop, If you're looking at the United States, you're saying, okay, well, maybe that labor pool doesn't exist. And that TSMC, this big Taiwan semiconductor company, has had problems setting up its Arizona factory because of that lack of skilled workers.
Morning Brew Daily
Nvidia To Make AI Supercomputers in Texas & Goldman Sachs Cashes In for Q1
All this stock market volatility may not have been easy on your stomach, but it's been the ride of a lifetime for Goldman Sachs. Equities traders at the Wall Street Bank posted their highest quarterly revenue on record in Q1.
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Nvidia To Make AI Supercomputers in Texas & Goldman Sachs Cashes In for Q1
As chaos grip markets over President Trump's stop and start tariff policies, equity trading revenue rose 27% from a year earlier to $4.2 billion in the first three months of the year. And remember, the quarter ended before Liberation Day on April 2nd, before one of the most volatile weeks in stock market history last week. So the good times for Goldman are likely rolling on.
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Nvidia To Make AI Supercomputers in Texas & Goldman Sachs Cashes In for Q1
Even though the market roller coaster is good for business, CEO David Solomon warned it wasn't so good for the economy.
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Nvidia To Make AI Supercomputers in Texas & Goldman Sachs Cashes In for Q1
He said this uncertainty around the path forward and fears over the potentially escalating effects of a trade war have created material risk to the US and global economy, he said, adding the prospect of a recession has increased with growing indications that economic activity is slowing down around the world.
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Nvidia To Make AI Supercomputers in Texas & Goldman Sachs Cashes In for Q1
Solomon said that he was hopeful that feedback from companies, investors and consumers would result in the White House changing course to an approach that would lead to more economic certainty and long term growth. Toby, it makes for an interesting dynamic for banks. It's the best of times, but also possibly the worst of times because they would be hit hard in a downturn.
Morning Brew Daily
Nvidia To Make AI Supercomputers in Texas & Goldman Sachs Cashes In for Q1
And, you know, Goldman is not the only bank that's seeing a huge equities boom. JP Morgan reported last week, 48% increase in stock trading revenue. Morgan Stanley up 45% year over year. and stock trading revenue. So it is providing a tailwind across this entire industry. Investment banking, which is when you underwrite deals and IPOs, is a different story.
Morning Brew Daily
Nvidia To Make AI Supercomputers in Texas & Goldman Sachs Cashes In for Q1
Goldman saw an 8% drop in the quarter there. It seems like deal flow has pretty much dried up or is on pause for now.
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Nvidia To Make AI Supercomputers in Texas & Goldman Sachs Cashes In for Q1
Yesterday morning, Katy Perry went up to space and back again before you logged on to your first work meeting. The pop star, alongside a star-studded all-female crew that included Gayle King and Lauren Sanchez, traveled to space aboard a Blue Origin rocket, becoming the first spaceflight of only women since 1963. The crew took off from Blue Origin's launch site in West Texas at 9.30 a.m.
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Nvidia To Make AI Supercomputers in Texas & Goldman Sachs Cashes In for Q1
Eastern, traveled above the Kármán Line, the internationally recognized boundary of space 62 miles above the Earth's surface, and returned just over 10 minutes later. They experienced about four minutes of weightlessness and a few moments of Katy Perry serenading them with a zero-G rendition of What a Wonderful World.
Morning Brew Daily
Nvidia To Make AI Supercomputers in Texas & Goldman Sachs Cashes In for Q1
Hundreds of thousands of people joined the live stream to watch the historic flight, and there were a few celebs at the launch site as well. Oprah was there to support her friend, Gayle King, and Jeff Bezos was there too, which is probably a good thing because Blue Origin is his private space company. And that's really what we want to talk about.
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Nvidia To Make AI Supercomputers in Texas & Goldman Sachs Cashes In for Q1
This was Blue Origin's 11th human flight since 2021, and it's built a reputation and received criticism for serving as a vehicle for celebrity space joyrides. Toby, Blue Origin is certainly god tier at creating buzz, but is there any substance behind this?
Morning Brew Daily
Nvidia To Make AI Supercomputers in Texas & Goldman Sachs Cashes In for Q1
Let's talk about the burgeoning space tourism industry. I don't know if it's burgeoning because it has gotten stops and starts and Virgin Galactic, which is a pioneer in this space,
Morning Brew Daily
Nvidia To Make AI Supercomputers in Texas & Goldman Sachs Cashes In for Q1
its stock price it went public in 2020 its stock price is down 99 its q for revenue was just over 400 000 and that missed estimates it's charging 250 000 to 450 000 per space flight uh blue origin did not disclose how you know its ticket prices or how many people paid it said that some people paid some people didn't i wonder if florence sanchez who is bezos's fiancee paid uh but this
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Nvidia To Make AI Supercomputers in Texas & Goldman Sachs Cashes In for Q1
Part of the space sector, I think, has generated a lot more buzz than actual dollars and cents. Meanwhile, Blue Origin has a freight business. You know, this is its passenger business. It has a freight business that is probably going to do a lot better and will be a lot more lucrative. It launched its first new Glenn its new Glenn rocket for the first time into orbit in January.
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Nvidia To Make AI Supercomputers in Texas & Goldman Sachs Cashes In for Q1
It's hoping to do that again a few months from now. And that's contracting with NASA to help it go to the moon and Mars. So space tourism, I think a tiny minnow in this overall space economy pie.
Morning Brew Daily
Nvidia To Make AI Supercomputers in Texas & Goldman Sachs Cashes In for Q1
Up next, we have Toby's Trends. Spring is here in New York, the weather's getting warmer, and we're starting to put some of those winter layers away, which means it's time to refresh your bed for the new season as well.
Morning Brew Daily
Nvidia To Make AI Supercomputers in Texas & Goldman Sachs Cashes In for Q1
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Morning Brew Daily
Nvidia To Make AI Supercomputers in Texas & Goldman Sachs Cashes In for Q1
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Nvidia To Make AI Supercomputers in Texas & Goldman Sachs Cashes In for Q1
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Morning Brew Daily
Nvidia To Make AI Supercomputers in Texas & Goldman Sachs Cashes In for Q1
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Morning Brew Daily
Tech Rout Wipes Away $1.1T & Another ‘DeepSeek’ Moment?
I will say one trend that I've been thinking about is the rise of takeaway food, or at least that's what they say in Britain, takeout here in the United States. 74% of all restaurant traffic came from off-premises customers in 2023. Before COVID, that was 61%. We've seen a rise in solo dining as well. It's increased by 29 percent in just the past two years.
Morning Brew Daily
Tech Rout Wipes Away $1.1T & Another ‘DeepSeek’ Moment?
So this ties into the broader perhaps trend of loneliness and isolation that that covid brought. We all spent a lot more time in our homes and it seems like we kind of like that and are taking our food to go more often. We're eating food by ourselves more often. And some would say that's probably not a good thing for our society, that everyone's spending a lot more time by ourselves.
Morning Brew Daily
Tech Rout Wipes Away $1.1T & Another ‘DeepSeek’ Moment?
One thing that people love doing that had not that has not changed since COVID stopped you from doing it is travel. I remember those days when we thought that the cruise industry would be dead. No one would ever go on a cruise anymore because it was this incubation area for viruses and other illness as well. The cruise industry has come back again. at a much higher clip than even before COVID.
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Tech Rout Wipes Away $1.1T & Another ‘DeepSeek’ Moment?
By 2023, cruise travel was up nearly 20% above pre-pandemic levels, and last year it grew by 34% over 2019 levels. So people still love going on cruises, actually more now than they do before COVID. Air travel is very similar. People were very scared to go on planes, but now we've had record day after record day TSA screening at airports.
Morning Brew Daily
Tech Rout Wipes Away $1.1T & Another ‘DeepSeek’ Moment?
Also, Absolutely horrible timing for sports fans because yesterday was the effective start of NFL free agency. It reminded you of how much X plays a role in the distribution dissemination of sports news. You have people like Adam Schefter and other NFL insiders ready to tweet all of these major, major moves about. Different players going to different teams.
Morning Brew Daily
Tech Rout Wipes Away $1.1T & Another ‘DeepSeek’ Moment?
Three of the top five queries on Google Trends for searches of Twitter down mentioned NFL free agency. So you had these sports reporters who are followed in the millions on Twitter going to blue sky, going to threads because they wanted to get this information out. People were craving this information. So absolutely horrible timing for Twitter to go down on a day of free agency like this.
Morning Brew Daily
Tech Rout Wipes Away $1.1T & Another ‘DeepSeek’ Moment?
Oh, you're taking the Invesco QQQ approach.
Morning Brew Daily
Tech Rout Wipes Away $1.1T & Another ‘DeepSeek’ Moment?
In M&A news, real estate listing platform and brokerage Redfin is getting bought by Rocket Companies for $1.75 billion.
Morning Brew Daily
Tech Rout Wipes Away $1.1T & Another ‘DeepSeek’ Moment?
It shows that Rocket, Dan Gilbert's Detroit behemoth that includes mortgage, real estate, and personal finance businesses, wants to push deeper into the property market in the hopes that Redfin's tech-fueled platform can help it boost mortgage originations, which have been slumping in this era of sky-high interest rates.
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Tech Rout Wipes Away $1.1T & Another ‘DeepSeek’ Moment?
Well, the Invesco QQQ ETF is a low fee, tax efficient, diversified way to access the future.
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Tech Rout Wipes Away $1.1T & Another ‘DeepSeek’ Moment?
Redfin stock shot up 67% on the news, but it's still languishing down 90% since a pandemic peak in 2021 when everyone was looking for their country escape.
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Tech Rout Wipes Away $1.1T & Another ‘DeepSeek’ Moment?
My worst fears were confirmed. I looked at this list of movies and DVDs that could be affected that were produced during those years. And yes, Entourage seasons one through four are on the list. So I got to go check and make sure that those DVDs are not rotted and they're in pristine condition.
Morning Brew Daily
Tech Rout Wipes Away $1.1T & Another ‘DeepSeek’ Moment?
Finally, a top comedy club in the UK says it's banning audience members with Botox because their tight faces don't react to jokes. The owner of Top Secret Comedy Club, which has hosted major comedians like Dave Chappelle, explained the move, saying, How do you even enforce something like this? The club said bouncers will be carrying out, quote, expression checks designed to detect Botox.
Morning Brew Daily
Tech Rout Wipes Away $1.1T & Another ‘DeepSeek’ Moment?
Now, all you have to do is train for 25 years and you'll match Invesco QQQ's longevity.
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Tech Rout Wipes Away $1.1T & Another ‘DeepSeek’ Moment?
Toby, before you say this is a joke, owner Mark Rothman said, we're dead serious about the ban. And if you're surprised, we need to see that.
Morning Brew Daily
Tech Rout Wipes Away $1.1T & Another ‘DeepSeek’ Moment?
That's what you get for bringing up your marathon unprompted. Again, with Invesco QQQ, you can rethink what's possible. Before investing, consider the fund's investment objectives, risks, charges, and expenses. Visit Invesco.com for a prospectus with this information. Read it carefully before investing. Full disclosure in podcast description.
Morning Brew Daily
Tech Rout Wipes Away $1.1T & Another ‘DeepSeek’ Moment?
Let's wrap it up there. Thanks so much for starting your morning with us and have a wonderful Tuesday. For any questions, comments, or feedback, send an email to morningbrewdaily at morningbrew.com. And if you're enjoying the show, share it with a friend, family member, or coworker. Toby, who should everyone listening share it with today?
Morning Brew Daily
Tech Rout Wipes Away $1.1T & Another ‘DeepSeek’ Moment?
Let's roll the credits. Emily Milliron is our executive producer. Raymond Liu is our producer. Olivia Graham and Olivia Lake are our associate producers. Yes, we got a new Olivia. Welcome to the fam. Uchenua Ogu is our technical director. Scoops Arderis is on audio. Hair and Makeup is laughing, I promise. Devin Emery is our chief content officer, and our show is a production of Morning Brew.
Morning Brew Daily
Tech Rout Wipes Away $1.1T & Another ‘DeepSeek’ Moment?
Cue the rains of Castamere, because yesterday the stock market held its own red wedding. A weeks-long decline in stocks turned downright vicious, with the Nasdaq plunging 4%, wiping out $1.1 trillion in value for its worst single trading session since 2022. The S&P 500 tumbled 2.7%. touching lows it hasn't seen since last September, and the Dow fell more than 2%.
Morning Brew Daily
Tech Rout Wipes Away $1.1T & Another ‘DeepSeek’ Moment?
The magnificent seven tech stocks, which account for an outsized share of the stock market, were dealt an outsized blow. Nvidia lost 5%, Alphabet and Meta dropped more than 4%, and Tesla dropped 15%, its worst day since 2020 and the biggest drop of any company in the S&P 500.
Morning Brew Daily
Tech Rout Wipes Away $1.1T & Another ‘DeepSeek’ Moment?
The steep sell-off came after the Trump team on Friday warned that their policies of tariffs and cutting government spending could require economic pain for long-term gain. Treasury Secretary Scott Besant previewed a, quote, detox period for the economy, and the president himself on Sunday did not rule out a recession, saying the economy was going through, quote, a period of transition.
Morning Brew Daily
Tech Rout Wipes Away $1.1T & Another ‘DeepSeek’ Moment?
Investors certainly placed their bets as though a downturn might come. Wall Street's preferred Fear gauge, the VIX, popped to its highest since December. Bitcoin fell below 80,000 and traders sought cover in bonds, sending treasury yields lower. Toby, it was a bloodbath out there.
Morning Brew Daily
Tech Rout Wipes Away $1.1T & Another ‘DeepSeek’ Moment?
Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, carnage on Wall Street as stocks plummeted to their worst day this year. Recession fears are real.
Morning Brew Daily
Tech Rout Wipes Away $1.1T & Another ‘DeepSeek’ Moment?
There are a lot of headlines warning of a recession or a slowdown, but there are some actual data points that we got after the market closed that sort of crystallized these fears. Delta Airlines got up on the mic to report its earnings, and they said they saw a pretty significant shift in sentiment in February. Consumer spending started to stall. They cut their profit guidance in half.
Morning Brew Daily
Tech Rout Wipes Away $1.1T & Another ‘DeepSeek’ Moment?
They also said that business travel has softened where there are places where people just aren't quite sure what's going to happen. Companies are pulling it back. That's chief executive of Delta, Ed Bastian. So they're starting to see this uncertainty make its way into actual balance sheets.
Morning Brew Daily
Tech Rout Wipes Away $1.1T & Another ‘DeepSeek’ Moment?
A number of analysts from banks, including Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, Baird, cut their stock price target on Tesla, citing all of those risks you mentioned. Elon Musk was asked on Fox yesterday how he's dealing with running his businesses while he's involved in all this stuff in Washington, D.C. He responded with great difficulty and then sort of paused for 30 seconds.
Morning Brew Daily
Tech Rout Wipes Away $1.1T & Another ‘DeepSeek’ Moment?
That kind of encapsulates what's going on over at Tesla. They need to get things back on track soon.
Morning Brew Daily
Tech Rout Wipes Away $1.1T & Another ‘DeepSeek’ Moment?
Five years ago, March 11th, 2020, is a day none of us will soon forget because it was when you realized, oh, this pandemic thing is really going to shut down the world, isn't it? On that day five years ago, the World Health Organization declared a worldwide pandemic. The NBA suspended its season after jazz center Rudy Gobert tested positive for the virus, leading to mass confusion in the arena.
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Tech Rout Wipes Away $1.1T & Another ‘DeepSeek’ Moment?
Neil, probably all of the above. Canadians may not have heard of Mark Carney, but people who have observed the global economy for the past decade or so certainly know him well. He's a very prominent figure on the global macroeconomic scale. seen having been the first person ever to be central bank chief of two different countries.
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Tech Rout Wipes Away $1.1T & Another ‘DeepSeek’ Moment?
And when he was the central bank leader of England, he was actually the first non-Brit to manage their central bank. So a little history over there. But he is stepping into this role really as a wartime leader. Carney is a proven manager of economic crises in Canada, staring down one of its biggest economic crises in decades.
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Tech Rout Wipes Away $1.1T & Another ‘DeepSeek’ Moment?
So right now he is prime minister. He's stepping in for Trudeau because he was elected by the Liberal political party, but he was not elected by the people of Canada. They're slated to have elections in October, but there is speculation that he will call elections before then to get a mandate for his government.
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Tech Rout Wipes Away $1.1T & Another ‘DeepSeek’ Moment?
So he could be extended for a couple more years or he could be the shortest serving prime minister in Canadian history.
Morning Brew Daily
Tech Rout Wipes Away $1.1T & Another ‘DeepSeek’ Moment?
First, First came the deep-seek earthquake, then the Manus aftershock. Last week, a Chinese startup released an autonomous AI agent called Manus, what it describes as the first general AI agent and, quote, the next paradigm of human-machine collaboration.
Morning Brew Daily
Tech Rout Wipes Away $1.1T & Another ‘DeepSeek’ Moment?
As an AI agent, Manus is part of a class of systems that go above and beyond a chatbot's capabilities by completing multi-step complex tasks on its own and produce tangible results, all without human intervention.
Morning Brew Daily
Tech Rout Wipes Away $1.1T & Another ‘DeepSeek’ Moment?
In a demo, Manas' chief scientist shows the technology completing three different tasks, sorting through resumes to find the top job candidate, Zillow surfing in New York City to help you find the right apartment, and performing a correlation analysis on various stocks.
Morning Brew Daily
Tech Rout Wipes Away $1.1T & Another ‘DeepSeek’ Moment?
And Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson posted a photo on Instagram sharing that they got COVID-19 while in Australia. Toby, that evening is absolutely seared into my memory. Hard to believe it's been five whole years.
Morning Brew Daily
Tech Rout Wipes Away $1.1T & Another ‘DeepSeek’ Moment?
For the second time in as many months, the AI sector went berserk trying to understand the implications of a potential breakthrough by a Chinese company. Remember, earlier this year, DeepSeek unveiled a model that allegedly rivals OpenAI's ChatGPT at a fraction of the cost, sending chip stocks tumbling and U.S. tech leaders into panic mode over their fragile dominance of the key sector.
Morning Brew Daily
Tech Rout Wipes Away $1.1T & Another ‘DeepSeek’ Moment?
In response to Manus, the reaction has been similarly impassioned and polarized. Some say this is the best thing since sliced AI bread. Others argue its capabilities are overblown. Toby, what are you hearing about Manus?
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Tech Rout Wipes Away $1.1T & Another ‘DeepSeek’ Moment?
On the other hand, there was a certainly high degree of hype from a few people who played around with it. The head of product at Hugging Face called Manus the most impressive AI tool I've ever tried. AI policy researcher Dean Ball of George Mason described Manus as the most sophisticated computer using AI. So there was a lot of praise from the developer community around its code. And, uh,
Morning Brew Daily
Tech Rout Wipes Away $1.1T & Another ‘DeepSeek’ Moment?
It is just another example of Chinese AI prowess at a time when the U.S. tech community is saying, hey, we have the lead, but really, you know, how big of a lead is this?
Morning Brew Daily
Tech Rout Wipes Away $1.1T & Another ‘DeepSeek’ Moment?
So one day as I was scrolling the web, I got hit with an ad for patio furniture. Dude, I live in a small New York City apartment, not relevant. So if that's happening to me, imagine the incorrect spaces your B2B marketing could be ending up. If you want to reach the right professionals, start with LinkedIn ads.
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Tech Rout Wipes Away $1.1T & Another ‘DeepSeek’ Moment?
LinkedIn has grown to a network of over 1 billion professionals and 130 million decision makers. And in this vast pool of potential, you can target your buyers by job title, industry, company role, skills, seniority, and more if you can't believe it. If you think you're wasting budget on the wrong audiences, stop that.
Morning Brew Daily
Tech Rout Wipes Away $1.1T & Another ‘DeepSeek’ Moment?
First and foremost, and start targeting the right people with LinkedIn ads instead. LinkedIn will even give you a $100 credit on your next campaign so you can take LinkedIn ads for a spin. Just go to LinkedIn.com slash MBD. That's LinkedIn.com slash MBD. Terms and conditions apply only on LinkedIn ads. We've talked about the cruise industry's growth over the past few years.
Morning Brew Daily
Tech Rout Wipes Away $1.1T & Another ‘DeepSeek’ Moment?
And after learning about Virgin Voyages, it's clear why they're so popular.
Morning Brew Daily
Tech Rout Wipes Away $1.1T & Another ‘DeepSeek’ Moment?
Have you seen their cabins? Some of them have a private terrace with a hand-woven hammock you can relax on while you enjoy the view of the sea. Plus, this year they're going to new places like Iceland, the British Isles, and San Juan. See what voyages you can embark on this year at virginvoyages.com or contact your travel advisor. That's virginvoyages.com.
Morning Brew Daily
Meta Trims its Workforce for AI? & Trump Stamps 25% Tariffs on Steel
Yeah, I guess my final point here is we're not really sure what the future holds for the penny because, as I said, Trump can't probably unilaterally do this. So he's going to have to get Speaker Mike Johnson on board and have someone pass a bill that will go through both chambers of Congress to end the penny. So we'll see what happens.
Morning Brew Daily
Meta Trims its Workforce for AI? & Trump Stamps 25% Tariffs on Steel
There clearly is more momentum than there has been in recent memory to get rid of the penny.
Morning Brew Daily
Meta Trims its Workforce for AI? & Trump Stamps 25% Tariffs on Steel
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Meta Trims its Workforce for AI? & Trump Stamps 25% Tariffs on Steel
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Meta Trims its Workforce for AI? & Trump Stamps 25% Tariffs on Steel
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Meta Trims its Workforce for AI? & Trump Stamps 25% Tariffs on Steel
Let's start with the food. You get access to more than 20 eateries on board with menus curated by Michelin star chefs.
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Meta Trims its Workforce for AI? & Trump Stamps 25% Tariffs on Steel
It's all super luxe. Virgin Voyages also hits so many interesting destinations. On top of exotic ports throughout the Caribbean, they're launching themed summer cruises to the British Isles, Iceland, North America, and the Mediterranean.
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Meta Trims its Workforce for AI? & Trump Stamps 25% Tariffs on Steel
Book now at virginvoyages.com or contact your travel advisor.
Morning Brew Daily
Meta Trims its Workforce for AI? & Trump Stamps 25% Tariffs on Steel
No, so the folks at Apple Insider did a test. They tried this one morning where they put an Apple Watch Ultra on their wrist and another Apple Watch on their ankle and took measurements and saw whether these were consistent. And no, they were not consistent. Blood oxygenation readings varied by 5% or read 98% on the wrist measurements. 93% on the ankle heart rate varied as well.
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Meta Trims its Workforce for AI? & Trump Stamps 25% Tariffs on Steel
The wrist sensor showed 75 beats per minute. The ankle watch read 63 and warned twice about a low heart rate. So there were some certain inconsistencies. They didn't make the Apple watch for the ankle.
Morning Brew Daily
Meta Trims its Workforce for AI? & Trump Stamps 25% Tariffs on Steel
And there are good and interesting reasons that I've never thought about why, why an Apple watch would not work on someone's wrist, but maybe putting it on your ankle is not going to work for anything except maybe tracking steps.
Morning Brew Daily
Meta Trims its Workforce for AI? & Trump Stamps 25% Tariffs on Steel
Okay, fine. Okay, well, I will tell you. One of them is if you have tattoos. It doesn't work if you have tattoos. Another person was a mom walking her kids in a stroller. She would put her hand on the stroller, and it would not count the steps that she was doing because tattoos, Apparently, your arm has to swing, and that is how Apple tracks your steps.
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Meta Trims its Workforce for AI? & Trump Stamps 25% Tariffs on Steel
Apple behind Google. I mean, Apple Maps behind Google Maps. It's what it's been like for the past decade.
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Meta Trims its Workforce for AI? & Trump Stamps 25% Tariffs on Steel
So there are a number of use cases where people might not have the ability to wear an Apple Watch. Another person just had a very small wrist, and the band didn't work, so she put it just on her ankle. So there are reasons, and maybe there is a market here for wearables that don't go on your wrist. That's what this kind of sparked for me.
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Meta Trims its Workforce for AI? & Trump Stamps 25% Tariffs on Steel
Elon Musk replied to that Sam Altman ex post saying Swindler. And really, this is like Kendrick Lamar versus Drake, but for people whose favorite book is Sapiens. And the reason that this throws a wrench into Sam Altman's plans to make turn AI and open AI into a for profit private enterprise is that.
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Meta Trims its Workforce for AI? & Trump Stamps 25% Tariffs on Steel
When they break off from the nonprofit, which is what they want to do, they need to compensate the nonprofit arm of OpenAI. And they probably don't want to pay that much. But the nonprofit has to accept the bid that is accurate market value. So if there is an external actor saying, oh, we'll pay $97 billion for the nonprofit, then the nonprofit can't say, OpenAI, your lowball bid, we'll take that.
Morning Brew Daily
Meta Trims its Workforce for AI? & Trump Stamps 25% Tariffs on Steel
They have to. to assess all bids, compare them against each other. So what this does is set a starting price that OpenAI has to come and pay, probably pay a lot more than they wanted to for this nonprofit, and it sets up a bidding war.
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Meta Trims its Workforce for AI? & Trump Stamps 25% Tariffs on Steel
President Trump signed an executive order that instructed the DOJ to stop enforcing a half-century-old anti-bribery law. The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, introduced in 1977, bans American companies from bribing foreign officials to win business. But Trump said while that sounds good on paper, in practice, it's a disaster.
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Meta Trims its Workforce for AI? & Trump Stamps 25% Tariffs on Steel
He said the anti-bribery law puts American companies at a disadvantage when competing for contracts overseas and that any firm that wants to do business internationally, even legitimately, gets investigated under the rule. Anti-corruption critics say the executive order defangs what had been a key tool officials used to crack down on companies doing sketchy things.
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Meta Trims its Workforce for AI? & Trump Stamps 25% Tariffs on Steel
Well, you shouldn't have to bust out your personalized stationery to pay your suppliers abroad. With Wise Business, you can save money, time, and stress on making payments and getting paid internationally.
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Meta Trims its Workforce for AI? & Trump Stamps 25% Tariffs on Steel
Last year, the SEC and DOJ filed 26 enforcement actions under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
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Meta Trims its Workforce for AI? & Trump Stamps 25% Tariffs on Steel
Maybe Roger Goodell knows what he's talking about because we want the Super Bowl to happen on Saturday. He insisted that Sunday would lead to, or always leads to, better viewership. And this is an absolutely monster number, 126 million. Go back to 2021. 95 million people watched the Super Bowl. That came in under 100 million. Now we're back to 126, the most ever number.
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Meta Trims its Workforce for AI? & Trump Stamps 25% Tariffs on Steel
The NFL is monoculture and I can't say that word. And I think most people tuned in, you're right, not for the football itself, but this was packed with celebrities both in commercials and in the stands themselves. Swift was there, Kendrick Lamar, Samuel Jackson, Anne Hathaway.
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Meta Trims its Workforce for AI? & Trump Stamps 25% Tariffs on Steel
Perfect for growing businesses that don't have time to waste. Why do you buy Irish butter, Neil? higher butterfat content compared to the standard American butter, obviously.
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Meta Trims its Workforce for AI? & Trump Stamps 25% Tariffs on Steel
I mean, the list goes on, and the Super Bowl does have a very long half-life after the fact because these videos go viral and the chatter continues to stay. So we're on Tuesday, and a lot of Super Bowl storylines, whether it's Kendrick Lamar's jeans or Anne Hathaway dancing, has still continued to this day.
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Meta Trims its Workforce for AI? & Trump Stamps 25% Tariffs on Steel
Don't even think about busking on the streets of Bangalore without a permit, even if you're a pretty famous ginger from West Yorkshire. Over the weekend, Ed Sheeran was stopped by police while holding an impromptu street concert in Bangalore, a city of 13 million people in India.
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Meta Trims its Workforce for AI? & Trump Stamps 25% Tariffs on Steel
A viral video showed a police officer approaching Sheeran while he was singing The Shape of You and unplugs his microphone, which led to jeering from the crowd who was singing along. The police deputy commissioner defended their party foul, claiming Sheeran didn't have a permit and that their job was to keep this busy street moving.
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Meta Trims its Workforce for AI? & Trump Stamps 25% Tariffs on Steel
Lawmakers joined in, saying even global stars must follow local rules. No permit, no performance. Toby, this would never have happened to Benson Boone.
Morning Brew Daily
Meta Trims its Workforce for AI? & Trump Stamps 25% Tariffs on Steel
He claims they got a permit. He said, we did all the paperwork. I was supposed to be out there. Everyone knew. And he was putting on this, you know, strumming his guitar in his little elvish style. But apparently the officials cracked down. Maybe we'll see Ed Sheeran's Super Bowl performer one day. One day. Let's wrap it up there.
Morning Brew Daily
Meta Trims its Workforce for AI? & Trump Stamps 25% Tariffs on Steel
Thanks so much for starting your morning with us and have a wonderful Tuesday. For any questions, comments, or feedback, send an email to morningbrewdailyatmorningbrew.com. And if you're enjoying the show, share it with a pal, family member, or coworker. Friends don't let friends be uninformed about the cost of the penny. Toby, who should everyone listening share the pod with today?
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Meta Trims its Workforce for AI? & Trump Stamps 25% Tariffs on Steel
Let's roll the credits. Milliron is our executive producer. Raymond Liu is our producer. Olivia Graham is our associate producer. Uchenna Waogu is our technical director. Scoop Stardaris is on audio. Hair and Makeup is free on Valentine's Day if anyone needs a hot date. Devin Emery is our chief content officer and our show is a production of Morning Brew.
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Meta Trims its Workforce for AI? & Trump Stamps 25% Tariffs on Steel
There is a big HR strategy shift underway in Silicon Valley. It's happened over the past few years, and that is more cuts consistently. I mean, if we... Talked about this in 2017 or 2018. It would have been almost unheard of. These companies were growing very fast. They grew even faster during the pandemic. They grew their workforces substantially. And now they're doing more periodic work.
Morning Brew Daily
Meta Trims its Workforce for AI? & Trump Stamps 25% Tariffs on Steel
cuts and it's not just meta it's amazon too it's microsoft it's salesforce there have been a lot of layoff announcements recently and it has to do with yeah it's these performance-based cuts it's not to reduce headcount they're going to rehire the same amount of people just in other areas And let's hear from Zuck to explain why this massive strategy change.
Morning Brew Daily
Meta Trims its Workforce for AI? & Trump Stamps 25% Tariffs on Steel
Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, hold on to your piggy banks because the penny could be going extinct.
Morning Brew Daily
Meta Trims its Workforce for AI? & Trump Stamps 25% Tariffs on Steel
And at a town hall meeting, he says, I think this makes the company better. I'm not going to be apologetic for it. And I think most people here want to work with people who are going to be better fits. It seems like Silicon Valley CEOs want to shed their reputation of being
Morning Brew Daily
Meta Trims its Workforce for AI? & Trump Stamps 25% Tariffs on Steel
employing people like Big Head, who I don't know if anyone's seen Silicon Valley, but Big Head is this character who is a part of this massive tech company who consistently gets promoted despite not doing much work. And he's just this small cog in a larger system. And I think that we've seen over the past few years, tech companies are trying to shed that reputation.
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Meta Trims its Workforce for AI? & Trump Stamps 25% Tariffs on Steel
And this is part of the broader, what we'll call a white collar recession, where high wage professional services workers are facing a much tougher job market than pretty much anyone else right now. If you go to the jobs report for January, we just had last Friday, professional business services information sectors, which had been booming, shrunk by around 9000 positions in January.
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Meta Trims its Workforce for AI? & Trump Stamps 25% Tariffs on Steel
Many job cuts have been announced in this area in particular, once you're laid off from these type of positions, finding people that are willing to hire you is much tougher. And we haven't even mentioned the two letters that are hanging over all of this, which is AI.
Morning Brew Daily
Meta Trims its Workforce for AI? & Trump Stamps 25% Tariffs on Steel
And a lot of the positions that Meta and Salesforce and Amazon and Microsoft, all these companies that have done these cuts, are going to be hiring for is machine learning engineers and AI. So it's not necessarily a one-to-one match of AI is doing your job, but someone who is working with AI, is going to be doing your job.
Morning Brew Daily
Meta Trims its Workforce for AI? & Trump Stamps 25% Tariffs on Steel
Now, just for some big picture numbers, it sounds like there's been or it feels like there's been a lot of job cuts this January. But if you go back to last January, there was a lot more. The figure for this January is down 4%. 40% from last January. Last January, there were tons of cuts, especially in the video game industry, which was the most job cuts in January for 15 years.
Morning Brew Daily
Meta Trims its Workforce for AI? & Trump Stamps 25% Tariffs on Steel
If you live in the US, open up Google Maps and scroll to the big body of water west of Florida, you'll notice a big change. The Gulf of Mexico has been officially renamed Gulf of America. The company said that it made the update in accordance with a new executive order from President Trump citing longstanding practice of changing labels based on guidance from countries.
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Meta Trims its Workforce for AI? & Trump Stamps 25% Tariffs on Steel
The trade war entered a new theater yesterday, one with a steel curtain. President Trump announced 25% tariffs on all steel and aluminum imports to the U.S. beginning March 4th, in a move that intends to protect and grow American production, but at the same time could disrupt trade with close allies.
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Meta Trims its Workforce for AI? & Trump Stamps 25% Tariffs on Steel
When it comes to making steel and sending it around the world, China is the world leader and no one else is close. Chinese mills crank out more steel and aluminum each year than the rest of the world combined. But the U.S. gets its steel from a group of closer friends. Canada is the number one supplier, followed by Brazil, Mexico, South Korea and Vietnam.
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Meta Trims its Workforce for AI? & Trump Stamps 25% Tariffs on Steel
And those are the countries most likely to be affected by 25 percent tariffs. But as Trump's tariff plans go, that he's targeting metals isn't surprising. Steel, which is a relatively small industry in the U.S., but a politically sensitive one because of its home base in Pennsylvania, has been a pawn in trade wars for years.
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Meta Trims its Workforce for AI? & Trump Stamps 25% Tariffs on Steel
Trump imposed tariffs on steel and aluminum his first go-round in office, and Biden mostly maintained those trade barriers when he was in the White House. Anyway, this caused a major market reaction. Stocks of American steel and aluminum producers like U.S. Steel, Cleveland Cliffs and Alcoa surged while European producers fell. Toby, another big shakeup to trade weeks into the new administration.
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Meta Trims its Workforce for AI? & Trump Stamps 25% Tariffs on Steel
And just to take a step back, the goal of tariffs is to make the steel and aluminum coming in from abroad much more expensive so that it makes the American production, American steel, more competitive. But there does appear to be just broad sectoral challenges and headwinds facing the steel industry of things like higher labor costs, higher energy costs.
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Meta Trims its Workforce for AI? & Trump Stamps 25% Tariffs on Steel
And the reason we import so much aluminum from Canada specifically is they have really cheap hydropower that power these mills and they send it to the United States. The United States is the largest consumer market. We consume the aluminum and then we send the scrap metal abroad. We are the largest exporter of scrap metal. So that's kind of how the trade system
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Meta Trims its Workforce for AI? & Trump Stamps 25% Tariffs on Steel
has worked in a lower tariff environment. Now that tariffs are going up 25%, it could shake things up. But the US steel industry is still facing an uphill battle for various broader, for broader challenges. And unlike other tariffs that Trump has announced, These are not easily negotiated away, right?
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Meta Trims its Workforce for AI? & Trump Stamps 25% Tariffs on Steel
So Trump announced tariffs, 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico, all imports, and then he went back on that because Canada and Mexico made concessions. But it's not clear whether there are any concessions that these countries can make to have these tariffs go away. This is more... economic basis, not based on immigration or drugs coming across the border.
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Meta Trims its Workforce for AI? & Trump Stamps 25% Tariffs on Steel
It's very clearly that Chinese steel is very cheap and depressing prices all around the world, which is making American steel less competitive.
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Meta Trims its Workforce for AI? & Trump Stamps 25% Tariffs on Steel
So at least for the next four years, people in the US will see Gulf of America, people in Mexico will see Gulf of Mexico, and people everywhere else will see both names. Toby, what did you think when you saw this change?
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Meta Trims its Workforce for AI? & Trump Stamps 25% Tariffs on Steel
And we'll probably see some retaliation because whenever you put a trade war, it takes two to trade war. If you put tariffs on other countries, they are going to slap tariffs on you. And Europe has said that they're going to come out with tariffs on high-profile American goods like Tennessee, Kentucky bourbon, and Harley Davidson motorcycles and Levi's jeans.
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Meta Trims its Workforce for AI? & Trump Stamps 25% Tariffs on Steel
Guess the coin flip was on President Trump's mind because right before the Super Bowl, he dropped a copper-plated bombshell. Trump said that he had ordered the Treasury Secretary, Scott Besant, to stop producing new pennies. Why no new pennies? Government efficiency, according to Trump.
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Meta Trims its Workforce for AI? & Trump Stamps 25% Tariffs on Steel
He said, let's rip the waste out of our great nation's budget, even if it's a penny at a time, adding that pennies literally cost us more than two cents. He is absolutely right about that. The U.S. Mint said last year that it cost three point six nine cents to produce and distribute a single penny far more than the coins face value of one cent.
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Meta Trims its Workforce for AI? & Trump Stamps 25% Tariffs on Steel
All told, the mint lost $85 million last year, producing 3 billion pennies, which made up more than half of all the coins the mint made last year. Why are we making so many pennies is an excellent question that no one has a good answer to. And Trump would seem to have broad support in his attack against the penny, which has no clear role in today's economy.
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Meta Trims its Workforce for AI? & Trump Stamps 25% Tariffs on Steel
The only problem is it's not clear whether he has the authority to unilaterally stop penny production. Congress, not the Treasury nor Fed for that matter, oversees the production of coins and operations at the
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Meta Trims its Workforce for AI? & Trump Stamps 25% Tariffs on Steel
Sure, please. Here's the argument for keeping the penny, and you can tell me if you are convinced. Well, the advocates for the penny are few, but they say that it would increase demand for nickels. And guess what? Nickels cost almost 14 cents to produce, which is way more than their face value of five cents. They're way more expensive to produce than nickels. And then
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Meta Trims its Workforce for AI? & Trump Stamps 25% Tariffs on Steel
as you just mentioned, we're going to be paying more for things. So Arizona iced tea is priced at 99 cents. Well, we're all going to be paying a dollar for that now. Is that not going to spark inflation? So are you convinced?
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Meta Trims its Workforce for AI? & Trump Stamps 25% Tariffs on Steel
Well, even if you're paying by credit card, they won't round up or round down.
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Whether you've got a long day of meetings or you're packing for a long-haul flight, Motion Wool is made to move with you. It's also designed to keep its shape over time so you can keep arriving in style.
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Well, I was going to say, I wish they were cool when I had them in eighth grade. And when I think about a braces comeback, that usually refers to something you respond to someone when they make fun of you for having braces, which I think happened to a lot of us back in the day. It's a little baffling, but as you mentioned, you can see it as a way to personally express yourself.
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Recently, I did do Invisalign, and in this article about braces, they quoted a bunch of people saying Invisalign was boring, and I'm like, yeah, that's kind of the point. You want to keep this thing a little discreet because it's very visible, but the tides have turned, the youth have spoken, and I guess braces are cool again.
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Seriously, drop the form 1040. There is a better way. TaxAct has a team of credentialed U.S.-based tax experts whose whole job is to know the tax code inside and out so you don't have to.
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And Shopify, Toby, has always been the Toby with an I, not you, has always been kind of pushing the technological bounds of workplace productivity. In early 2023, he kind of rocked the HR world. He sent this memo directing employees to stop holding an absurd amount of meetings. The company literally went into people's calendars, deleted 12,000 events, freeing up 95,000 hours.
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And now he goes with this very, you know, buzzy or interesting... boundary pushing AI memo as well, saying you can't get more people on your team if AI can do that. And you have to prove that AI can't do that. And you just wonder how big the overall head counts of tech companies is going to be now. We saw huge hiring during the pandemic. It
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CEOs Sound Off Against Tariffs & The NCAA Case Upending NIL
Then there were major layoffs, and now it's kind of stagnated. Shopify had a total headcount of 8,100 at the end of December from 8,300 a year earlier. And you wonder with this new directive whether that will ever grow again. Klarna, as you mentioned, is another AI-forward fintech company that wants to decrease its headcount from 4,000 to 2,000.
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You just wonder what this means for the overall picture for tech jobs. Another company thought, hey, what if we did Game of Thrones, but make it real? Colossal Biosciences announced yesterday that they had created three direwolves, which haven't existed on Earth in more than 12,000 years.
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If Colossal sounds familiar, that's because it's the $10 billion company trying to resurrect the woolly mammoth and de-extinct a bunch of other lost species like the dodo and the Tasmanian tiger. But it surprised the world yesterday with the introduction of the direwolves, two brothers named Romulus and Remus, and their sister named, of course, Khaleesi. How did they do it?
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A team took gray wolf cells, edited the genes to focus on specific direwolf traits, like heavy muscles, inserted those cells into domestic dogs, then finally implanted those into different dogs that served as surrogates. Voila, you get a direwolf. Toby, are you impressed?
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CEOs Sound Off Against Tariffs & The NCAA Case Upending NIL
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CEOs Sound Off Against Tariffs & The NCAA Case Upending NIL
I have to make an admission. I didn't know dire wolves were real. That is a fair admission. Right? Yeah. I thought they were straight up Game of Thrones characters.
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CEOs Sound Off Against Tariffs & The NCAA Case Upending NIL
And Neil, I have to ask, was it worth it for the views? Certainly not. And this is not the only instance recently of U.S. influencers taking off. countries where they visited by just doing things that are pissing off the government. I mean, one US influencer, this was back in March, took a baby wombat from their mom. And this was an Australian. It sparked a huge amount of backlash.
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They were reviewing her visa. And she was like, all right, I'm out of here, the Australian prime minister. So there's a lot that people would do for clicks. Many of those are not acceptable to the people where you're doing that. All right, that is our show. Thanks so much for starting your morning with us and have a wonderful Tuesday.
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CEOs Sound Off Against Tariffs & The NCAA Case Upending NIL
Just file before April 15th at TaxAct.com and let TaxAct experts be your tax sidekicks so you can keep being the hero.
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CEOs Sound Off Against Tariffs & The NCAA Case Upending NIL
For any questions, comments, or feedback, send an email to morningbrewdaily at morningbrew.com. Let's roll the credits. And just a heads up, we've got a few changes in store. Don't be shaken. Emily Milliron is our executive producer. Raymond Liu is our producer. Our associate producers are Olivia Graham and Olivia Lake. Uchenna Waogu is technical director emeritus.
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CEOs Sound Off Against Tariffs & The NCAA Case Upending NIL
I know, he's leaving the show to work here on a daytime schedule at the brew. We'll never forget you, Uchenna. Garrett Peck is on audio. Hera Makeup is skeptical of the new braces trend. Devin Emery is our president. Congrats on the promotion. And our show is a production of Morning Brew.
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CEOs Sound Off Against Tariffs & The NCAA Case Upending NIL
It was pretty wild. I mean, the S&P 500 was down 3.4. Sorry, it was down 4.7 percent for the day, officially entering bear market territory. Then this tweet comes along and everyone's like, well, where is this information from? So there's a wild goose chase on Twitter to find that. But it had. really severe market implications.
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CEOs Sound Off Against Tariffs & The NCAA Case Upending NIL
And then the S&P 500 went from down 4.7% to up 3.4% for the day before finding a sense of calm and futures look good this morning. They're all in the green. All three indexes are up over 1%. Japan's Nikkei index was up 6% for the day. So it seems like markets are finding some measure of calm after two and a half days of truly insane volatility and a big sell off.
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CEOs Sound Off Against Tariffs & The NCAA Case Upending NIL
Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, Jamie Dimon leads a chorus of billionaires slamming tariffs.
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CEOs Sound Off Against Tariffs & The NCAA Case Upending NIL
shows how thirsty investors are for Trump to roll back these tariffs. It perhaps is a preview of what could happen should he rescind the tariffs. Yesterday, we got even more conflicting news. Investors really want to know. They're flying blind right now. They really want to know whether these tariffs are permanent or they're part of a negotiation.
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And Trump was asked this, whether they are permanent or up for a negotiation, because that would provide a lot of clarity for investors. And he replied, they can both be true. And this was Also evidenced yesterday by conflicting reports by two of his trade advisors or his economic officials.
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Secretary of Treasury Scott Pesent said that following a very constructive phone discussion with the government of Japan, I'm starting to negotiate with Japan. Eleven minutes later, Peter Navarro, the key architect of this of this trade plan for Trump, said wrote a Financial Times op ed where he said this is not a negotiation for the US.
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This is a national emergency trade by trade deficits caused by a rigged system. So you have one economic official saying we're starting negotiations the next 11 minutes later, saying we are not negotiating. And that has left traders very confused, which could provide an overhang for the markets for days to come until we get a little more clarity.
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CEOs Sound Off Against Tariffs & The NCAA Case Upending NIL
Meanwhile, the market turmoil since last Wednesday has lost Wall Street titans a lot of money, and anyone who's watched their portfolio tank, you know that you start to get a little cranky. A number of the biggest names in finance have spoken out against Trump's tariffs in the last few days, warning of severe economic headwinds to come. and even possibly a recession.
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One of the more surprising critics is Jamie Dimon, the leader of the biggest bank in the country, JP Morgan, and the most tenured and influential of all Wall Street CEOs. In his annual letter to shareholders yesterday morning, Dimon said that there were some legitimate reasons for the tariffs. However, he added in their current implementation, they will drive up inflation and slow down growth.
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And you better wrap this up soon because, quote, the quicker this issue is resolved, the better, because some of the negative effects increase cumulatively over time and would be hard to reverse. That is a reversal from Diamond's position as recently as January when he told people worried about tariffs to, quote, get over it.
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So the Nintendo of America president was making the media rounds yesterday discussing the impact of the trade war on the Switch 2, the company's much anticipated new console whose pre-sales have been delayed due to tariffs. And that's interesting, but what you really need to know is this guy's name is Doug Bowser. Yes, Bowser, like Mario's arch nemesis.
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CEOs Sound Off Against Tariffs & The NCAA Case Upending NIL
Diamond's not the only one, not the only banking baron sounding the alarm. Bill Ackman, a Trump supporter, warned of economic nuclear winter over tariffs. And the influential but typically private investor, Stanley Drunkenmiller, issued a rare statement on X saying that he doesn't support tariffs over 10%. Toby, the billionaire dam has broken.
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And another one of those influencers was someone we talked about last week, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink. He got up at the Economic Club of New York and said, he didn't talk about the tariffs specifically, but he said, most CEOs I've talked to would say, we are probably in a recession right now.
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This comes after his annual letter last week where he said we are in one of the more uncertain economic environments that he's ever seen. So he's joining the chorus along with Bill Ackman. And another name to know that spoke out was Ken Langone. He's the co-founder of Home Depot, longtime Republican donor. He said, I don't understand the gosh darn formula. He didn't say gosh darn.
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He said something else similar. I believe he's been poorly advised by his advisors about this trade situation. and the formula they're applying. So Ken Langone, Larry Fink, Bill Ackman, Jamie Dimon have all kind of said recently in the past few days that we need to get this thing wrapped up because it's causing a ton of uncertainty and could lead to a recession.
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What if I told you that Florida beating Houston last night in the men's national championship game was not the most important thing to happen in college sports yesterday?
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Perhaps the more significant development happened in a courtroom in California where a judge heard the final hearing and a settlement that will rip up the NCAA's amateurism model as we know it and allow schools to directly pay players for the first time. Experts say it's the biggest structural change in the entire history of collegiate athletics ever.
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CEOs Sound Off Against Tariffs & The NCAA Case Upending NIL
and arguably one of the most significant legal milestones in sports history, not just college. The settlement stems from several massive multibillion-dollar lawsuits filed against the NCAA over player compensation, which the organization has worked for over a year to resolve.
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The judge still needs to approve it, and she declined to yesterday, telling lawyers to make some small tweaks and get back to her in a week. But when she does, as expected, the landscape of college sports will never be the same again.
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Among the sweeping changes, schools would be able to start sharing revenue with student athletes, team sizes would be governed by roster limits instead of scholarships, and name, image, and likeness deals, NIL, would be overseen by a third-party clearinghouse that ensures they are fair value. Toby, there's two major parts to this settlement, one looking back and one looking forward.
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CEOs Sound Off Against Tariffs & The NCAA Case Upending NIL
The Nintendo executive and the video game villain have no connection, but it could be a sign of normative determinism, the theory that people tend to gravitate toward work that fits their names.
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Yeah, so schools will have, for now, a $20.5 million salary cap to spend on players, and it applies to those big four power conferences, plus the Pac-12, and other schools can opt in. And the question is, will this increase or decrease schools And as always, with NCAA changes, it appears like this is a rich get richer situation.
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CEOs Sound Off Against Tariffs & The NCAA Case Upending NIL
Alabama, Ohio State, all these companies make a ton or all these schools. They are basically companies. They make so much money in their athletic departments because of these powerhouse programs.
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CEOs Sound Off Against Tariffs & The NCAA Case Upending NIL
football programs and secondarily basketball so they will have more money to marshal to pay players and also while nil is not going away it's moving to a third party clearinghouse situation managed by deloitte they will probably have more resources at their disposal to broker nil deals so players will be able to get some of that revenue sharing and nil deals so it does seem like the power conferences will put even more distance with the rest of the pack
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That's right. Since it's both a private and a nonprofit corporation, Jobs Ohio is uniquely positioned to give companies very hands-on support with complete confidentiality.
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It helps that Ohio has the third largest manufacturing workforce in the U.S. and the cost of living is 5.8% lower than the national average.
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Theory is known for creating collections with exceptional fit, innovative fabrics, and enduring styles. Now they're doing it again with MotionWool.
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Pretty fascinating insight into business strategy here. So when Papa John's rolled out that stuffed crust pizza in 1995, they actually did so with an ad from a person named Donald Trump. They dominoes saw that happening. They said, ah, that's a gimmick. You know, I don't think this is going to be a long term trend. It's going to fizzle out.
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But stuffed crust has turned out to be a huge money maker when Pizza Hut launched it. It generated $300 million in sales in its first year. Papa John's came along in 2020. That boosted sales by nearly 30% in the quarter that it launched.
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Domino's is looking at stuff across and saying, this is the only gap we have in the menu between us and our competitors at a time when sales are stagnating because people are pulling back on spending and looking for more value. They said, OK, maybe this is the time we need to actually dive in.
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All right, let's sprint to the finish with some final headlines. A shocker in aisle five, Kroger CEO Rodney McMullin abruptly stepped down yesterday following a board investigation of his personal conduct.
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The country's largest supermarket chain by sales said that McMullin's conduct was not related to its financial performance or operations, but it was, quote, inconsistent with the company's business ethics policy. McMullen had been at Kroger for more than four decades, beginning as a stock clerk at a Lexington, Kentucky location before working his way up to CEO in 2014.
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The surprise leadership shakeup adds more turmoil for Kroger, which is still nursing a failed acquisition of smaller rival Albertsons.
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We're in a total arms race right now where these companies are raising so much money. I don't know about the rest of the startup world, but as you mentioned, if you're an AI company making a top-line model, I mean, VCs are just writing you a blank check, essentially. OpenAI is still the leader in the field. They are raising money right now at a $300 billion valuation from folks like SoftBank.
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Hyper fixating on daily market moves is so 2020. Have you heard of Invesco QQQ? It's an easy way to access NASDAQ 100 companies. So no more ticker fixation. QQQ is a ticker to remember. Now you can put your screen time to better use.
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But Anthropic thinks that it's taking a more safety-focused approach, you know, that competitive advantage might help it weasel in, you know, past OpenAI and these partnerships with Amazon, which has invested tons of, many billions of dollars, including a recent $4 billion investment, will help it surge past its rivals.
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Really a disaster, and it recalls the 2018, the Super Bowl, which I wasn't watching on Hulu, but it ended early in some markets before the game even ended. That was 2018. I think you can get away with a streaming company having some technical glitches then, but now, you know, as streaming has...
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almost overtaken linear TV and how people consume television, it is a bit baffling that companies have not had their IT ducks in order. We saw this with Netflix a couple of times most recently with the Tyson-Paul fight having many, many glitches. But it seems like streaming may not yet be ready for prime time, even though it's been around for a decade now.
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Let's wrap it up there. Thanks so much for starting your morning with us and have a wonderful Tuesday. For any questions, comments, or feedback, send an email to morningbrewdailyatmorningbrew.com. And if you're enjoying the show, share it with a friend, family member, or coworker. Toby, who should everyone listening share it with today?
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Okay, let's roll the credits. Emily Milliron is our executive producer. Raymond Lute is our producer. Olivia Graham is our associate producer. Uchenawa Ogu is our technical director. Garrett Peck is on audio, hair, and makeup. Totally thought Domino's already had stuffed crust pizza. Devin Emery is our chief content officer, and our show is a production of Morning Brew.
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The great North American trade war has begun. Effective today, President Trump has slapped heavy tariffs on the U.S. 's three largest trading partners, 25% tariffs on most goods from Canada and Mexico, and an additional 10% on China, doubling the rate to 20% and affecting a total of $1.5 trillion in annual imports.
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Trump has accused these countries of not doing enough to stop the flow of migrants and fentanyl into the United States and is taxing their exports as punishment. The impact of these tariffs will be massive, dwarfing all of the tariffs Trump applied during his first term and raising the average U.S. tariff rate to their highest levels since the 1940s. And the view from Wall Street was not good.
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Investors clearly showed they viewed this move as reckless for the economy. After Trump confirmed yesterday afternoon that tariffs on Canada and Mexico would go ahead, stocks tanked. with the S&P posting its worst day of the year, down nearly 2%, and Nvidia pledging 9%. Canada and China quickly responded overnight with retaliatory tariffs of their own.
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China will place additional tariffs of up to 15% on U.S. agricultural products, including chicken and soybeans, while Canada will impose immediate 25% tariffs on more than $20 billion of U.S. imports, with $86 billion more to come in three weeks. Toby, turns out Trump was serious about tariffs and the business world is scrambling.
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Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, tariffs on Mexico, Canada, and China have gone into effect, sending shockwaves through global trade.
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And it's worth noting just how dramatic the shakeup is to place tariffs on Canada and Mexico, which we've had a free trade partnership with going back to NAFTA in the 90s. Borders had virtually evaporated because transportation costs were so low. There was no taxes to send your goods across borders. So these three countries had started to trade a ton with each other. You had the United States,
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making things that they do well, say like Florida orange juice or beef in the Midwest. We send that to Canada and Mexico. Meanwhile, in Quebec, they have really cheap hydropower, so they send that to Vermont, New York, and New Hampshire. In Mexico, they make avocados that are bought by Chipotle, and a lot of us
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So this architecture had formed through free trade where each country did what they do best and then traded with each other because there were no taxes on imports. Now that those are going up to 25%, it sends everybody scrambling to change their supply chains.
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And so we'll see how this all plays out on Wall Street today. Yesterday was a really bad day on the stock market as investors showed that they think that this new tariff regime will lead to slower economic growth, less business investment overall, less employment. Everything's just going to contract. And you saw that in this Atlanta Federal Reserve GDP tracker.
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Now, this thing keeps a running tally of how much it expects GDP to grow. grow or shrink in the current quarter. It's very volatile. It goes up and down. But yesterday, it showed a pretty remarkable reading.
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If you watched the Oscars Sunday night, you saw Adrian Brody give a really long speech after winning Best Actor for his role in The Brutalist. You may not have known you were also watching history. Clocking in at 5 minutes and 40 seconds, it was the longest acceptance speech in Oscars history, topping the previous record, Greer Garson's set, in 1943 by 10 whole seconds.
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Take Rheinmetall, for example. This is a German company that makes military equipment. It's climbed more than 80% in 2025. That makes it the best performer in the stocks Europe 600 index. Meanwhile, if you go to the United States, what's the best performer in the S&P 500? It's CVS, which is up 3%. Forty six percent. So these companies are in an absolute tear.
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And that's because Europe is doing this huge push to rearm in the face of America pulling back. You saw that in stark relief yesterday. Donald Trump ordered a pause on all U.S. military aid to Ukraine yesterday, said we're not going to do any of that until Zelensky and other Ukrainian leaders do. say that they want to have peace.
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Of course, they're probably not going to do that because they don't want to cede so much territory to Russia. And then you had the EU come out also this morning saying that we're going to unveil a plan that requires $841 billion more in spending. Where is that $840 billion going? It's going to defense companies. And that's why you're seeing these stocks hit record highs.
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Moving on, more of the chips powering your smartphones and AI chatbots are going to come with a Made in the USA tag. Yesterday, in an announcement alongside President Trump, the world's top chipmaker, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, or TSMC, said it will invest $100 billion over the next four years to build chip production plants in the United States.
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When it was clear Brody was going well into overtime, the orchestra tried to play him off, Brody dismissed them, saying, I will wrap up, turn the music off, I've done this before, and promise to be brief, which turned out not to be the case. Toby, this probably disqualifies him from being tapped for any future best man speeches.
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That comes on top of the $65 billion the company had already committed to building out facilities in Arizona. Bringing more chip production onto U.S. soil has been a top priority for American leaders on both sides of the aisle who say their use for military applications and other key products is a national security concern. So why is TSMC pledging all this money now?
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The threat of tariffs has a lot to do with it. Trump has floated steep tariffs on semiconductors coming from Taiwan, TSMC's home country, which could devastate its economy that is dependent on chip exports Trump has repeatedly claimed that Taiwan stole chip making dominance from the United States. So this U.S. investment promise could be a way to placate the president and avoid tariffs.
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Toby, there's been a distinct pattern of corporate giants lining up one by one to announce major investments in the United States under the new administration.
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It's curious to see the different strategies applied by the two recent administrations because both of them wanted more chip production happening here in the United States because they cited it as very important for national security. The pandemic put that into stark relief when there was that huge chip shortage. The car, you know, automakers couldn't get enough chips to make cars.
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And there was, you know, snarled supply chains all over the globe. The Biden administration went with the carrot. They put out the Chips Act, which dangles $52 billion in grants and loans to chip companies to come to the United States and build factories. That led to a lot of investment, including from TSMC, which got a $6.6 billion grant.
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Trump is going more with he's ditching the carrots, going more with the stick by threatening tariffs on on semiconductors. Twenty five percent. You know, those haven't really come to pass. But just the threat of the stick has led TSMC, at least, you know, for one, come to invest more in the United States.
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I got 3432, which put me at number 14 on the leaderboard last time I checked.
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Well, they can find out when they take the quiz. Head over to morningbrew.com slash morning-market-trivia to put your trading knowledge to the test and see how you stack up. It takes only a few minutes to complete, but be mindful of the time because speed contributes to your overall score.
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And it's equipped with a timer that monitors your progress and your pressure to help you brush at just the right intensity.
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Still brushing the analog way? Get 15% off your Quip Ultra at getquip.com slash brew. And subscribe for auto-shipping of BrushPod refill heads to earn exclusive perks. That's G-E-T-Q-U-I-P dot com slash brew. Now we need to talk about a letter. No, it's not the thank you notes you rush through after your wedding.
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It's the annual letter to shareholders penned by BlackRock CEO Larry Fink and released yesterday. This letter is read even more closely in investing circles than Warren Buffett's yearly missive because BlackRock is the largest asset manager in the world.
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It has large stakes in hundreds of public companies, and Fink has caused tectonic shifts on Wall Street with his statements on topics like ESG and sustainability in the past. In essence, as BlackRock goes, so goes the finance world. So where is the finance world going now? into private investments, which was the main theme of Fink's letter this year.
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Fink said he wants regular Americans to have more access to private investments such as real estate, infrastructure, private loans that are currently only available to institutional investors such as pension firms and insurance companies. In his call to democratize private investing, Fink wrote,
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assets that will define the future data centers, ports, power grids, the world's fastest growing private companies aren't available to most investors. They're in private markets locked behind high walls with gates that open only for the wealthiest or largest market participants.
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Fink aims to throw open those gates and let us please start feasting on private investments that are currently blocked off. Toby, I am curious, though, who do you think might benefit from that? I think I have an idea.
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Right. He said, you may assume that I'm talking my book. And he's like, yeah, you're kind of right. At the same time, the entire finance world is going in this direction. So BlackRock is now going to compete against KKR, Apollo, these big private equity firms that are just buying up ports and real estate and infrastructure and data centers all around the world.
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BlackRock just bought a couple dozen ports from around the world. It's in the process of buying those two ports at the Panama Canal from a Hong Kong firm. So This is the direction the finance world is going in. And right now, people like you and me, Toby, and people listening have no access to buying private investments. And even buying your home is really impossible.
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So how are you going to invest in a real estate asset class? That is where the finance world is going. And that's why Fink said, In the future, you won't, you know, the 60-40 stock and bond portfolio that compromises most, you know, 401ks will instead shift to a 50-30-20 approach, 50 stocks, 30 bonds, 20% private assets. And he projects that those funds with that scenario will outperform stocks.
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Psych. We are never leaving in the morning. We ride at dawn. Okay, now a word from our sponsor, Tax Act. This is 100% real. Toby, how are your taxes coming along this year? Taxes? Neil, I am a mess.
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the typical 401k by 14.5% over a 40-year period. Obviously, BlackRock is going to sell those funds. So that is where he thinks this finance world is going. And usually people listen to him.
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One political topic that he did mention very briefly was that protectionism is back, and he alluded to all of the uncertainty in the economy. He said, I hear it from nearly every client, nearly every leader, nearly every person I talk to. They're more anxious about the economy than at any time in recent memory. But he also did this assurance.
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He said, we have lived through moments like this before, and somehow in the long run, we figure things out. So a final note of optimism from Larry Fink. Now let's sprint to the finish with some final headlines.
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Insane. Definitely shades of GameStop and AMC in 2021 with this IPO. The question now is, can it sustain it? And history shows probably not. So there are two dozen stocks that ended their initial sessions after their IPO up more than 300%. And they've been losers in the long run. Shares of the average company in that basket are down 85% from their IPO price. So
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accidentally commit tax fraud. Take a deep breath, Toby. Tax Act is literally designed for people just like you. They simplify the entire process, helping you find every deduction and credit you deserve with their deduction maximizer.
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when the reddit hordes kind of move on to the next shiny thing and they get bored with newsmax they get bored with gamestop and they see something else then we'll see what happens to newsmax because you're right it is loss making but it has sort of held its own as a cable news channel it is firmly number four behind fox news msnbc and cnn and it turned its uh founder ruddy chris ruddy into a billionaire so he's got that going for him
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Major bummer. By next NFL season, we probably won't know in advance whether Taylor Swift will attend a Chiefs game. That's because the FAA has introduced a system that allows private jet owners to request their registration information, such as name and address, be kept private.
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The change, which is part of the FAA Reauthorization Act of 2024, could deal a potentially fatal blow to the cottage industry of private jet trackers who had kept us all informed about where Musk, Zuckerberg, Bezos, Swift, and Kim Kardashian were flying via publicly available data from the FAA.
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That received pushback from social media barons like Zuck and Musk, who blocked those flight tracking accounts on their platforms, and Swift even sent a cease and desist letter to the most prolific P.J. Tracker, Jack Sweeney, citing safety concerns. Toby, a big blow to those of us who want to speculate on football coaching moves.
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You underestimate the people, Toby. They're going to find a way. Trust me.
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That is where Tax Act's expert assist comes in. They have a whole team of credentialed US-based tax bros ready to answer all of your questions. So they're like my own tax therapist. Sure, without the couch. Plus, every business return comes with their 100% accuracy guarantee, so you can file confidently.
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Someone posted on X about this logo that it looks like every letter was designed by a different person. And once you look at this thing and you have that in the back of your mind, you cannot think about anything else. You see it everywhere. I'm sure there are a lot of people, uh,
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who are feeling a little bit smug about this change because they, uh, criticized H I don't even know what to call this thing anymore. HBO max max for ditching the HBO branding and going with max. And now that it's going a little slightly back towards, uh, the HBO feel. And if you're keeping track at home, uh,
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what all the colors of the of the streaming services brands are we have amazon prime video paramount plus disney plus in blue apple tv plus and now max are this monochrome branding and obviously netflix is red i think i'm taking a victory lap by the way because i
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Keeping a sourdough starter alive is a passion project requiring blood, sweat, tears, mental fortitude, and intense focus over a long period of time. Or you could just get this machine. Sourdough Sidekick is a new countertop appliance that feeds your sourdough starter for you, priming it for the exact moment you want to start baking your loaf.
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The joint project from GE Appliance and the legendary King Arthur Baking Company is available to back on Indiegogo for $129. But if you want this thing, you'll have to wait. Delivery isn't estimated until January 2026, so you'll have to keep your starter alive by yourself until then. Toby, are you buying this or are you too much of a traditionalist?
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Okay, let's wrap it up there. Thanks so much for starting your morning with us and have a wonderful Tuesday. Stay vigilant out there today. Remember the date. For any questions, comments, or feedback, send an email to morningbrewdaily at morningbrew.com. Let's roll the credits. Emily Milliron is our executive producer. Raymond Liu is our producer.
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Olivia Graham and Olivia Lake are our associate producers. Uchenoba Ogu is our technical director. Scoops Dardaris is on audio. Hair and makeup, you were the star of the show today. Devin Emery is our chief content officer, and our show is a production of Morning Brew.
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I'm feeling calmer already. That is great. Just head to taxact.com and file before April 15th.
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When you think about how much marketing collateral that the fashion industry needs to produce on a daily, weekly, yearly basis is almost unfathomable. So you can see why brands like H&M or other fashion companies want to reduce costs or find ways to streamline their process so that they don't have to pay as much to produce all this marketing collateral.
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Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, your McLevin driver's license isn't going to cut it at airports anymore. What you should know about the real ID deadline that's coming up fast.
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And one of them, there's this opportunity afforded by generative AI to create these digital twins. It's been happening in the auto industry for a very long time for marketing, and it's creeping into the fashion industry as well. H&M has certainly started a conversation with this announcement, and that's kind of what they want to do.
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Jorgen Andersen, who is the chief creative officer of H&M, said we saw this as a way as a big player in the industry to lead a conversation that takes the model, the agency and the best interest of the fashion industry into consideration. You can debate the second part of that sentence, but what they have done is certainly start a conversation.
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Yeah, they quoted one model as saying, she's like me without the jet lag, talking about her digital twin. They quoted another model saying, finally a way for me to be in New York and Tokyo on the same day. And the implications of that are kind of massive.
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You know, you wonder whether these top end models will get more work and squeeze the bottom end of the industry because they can be in New York and Tokyo on the same day in a fashion shoot in Tokyo or on a runway in New York. at the same time. So you only need to hire these people twice, essentially.
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So it's kind of mind boggling to think about what will happen to these, to the hierarchy of models. And also of course, what will happen to everyone working on photo shoots? That is the main concern about AI replacing people's jobs is that you have all these stylists, photographers, lighting assistants that currently work on photo shoots.
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The big pushback to H and M's announcement is that this will replace their jobs.
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You all know that tomorrow President Trump is expected to announce sweeping tariffs on countries around the world that have higher trade barriers than the U.S. Those countries are likely to respond with tariffs of their own, escalating this simmering conflict into an all-out global trade war.
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caught in the crossfire perhaps more than any other sector are american farmers u.s farmers help feed the world exporting an estimated 170 billion dollars worth of agricultural products this fiscal year on the flip side that makes their pork fruits veggies and soybeans prime targets for other countries aiming to strike back against u.s tariffs we've already seen this play out with the first round of tariffs last month
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After the Trump administration raised tariffs on Chinese imports, China retaliated by putting a 15 percent tariff on U.S. chicken, wheat, corn and cotton. And Canada slapped 25 percent tariffs on processed foods such as wine, sausages and baked goods. Given that Canada, China and Mexico are the three biggest foreign buyers of American farm goods.
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The agricultural industry is at risk of losing market share in those countries due to tariffs. The president has said that domestic demand will make up for those losses in exports, telling farmers they'll benefit by making more product to be sold inside the United States. Still, there is a great deal of apprehension out on the plains.
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In a Purdue University study, over half of farmers said that trade policy was their most important issue over the next five years.
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Well, last time in 2018, Trump put tariffs on China. China put tariffs back on corn, soybean, hogs, and sorghum from the United States. The United States stepped in with aid to farms. They sent direct payments totaling $28 billion to help smooth that over, as you mentioned, preventing a financial catastrophe hitting farms because they saw these foreign markets collapse. dry up.
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It looks like a similar thing could happen this time around. Again, we don't know exactly what tariffs are coming from the U.S. tomorrow, and we don't know what the retaliation would be. But Agricultural Secretary Brooke Rollins said that the administration is probably going to provide financial support for farmers if they see their markets dry up overseas.
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So that would probably be a lot more than $28 billion because that was just a trade war with China back in 2018. This is going to be a trade war with the whole world, including Canada and Mexico, which are two of the top three foreign markets for U.S. farmers. So we'll have to see how the details play out. But the U.S. farmers are certainly in the center of this trade war.
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It's finally happening. And just this morning, I checked and it turns out I am one of those one in five travelers that are flying through U.S. airports without a real ID. So I guess I need to get on that. The good news is that you can use your passport instead. That will work if you do need to fly after May 7th and you don't have your real ID.
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But it just shows that New York was one of those states. that issued uh not fake ids but not real ids alongside real ids and somehow i ended up with a non-real id so yes i would encourage you to look at your driver's license because uh this may 7th date is approaching and it's been an absolutely long time coming which i think led to this scramble at DMVs over the past few weeks.
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Yeah, we absolutely loved beginning our mornings with you, but we want to meet you all where you're at, which is the afternoon hours. You'll still get the same great energy and news and jokes that you're used to in the morning, but now we'll be bringing it to you at 7 p.m. instead of 7 a.m.
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This was initially part of a law from 2005, and the goal was to increase security around IDs. It was pushed back three times during the pandemic, and now I guess finally it is coming. And yeah, you see DMVs all around the country, kind of expanding hours. New York said it was opening DMVs on Saturdays, which it hadn't before, in order to get more appointments in.
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That's right. Since it's both a private and a nonprofit corporation, Jobs Ohio is uniquely positioned to give companies very hands-on support with complete confidentiality.
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It helps that Ohio has the third largest manufacturing workforce in the U.S. and the cost of living is 5.8% lower than the national average.
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Neil, what's one way you rely on tech in your everyday life? I got a lot of health tracking apps running constantly to let me know how the body's holding up.
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The Quip Ultra is a smart sonic electric toothbrush that's packed full of some pretty cool tech you'll want to use daily.
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Obviously, this story was a bombshell, but it is just a continuation of a pretty big transformation The Atlantic has undergone over the last few years. Coming out of the pandemic, traffic started taking a nosedive as people just ventured out into the real world. Lorene Powell Jobs, who is The Atlantic's owner, was ordering company leadership to basically
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figure it out, dig the company out of a hole. And part of that turnaround strategy was raising subscription prices by 50%, making it harder for readers to, you know, read stories without paying, which sounds counterintuitive, but they also made the switch from day-to-day news coverage to diving much deeper into stories. Couldn't be us. We are day-to-day.
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for life, but they were kind of leaning into these more deeply reported stories. So they saw the revenue grow 10% in 2023, reached $100 million. They also signed this really great distribution deal with Apple News+.
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And in 2023, Chili's actually brought back its I want my baby back, baby back, baby back ribs commercial. So clearly they are leading into this nostalgia vibe, which is super in right now. And I do tell you what, Neil, I actually do feel God in this Chili's tonight. Now a word from our sponsor, Sophos. Businesses are usually told to pick one, strong cybersecurity or simple cybersecurity.
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So all of a sudden, all these factors came together, and obviously the story and the headline was a huge part of it, but they kind of set themselves up for success with the groundwork they laid over the previous months.
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Yeah, this is absolutely a show that is meeting the moment where it's at right now. I mean, look at all the laws that are on the books right now. in relation to children in social media. Last year, Australia banned children under 16 from social media. Denmark is also looking to ban smartphones in schools. France has already implemented a similar law in their country.
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Trump Drops 25% Tariffs on Cars & 'Family Dollar' Sold for $1B
So this is clearly kind of the topic du jour of the moment when it comes to kids and smartphones. And I will say, too, Britain in general tends to love...
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Trump Drops 25% Tariffs on Cars & 'Family Dollar' Sold for $1B
Taking it there, you know how to think from TV shows because remember in 2024 there was this show called mr Bates versus the post office which talked left a lot of real poster workers Very angry who were wrongly convicted of theft and that actually led to a law to exonerate them So we are seeing this pipeline of television show comes out people in the UK react and then something happens in real world and it looks like we're seeing that pattern repeated with adolescents and
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By the way, it's kind of working out just fine for the NCAA right now because the first weekend of the men's tournament, most watched since 1993. The first round of the women's tournament, second most watched ever behind Kaitlin Clark's season from last year. So clearly people are still tuning in.
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Everyone thinks that the beauty of March Madness lies in unknown players who become these tournament legends, unknown schools who make these big runs, but also seeing major schools match up against each other in regularity. really good matchups is also very entertaining and very compelling, you know, just based on these viewership figures. Do we really need to see, you know, St.
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Peter's getting blown out a few rounds later? Is that better than seeing some of the best teams in the country going up? That's maybe a pessimistic take, but it is a take that I think is reflected in the viewership that we saw.
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I don't blame the players either. I mean, a lot of them are not going to make it to the NBA, so get the NIL deal. Start your career with some money. A lot of coaches are saying this. We understand why you are making these jumps, but you're also not seeing a lot of major conference schools dropping down players anymore.
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They're more willing to ride the bench at a high major because they're getting an NIL deal rather than go in search of more playing time. So The whole landscape is shifted. I think this tournament was finally a culmination of a lot of factors that have been kind of brewing over the last few years. Well, you finally made it to the best time of year if you are specifically Neil Andrew Fryman.
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Opening day for the MLB. Technically, the season kicked off in Japan last week, but the first pitches on U.S. soil are being thrown today, and some of those pitches are being thrown in new, much smaller ballparks.
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Two teams, the A's and the Rays, are caught in MLB purgatory, forced to spend the 2025 season in minor league facilities as they wait for major resolutions on a pair of real estate issues. For the Athletics, their temporary homelessness comes after trying for 20 years to build a new stadium in the Bay Area.
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They couldn't get it done, and now they're shacking up in Sacramento's AAA Stadium for the foreseeable future as they wait for their new digs to be constructed in Las Vegas by 2028. The Tampa Bay Rays, on the other hand, were forced into their situation after Hurricane Milton tore the roof off their typical home, Tropicana Field. They will be taking their talents from St.
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Pete up I-275 to the New York Yankees spring training facility in Tampa. But their situation is actually much worse than the A's because the Rays don't have a shiny billion-dollar stadium in the works to look forward to.
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So while you're watching Shohei Otani and Juan Soto mash home runs this year, keep an eye out for these majorly downsized and intimate arenas that the A's and A's are currently calling home. Neil, you are my baseball guy. Am I wrong in thinking that these smaller venues might lead to better atmosphere for teams that honestly had trouble filling bigger stadiums?
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Trump Drops 25% Tariffs on Cars & 'Family Dollar' Sold for $1B
I'm actually going to push back on that last part of the metaphor, Neil. I think the conductor of this security symphony is actually Sophos Central. It's a place where you can manage all of your alerts, settings, and tools, over 300 of them, while staying connected and in sync. One platform, one dashboard.
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Trump Drops 25% Tariffs on Cars & 'Family Dollar' Sold for $1B
Any other storylines you're looking at this year? I know we had a few major rule changes over the past few years. There was the pitch clock that went a long ways towards shortening games. They made the bases bigger a few years ago. They recently banned defensive shifts. Are there any rule changes on the book that you have your eye on?
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Trump Drops 25% Tariffs on Cars & 'Family Dollar' Sold for $1B
I'm so in. That sounds delicious. A little chocolate syrup drizzled on top.
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Trump Drops 25% Tariffs on Cars & 'Family Dollar' Sold for $1B
absolutely buying that one all right in toronto they are rolling out cotton candy fries i'm out immediately out cotton candy is a no-go for me give me a next one all right and finally this is going to be close to our home at yankee stadium helmet tiramisu it's tiramisu a giant version in a baseball helmet it looks so good i've had a healing on tiramisu over recent years i used to think it was kind of gross the texture grossed me out but this looks delicious i love tiramisu now and it might actually bring me out to a yankees game
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Trump Drops 25% Tariffs on Cars & 'Family Dollar' Sold for $1B
Great show today, Neil. Let's run it back tomorrow.
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Trump Drops 25% Tariffs on Cars & 'Family Dollar' Sold for $1B
Sophos.com, elite defense, expert offense, working in beautiful harmony. That's S-O-P-H-O-S.com. Hope you're either making plans to move to a walkable city or are ready to learn how to fix a transmission because it's not going to be cheap to buy a new car in the coming months.
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Trump Drops 25% Tariffs on Cars & 'Family Dollar' Sold for $1B
Yesterday, President Trump announced that he's slapping a 25% tariff on all imported cars and auto parts, betting that Americans are willing to stomach higher sticker prices today for the promise of the domestic auto market roaring back to life tomorrow. Speaking from the Oval Office yesterday, Trump said the move is meant to supercharge U.S.
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Trump Drops 25% Tariffs on Cars & 'Family Dollar' Sold for $1B
auto manufacturing and deliver, quote, tremendous growth and revenue for the U.S. The pitch is simple. If you build in the U.S., you dodge the tariffs. Import, you gotta pay up. Here is where we'll add the necessary disclaimer that, yes, he could change his mind and roll these back, but Trump did make it clear yesterday that these tariffs are, quote, permanent no matter what.
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Trump Drops 25% Tariffs on Cars & 'Family Dollar' Sold for $1B
Still, if you're finding it hard to take him at his word, that's understandable. The big three automakers in the U.S., GM, Ford, and Stellantis, were previously granted a one-month exemption for vehicles that comply with the USMCA trade deal, a grace period that has now expired. The move will hit a big chunk of the U.S. auto market, about 4%.
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Trump Drops 25% Tariffs on Cars & 'Family Dollar' Sold for $1B
45% of all light vehicles sold here are imports, including 3.6 million built in Mexico and Canada, and another 3.7 million shipped in from Japan, Korea, and the EU. As to be expected, auto stocks slipped about 5% in after-hours trading, as Wall Street digested the reality of more expensive cars and potentially disrupted supply chains. Neil, these are set to go into effect next week on April 3rd.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Drops 25% Tariffs on Cars & 'Family Dollar' Sold for $1B
Should we all buy a bike?
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Drops 25% Tariffs on Cars & 'Family Dollar' Sold for $1B
Right. You're correct in the fact that the auto industry is global, and it's almost been designed like that. Certain countries specialize in different parts for different types of cars, and it has been built on this assumption that there would be little to no tariffs.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Drops 25% Tariffs on Cars & 'Family Dollar' Sold for $1B
So that is why we say this is a big supply chain disruption coming, because it just undermines what has been the global norm over the last few decades, which Companies are going to be the most affected like this. You look at companies like Volvo, Mazda, Volkswagen. These have the lowest percentage of parts assembled in the U.S. Then you look at companies like Rivian, Tesla, Ford.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Drops 25% Tariffs on Cars & 'Family Dollar' Sold for $1B
Those are at the top end of domestic manufacturers who source and build most of their cars inside the United States. So you'll kind of see these auto company stocks even out over the coming days as the market digests which companies are better positioned better prepared to withstand this tariff rents that's been thrown into their supply chains.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Drops 25% Tariffs on Cars & 'Family Dollar' Sold for $1B
Then Dollar Tree is offloading Family Dollar for $1 billion. It's Thursday, March 27th. Let's ride. Let's ride.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Drops 25% Tariffs on Cars & 'Family Dollar' Sold for $1B
And then finally, just to zoom out, we've said, look at that April 2nd date. That's the day the administration says they will unveil these reciprocal tariffs on a much wider range of imports. Those April 2nd tariffs, though, have been kind of being soft-launched as not being as bad as most expect. Yesterday, Trump said the announcement would be, quote, conservative.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Drops 25% Tariffs on Cars & 'Family Dollar' Sold for $1B
So it seems like the White House is kind of trying to downplay what might happen on that early April date. Sometimes $1 plus $1 doesn't equal $2. Sometimes it equals negative $8 billion, actually, which is a result of the ill-fated tie-up of Dollar Tree and Family Dollar that is now officially coming to an end.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Drops 25% Tariffs on Cars & 'Family Dollar' Sold for $1B
Dollar Tree is closing the chapter on its acquisition of its once-rival chain, offloading the brand for $1 billion to a pair of private equity firms. Dollar Tree originally bought Family Dollar for $9 billion, looking to add scale in order to take on bigger rivals. But also... to keep it out of the hands of another rival chain, Dollar General, a decade ago.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Drops 25% Tariffs on Cars & 'Family Dollar' Sold for $1B
The plan seemed sound enough at the time, especially since dollar stores were all the rage coming out of the financial crisis in 2008 as Americans were looking to pinch their pennies. Plus, Dollar Tree mainly targets suburban middle-income shoppers, while Family Dollar is more entrenched in urban communities, so the synergies were supposed to synergize. But messy stores, rising prices,
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Drops 25% Tariffs on Cars & 'Family Dollar' Sold for $1B
and over-expansion ended up hampering the acquisition, leaving Family Dollar vulnerable to competition from mega chains like Walmart and Amazon. Neil, I tell you one thing. If I had a dollar for how many times I just said dollar in that intro, I could buy Family Dollar myself.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Drops 25% Tariffs on Cars & 'Family Dollar' Sold for $1B
And I thought you were going to say we all felt the feeling of walking into a dollar store and realizing that, wait a second, nothing really costs a dollar anymore. I mean, their prices range all the way up to products that are $10. Dollar Tree is actually looking to boost its business by closing some—
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Drops 25% Tariffs on Cars & 'Family Dollar' Sold for $1B
underperforming stores, getting rid of family dollar, but also leaning into more pricey items like costs in that $7 range. It's just a different industry or a different playing field that these companies are operating in right now because there is this existential threat facing this entire dollar store industry. It's been under pressure from inflation over the last few years, low-income shoppers.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Drops 25% Tariffs on Cars & 'Family Dollar' Sold for $1B
I've also felt a lot of pressure to just afford basic necessities, and increasingly they're opting for bigger chains like Walmart. So as low-income Americans' fortunes have kind of grown worse over the last couple of months and years, more shoppers are kind of opting to skip even on those basic necessities, which obviously proves to be not great for the business for these dollar stores.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Drops 25% Tariffs on Cars & 'Family Dollar' Sold for $1B
I do want to dig into how the comptroller calculates these bonuses because it's pretty interesting. Basically, they only are reflecting cash bonuses from 2024 and deferred bonuses from previous years that have been cashed in. So technically speaking,
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Drops 25% Tariffs on Cars & 'Family Dollar' Sold for $1B
The Comptroller's 2024 figures are actually representative of previous year's bonuses because they probably understate the total because most bonuses as you move up the food chain in Wall Street are not paid in cash, but they're actually paid in deferred stock. A managing director, for instance, might get 50% of its bonus in deferred stock.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Drops 25% Tariffs on Cars & 'Family Dollar' Sold for $1B
So by only measuring cash, you're actually undercounting a lot of what these bonuses are actually coming in at. But on the other hand, they might overstate the total as well because As you said, bank stocks had this huge run up in 2024. So maybe a lot of these directors are looking at their deferred stock bonuses and going, this is the time to cash in.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Drops 25% Tariffs on Cars & 'Family Dollar' Sold for $1B
I mean, JP Morgan had an incredible year last year. They're up over 50, or sorry, Goldman Sachs is up over 50% over the past year. So if you're sitting there with all this deferred stock, of course, you're going to cash it in as the market kind of reaches a frothy level. So it's It's a little more complex than just saying record bonuses.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Drops 25% Tariffs on Cars & 'Family Dollar' Sold for $1B
All these people are getting $244,000 in cash into their bank accounts. It's got more nuance than that.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Drops 25% Tariffs on Cars & 'Family Dollar' Sold for $1B
Up next, we got more numbers, courtesy of Neil, coming your way. This message, it's a paid partnership with Apple Card. Did you know you can earn up to 3% daily cash back on every purchase when you have an Apple Card? I said what I said, up to 3% on every purchase. You can even take that daily cash back and save it automatically when you open a high yield savings account through Apple Card.
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Trump Drops 25% Tariffs on Cars & 'Family Dollar' Sold for $1B
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Trump Drops 25% Tariffs on Cars & 'Family Dollar' Sold for $1B
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Morning Brew Daily
Trump Drops 25% Tariffs on Cars & 'Family Dollar' Sold for $1B
I mean, everything Chili's touches these days turns to baby-backed gold. Sales at restaurants opened for at least a year, about 31% last quarter. That is the third straight quarter of double-digit growth. Remember the triple-dipper appetizer that went viral on TikTok? Mozzarella sticks pulling apart. It's still powering sales growth.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Drops 25% Tariffs on Cars & 'Family Dollar' Sold for $1B
Designed with sellers in mind, Walmart Marketplace is a fast-growing e-commerce platform that's designed to make selling simple. You pay zero setup, monthly, or closing fees, and Walmart's competitive commission in fulfillment fees can help create better margins for your bottom line.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Drops 25% Tariffs on Cars & 'Family Dollar' Sold for $1B
Head to marketplace.walmart.com slash MBD to get started. That's marketplace.walmart.com slash MBD.
Morning Brew Daily
Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
Then Nike partnered with one of the greatest middle distance runners of all time to try and break the women's four minute mile barrier. It's Thursday, April 24th. Let's ride.
Morning Brew Daily
Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
They're covering everything from building and implementing generative AI to modern data architecture and machine learning. Stream AWS for software companies everywhere you listen to podcasts.
Morning Brew Daily
Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
This is an inside look into what is considered the hardest ultramarathon in the world. So anytime I have to do something hard, I watch that YouTube video for a little perspective because nothing is as hard as the Barkley marathons. Do you have a favorite YouTube video in mind?
Morning Brew Daily
Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
Yeah, there was kind of this gradual rise. And then in recent years, there's been a massive, almost exponential looking rise. And this is not your neighbor with the pool in the McMansion. This is, I mean, toss as many zeros after that point and then tassel one on the end. That's the percentage that we're talking about here. And a lot of it is due to just the stock market.
Morning Brew Daily
Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
Most of their wealth is tied up in the stock market. And 2024 was a very good year. Together, the last two years, 2024 and 2023, were the S&P 500's best consecutive years in nearly a quarter century. So even though the market has kind of gone south recently, we are coming off just a historically hot market, which obviously leads to compounding returns for that top echelon.
Morning Brew Daily
Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
I mean, a big part of it is that Americans are obsessed, and actually a lot of people are obsessed with protein, and meat is largely seen as the less processed way to satisfy that craving. I mean, food makers in 2024 introduced 97 new products with protein in the brand name. That is more than double a year ago. So this is clearly the trend de jour in nutrition right now.
Morning Brew Daily
Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
A lot of it also might coincide with weight loss drugs like Ozempic taking off. When you lose weight, you are also potentially losing muscle mass. So protein intake has spiked in response to that. And then you can't ignore the influencers either. I mean, I probably cannot open TikTok or Instagram reels right now and scroll without seeing some usually shirtless dude, you know, with a.
Morning Brew Daily
Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
huge cutting board full of meat in front of you telling me to like eat carnivore i mean joe rogan has said that he has followed the carnivore diet which is entirely meat so it's a confluence of a lot of different trends but a lot of uh nutrition experts and also just people who analyze the food industry said this was a crazy turnaround because yeah i mean if we were hosting this podcast five years ago we'd have been talking about the end of meat because impossible foods these fake meat brands kind of overtaking them but it has been a huge 180 and now it's all about the meat
Morning Brew Daily
Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
Recency bias, but I think that one is well. Totally recency bias. And now a word from our sponsor, Planet Oat. Neil, you ever upgrade your phone and immediately start to wonder how you were ever rocking the old one?
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Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
I know, and I can't think of 283% increase more well spent because we both really enjoyed the movie. This is kind of the running up that hill, you know, Kate Bush moment from Stranger Things where you just see something just get a massive tailwind and start jumping up the streaming charts. And yeah, I do love that they did focus on the small details.
Morning Brew Daily
Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
A lot of it goes back to the actual book that it was based off of. So you got to give credit where credit is due. Still not everything is exactly right. They pointed out things like tables in the Sistine Chapel are positioned differently and the Cardinals actually do not address each other the way that they do in the film.
Morning Brew Daily
Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
So I don't know if those are creative liberties, you know, changing the orientation of the tables. But yeah, just exactly the movie that people needed right now because you are curious. It is a secretive process and it does do a great job of illuminating what actually goes on behind those closed doors. Now let's sprint to the finish with some final headlines.
Morning Brew Daily
Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
As Google stares down an antitrust trial that could force it to shave off its Chrome business, OpenAI is tossing its hat in the ring and saying, you know what? If we had to, we'd be interested in buying the lucrative web browser.
Morning Brew Daily
Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
As the Justice Department soldiers through a three-week trial to sort out what to do with Google after a judge last year found the company monopolized the search market, a variety of witnesses have been called to the stand, one of which was OpenAI's head of chat GPT, Nick Turley. When asked whether his company would seek to buy Google's browser, he responded, yes.
Morning Brew Daily
Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
We would, as would many other parties. Not only does Chrome spit off money, but OpenAI is most certainly interested in its power as a distribution vehicle. Chrome has 3 billion users compared to ChatGPT's 300 million and would represent an avenue to find its way onto Android smartphones after being mostly stonewalled on that front.
Morning Brew Daily
Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
Neil, it feels like OpenAI is kind of being your ex's best friend here and saying, oh, just come here, Justice Department. I'll be your shoulder to cry on and also date you and make billions of dollars off of Google Chrome.
Morning Brew Daily
Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
I do think part of it, though, is like the smartphone deal. Because remember, OpenAI struck this partnership with Apple to kind of have their models end up on their phones, but completely have been shut out by Android, mostly because Android is owned by Google. And so you go to Samsung and say, hey, can we jump on these phones? And they say, no, we're using Google's Gemini platform.
Morning Brew Daily
Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
So I do think that part of it is just figuring out how to enter into the other half of the smartphone market, which would be very big for open AI. And then also, yeah, they're a competitor and they get called to the stand. Of course, he's going to say, well, I'm not going to say no to this.
Morning Brew Daily
Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
That's the Planet Oat effect. Pour it into your coffee once, and suddenly your whole morning routine just levels up.
Morning Brew Daily
Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
Like you're asking me, like, of course we would want this, but who knows how real this actual deal is because, you know, it could create just another monopoly if you hand it over.
Morning Brew Daily
Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
Yeah, this is the question of kind of this generation right now as developed nations are struggling with falling birth rates, which leads to aging populations, which leads to the young population having to take care of this aging population. So it leads to a lot of issues.
Morning Brew Daily
Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
And we've seen in Tokyo they've instituted a four-day work week for government employees to try to encourage people to start families. So a lot of different experiments.
Morning Brew Daily
Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
Yeah. Yeah, four-day work week. Well, we got a pretty good gig for five days. But yeah, cash for babies is sometimes not as effective as it sounds because so many factors go into having kids. Your current economic situation, what you think the future is going to be like, your own specific life circumstances.
Morning Brew Daily
Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
And if you go for the unsweetened version, zero grams of sugar and still full of flavor.
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Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
So $5,000 for a baby does sound good on the surface, but other nations have kind of struggled to make that exact transaction work. If you thought trade between the US and China was frozen over, it's got nothing on the NFL draft that kicks off tonight.
Morning Brew Daily
Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
Barring any last-minute deals, every team will go into the draft with the original first-round picks for the first time since 1967, according to the AP. Now, we're recording this on Thursday morning, so... This could be null and void by the time the Titans are on the clock with the first pick. But if stasis remains, feel free to drop that little nugget at your draft watch party.
Morning Brew Daily
Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
More likely, though, we'll see some movement. Last year, there were five draft day trades. And it looks like there's not a ton of mystery at the top of the board. The Tennessee Titans are picking first. And sportsbooks have Miami QB Cam Ward at 99% to go number one overall, which would be the seventh time in eight years that a QB went first. Will you be turning in to see who the Eagles snag?
Morning Brew Daily
Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
with a 32nd pick overall.
Morning Brew Daily
Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
Get your hands on the oat milk that has it all. Visit planetoat.com for more. U.S. financial markets has found a new favorite food, and that's any crumb from the Trump administration that shows it is softening its stance on trade. And yesterday, they got a few of those tasty morsels, which pushed indexes into green territory once again.
Morning Brew Daily
Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
Great show today, Neil. Let's run it back tomorrow.
Morning Brew Daily
Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
Do I want to get takeout on my way home from work? Yes. Does that takeout sometimes make me feel bleh afterwards? Also yes.
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Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
With 40 options across eight dietary preferences on the menu each week, chow down on meals tailored to your goals. Choose from options like Calorie Smart, Protein Plus, or Keto. Factor even has smoothies, breakfast, grab-and-go snacks, and more add-ons for you to munch on throughout the day.
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Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
See, I'm more of a four cheese tortellini and Italian sausage guy. Fills me right up and I still get to enjoy the sauteed kale and garlicky green beans that come on the side.
Morning Brew Daily
Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
That's code factor podcast at factormeals.com slash factor podcast to get 50% off plus free shipping on your first box.
Morning Brew Daily
Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
First, there was Trump easing off some of his favorite punching bags, Jerome Powell and China. On Tuesday, he clarified that he had no intention of firing the Fed chair, despite all the criticism. While yesterday, Trump softened up his tone on China. saying that tariffs will drop substantially from the current 145% rate. We're going to be very nice.
Morning Brew Daily
Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
They're going to be very nice, he said, much to the S&P 500's delight, which jumped more than 2% as it digested his new stance. The change in tune likely stems from a meeting Trump had with CEOs earlier this week,
Morning Brew Daily
Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
The president sat down with the heads of Walmart, Target, and Home Depot, who privately warned that the current tariff and trade policy will lead to price hikes and store shelves emptying in a matter of weeks as tariffs hinder global logistics. Their fears are warranted.
Morning Brew Daily
Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
American importers have already began to cancel shipments from China, with U.S.-China shipping falling 60% in the weeks since the latest tariffs on China were announced, according to Ryan Peterson, the CEO of logistics firm Flexport. So, Neil, while the market partied yesterday on the back of some good soundbites, actual trade looks like it's still in a little bit of a precarious position.
Morning Brew Daily
Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
Yeah, so that's why the soundbite of, we're going to be very nice to them, did cause markets to kind of jump a little bit. But let's look at the actual activity around ports. What is actually going on in this trade war? And activity is certainly declining. Right now, there are 22 vessels scheduled to enter the port of Los Angeles this week.
Morning Brew Daily
Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
There's only 18 scheduled to enter next week, and then just 12 the week after that. So it doesn't take a math degree to realize that that number is going down. And then, yeah, Flexport's CEO has kind of sounded the alarm here and said, 60% down from typical levels here. Axios did kind of do a deep dive, though, and said that this is low numbers that we're seeing right now, but not unprecedented.
Morning Brew Daily
Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
Right now, the forecast for May 4th of the number of containers that will enter the Port of Los Angeles is about 62,000. Go back to March 4th, 2024. 61,000 containers were kind of waiting to enter the port. So it's not necessarily something that is historically bad or low right now, but tech trade volumes tend to mean revert. They come back to like a stasis point.
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Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
And if we keep declining, then that's when we start entering historically low territory.
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Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
Yeah, I mean, this is something that Yale and other colleges have been looking out for. Yale's president warned that reliance upon government support may subject the entire university to conditions and requirements which can undermine the capacity of faculty and trustees to chart the institution's destiny. So build up your finances separate of what the government gives you.
Morning Brew Daily
Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
But if I told you that quote actually came from Yale president Kingman Brewster back in 1975. So this is a very old tug of war that we're seeing and actually so old. In fact, that it goes back to 1755 when the general assembly of the colony of Connecticut voted to refuse Yale's annual grant.
Morning Brew Daily
Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
So AKA very similar to what we're seeing right now with the federal government pulling funding from institutions. And that was funny because on the surface, it was tied to, you know, budget constraints during the French and Indian war, but technically it was actually a religious dispute. between the president and the head of the General Assembly.
Morning Brew Daily
Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
So all this to say, this is not necessarily a new thing that we are seeing. Maybe the ways that the colleges are kind of building up their financial fortress, as you described it, are new, though.
Morning Brew Daily
Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
And doing things like selling illiquid private investments in private equity is maybe a warning bell because of just how foundational that's been to this endowment model that has carried us through these last few centuries.
Morning Brew Daily
Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
Well, first, I just want to go down memory lane here because I grew up with YouTube. It was right smack dab in my early days. So remember the OK Go music videos on the treadmills? There's obviously Charlie Bit Me and then Charlie the Unicorn as well. Harry Potter Puppet Pals. As I read through this list, I'm like, what was going into my brain during these formative years?
Morning Brew Daily
Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
Nike is looking to get its mojo back, and it thinks the answer is to get someone to run a mile in their shoes faster than you can make a bag of rice a roni. Faith Kipyagon is a Kenyan track star who is widely acknowledged to be the greatest female middle distance runner of all time.
Morning Brew Daily
Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
Nike thinks she can also be the first woman to break the mythical four-minute mile barrier that has captivated the athletic world since the days of Roger Bannister. The project, titled Faith Kipyagon vs. the Four-Minute Mile, is a way for Nike to show it's still got the juice after years of losing market share to rivals like Ahn and Hoka.
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Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
It's attempted these moonshots before, most recently working with Elliot Kipchoge to try and break the two-hour mark in the marathon. The idea is to put the athletes in their latest generation of super shoes, then attack the margins in order to make them incrementally faster. Precise pacing formations, carefully calibrated nutrition, and ideal conditions
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Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
are some of the levers that Nike hopes to pull to shave off seconds from Kip Yegan's time. Now, about that time, right now, Kip Yegan is the world record holder in the mile, having run a 4.07 back in 2023. So these shoes, Neil, have to be very super in order for her to shave off eight seconds.
Morning Brew Daily
Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
Yeah, they definitely need to get kind of their swagger back a little bit. I think this might be a step too far, though, because, I mean, Faith Kipyagon is truly just like the GOAT middle distance runner for women. And unfortunately, she's not necessarily super close. I mean, 4.07 is... It seems like it's close. I mean, seven seconds, but that is a gargantuan model.
Morning Brew Daily
Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
Right now, her 1500 world record is 349, and that converts roughly to a 406.5 second mile, so there's still that pretty big gap there. The biggest lever they can pull here is the pacing. Using male pacers, too, is a big leg up. They'll do that same formation that they did with Elliot Kipchoge, too. Pacer in front, pacer behind. There are levers, and if anyone can do it, it is her, but I...
Morning Brew Daily
Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
I don't know. I don't want to put. Here's the thing. It doesn't matter.
Morning Brew Daily
Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
event but it's going to be cool and we will definitely watch and i also have to bring up toby you got a big race coming up on sunday toby here he's not going to talk about it but he is running the london marathon on sunday so good luck to you thank you and yes kyle will be here to fill in tomorrow and as well on a monday who knows i'm not exactly in faith kipyagan shape so we're just gonna we're just gonna leave the bib number a mystery and then report back if it goes well speaking of numbers neil's got some coming up next
Morning Brew Daily
Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
And then Dude Perfect was a big one, too. They were very early to the YouTube days as well. But those were foundational, and I hope some of our listeners can remember those. But the YouTube video I've probably watched the most, and that is my favorite, is one called Where Dreams Go to Die, Gary Robbins and the Barkley Marathons.
Morning Brew Daily
Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
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Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
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Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
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Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
From generative AI and cybersecurity to data privacy, product leaders are managing a whole lot of change. On the pod, you'll learn how your fellow product leaders are navigating innovation at their orgs.
Morning Brew Daily
Fed Holds Rates Steady & 'X' Worth $44B Again?
Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, Ben & Jerry's is escalating its fight against its parent company, accusing Unilever of removing its CEO.
Morning Brew Daily
Fed Holds Rates Steady & 'X' Worth $44B Again?
For my next number, the French Bulldog has done what Patrick Mahomes couldn't by going back to back to back. For the third year in a row, the Frenchie is the U.S. 's most popular purebred dog, according to an annual ranking from the American Kennel Club.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & 'X' Worth $44B Again?
After the French Bulldog, the most popular breeds are Labrador Retrievers, Golden Retrievers, German Shepherds, and Poodles, rounding out the top five. But there's one dog that's come out of nowhere to make a claim as an alpha, the Cane Corso.
Morning Brew Daily
Fed Holds Rates Steady & 'X' Worth $44B Again?
This strong and athletic breed, which served as a Roman war dog and later a boar hunter, has surged in popularity, rising from nearly 50th on the list last year to 14th this year. The AP notes that the American Kennel Club rankings have been accused by animal welfare activists of
Morning Brew Daily
Fed Holds Rates Steady & 'X' Worth $44B Again?
Pumping up the visibility of certain breeds and supercharging puppy mills, the AKC responds that it just documents and doesn't promote dog ownership trends. Toby, can anyone take down the Frenchie? This is crazy.
Morning Brew Daily
Fed Holds Rates Steady & 'X' Worth $44B Again?
The Lab was the most popular breed for a very long time until the Frenchie has overtaken it in the past few years due to popularity in social media. They just, you know, look good on an Instagram reel.
Morning Brew Daily
Fed Holds Rates Steady & 'X' Worth $44B Again?
For my last number, a student manager signed a name, image, and likeness deal for the first time in history. Amir Khan, who was the student manager for the McNeese State men's college basketball team, signed not one, but three NIL deals this week with major brands Buffalo Wild Wings and TickPick and Insomnia Cookies. Khan is no ordinary manager.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & 'X' Worth $44B Again?
Along with his regular duties of wiping sweat off the court and rebounding during warm-ups, he is a rap legend. Last month, a video went viral showing Khan rapping a song alongside the team's players while leading them out of the tunnel, boombox strapped over his shoulder. His star rose quickly from there, amassing a large following on social media and selling t-shirts with his photo on them.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & 'X' Worth $44B Again?
Toby, we are in a new era of college sports where previously anonymous people can instantly monetize overnight fame through NIL deals. We saw this happen last March with Oakland sharpshooter Jack Golke. And as the tournament gets going today, expect more to come.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & 'X' Worth $44B Again?
Neil, what's the worst trade you've ever made? One time at the middle school lunch table, I was convinced to give up half of my fruit by the foot in exchange for some goldfish. The goldfish were stale and I was swindled. Rookie mistake.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & 'X' Worth $44B Again?
I think it's happening this year. I think a lot of people are probably turning to AI to help fill out their brackets because it's a crapshoot as it is, you know, maybe you think differently with your whole kill shot metric. But I'm sure a lot of people listening to this are like, Yeah, I have used AI to help fill out my bracket. Or, hey, that's a good idea. I have six hours left.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & 'X' Worth $44B Again?
The game tips off at 12.15. Maybe I'll turn to AI. And if you're going to do that, I have some tips. Because I asked ChatGPT, like a doofus, I said, who's going to win March Madness this year? And ChatGPT replied, I can't predict the future, but I can tell you that NCAA March Madness is always full of surprises.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & 'X' Worth $44B Again?
So if you give a vague prompt like that, you will get a vague response because it is going to hedge. You need to be a little more specific. with your query. So the Axios reporter said something along the lines of, I'm looking for help filling out a 2025 NCAA men's basketball bracket and wondering who you would pick for each game. I'm attaching a blank bracket to help.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & 'X' Worth $44B Again?
But Sophos, they believe cybersecurity shouldn't have any trade-offs. They give your business enterprise-grade security and ease of use.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & 'X' Worth $44B Again?
So attaching a PDF, please tell me who you predict to win each game. Then ChatGPT might say all of the favorites, but that you have to go a little further than and push it and say, can you do some deep research around the web and incorporate some upsets into your predictions? Maybe you could say, incorporate this strategy. I really like this team.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & 'X' Worth $44B Again?
So if you push it a little bit, you may get a bracket that looks pretty good or something that would rival anything that you could come up with.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & 'X' Worth $44B Again?
Some people have worked this morning.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & 'X' Worth $44B Again?
All right, well, whatever strategy you choose, we hope you have a wonderful bracket-filling-out experience. I haven't filled out any brackets, so I need to get on that this morning as well. Okay, let's wrap it up there. Thanks so much for starting your morning with us, and have a wonderful Thursday for any questions, comments.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & 'X' Worth $44B Again?
or feedback for us, send an email to morningbrewdaily at morningbrew.com. And if you love the show, don't keep it to yourself. Share it with a friend, family member, or coworker. Toby, who should everyone share it with today?
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & 'X' Worth $44B Again?
There is no way I can pick Duke. There's just no way. Fair enough. Sorry, even if they win, I will not pick them. It is my principle. Okay, let's roll the credits. Emily Milliron is our executive producer. Raymond Liu is our producer. Olivia Graham and Olivia Lake are our associate producers. Uchenua Ogu is our technical director. Scoop Stardaris is on audio.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & 'X' Worth $44B Again?
Hera Makeup is on Yale Upset Watch today. Devin Emery is our chief content officer. And our show is a production of Morning Brew.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & 'X' Worth $44B Again?
More like cybersecurity fruit by the foot and eat it too. Sophos means no compromises, no trade-offs, just cybersecurity you can trust. Visit Sophos.com and keep your business safe without the trade-offs. That's S-O-P-H-O-S.com.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & 'X' Worth $44B Again?
It is a great morning because we have made it to the best day of the year, the start of the first round of Men's March Madness. Now, I'm sure many of you Venmo'd five of your friends $20 for a bracket challenge without having watched a second of college basketball this year. And that's perfectly normal. But there are still a few hours remaining before the first game tips off.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & 'X' Worth $44B Again?
Yeah, coming into this Fed meeting, it was expected that they wouldn't cut rates, but it was still a very closely watched meeting because of what was going on in the economy and markets leading up up to these Fed officials getting together. The market has been flashing some warning signs about a slowing economy. The S&P 500 entered a correction last week.
Morning Brew Daily
Fed Holds Rates Steady & 'X' Worth $44B Again?
Gold, which is a safe haven, surged to more than $3,000 for the first time. The dollar is down 4% in March. On earnings calls, many companies have been warning of a consumer spending slowdown. So all of that factored into making Jerome Powell's press conference
Morning Brew Daily
Fed Holds Rates Steady & 'X' Worth $44B Again?
a very closely watched event on Wall Street to see what his predictions were for the future, for rate cuts, for economic growth and for inflation. We saw from the Fed was that they do expect higher inflation. They do expect lower growth, but still they expect to do two rate cuts this year, which is why you saw the markets gain yesterday and they're also gaining this morning.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & 'X' Worth $44B Again?
And one reason why the Fed is not going to cut rates anytime soon is that we have two economic factors kind of balancing themselves out. Lower economic growth would generally support the case for lower rates. Higher inflation would generally support the case for higher rates. So those two are kind of canceling them out. It's kind of like adding plus one and negative one. So you get to zero.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & 'X' Worth $44B Again?
And that's what Powell said. He's like, these are two factors that we're considering here. And they're canceling each other out. So that's why we're just literally doing nothing, sitting on our hands and waiting to see what happens.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & 'X' Worth $44B Again?
In further proof that time is a flat circle, the social media site X is worth $44 billion, exactly the same price Elon Musk bought Twitter for in 2022. Investors gave the company that valuation earlier this month when they exchanged existing stakes in what's known as a secondary deal, according to the Financial Times. But it's not about the destination. It's about the journey.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & 'X' Worth $44B Again?
X's value plunged as much as 79% below its sale price as recently as last September after advertisers fled the platform over Musk's loosening of content moderation and brand safety issues. Now, marketing spend is slowly but surely coming back, and combined with a much lower headcount, upcoming features, and an integration with AI, X's financial outlook doesn't look as bleak as it once did.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & 'X' Worth $44B Again?
If you want to create a more informed bracket, well, I've got a bracket science major sitting right next to me. You're probably not surprised, but our dear Toby is a two-time March Madness bracket champion, and he's literally spent hours this week poring over strategies and stats to get an edge, and he wants to help you. So, Toby, let's hear it.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & 'X' Worth $44B Again?
Profits are looking stable, earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization, known as EBITDA, was $1.2 billion in 2024, about equal with the period before Musk brought the company. Toby, it's clear that reports of X's death were greatly exaggerated, but is this a healthy platform?
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & 'X' Worth $44B Again?
And yeah, you're right. X is also progressing in Elon's vision. to create a everything app. Elon Musk for decades has wanted to create an everything app similar to a WeChat in China where you can do everything from post on social media to send payments. And that payments part is a part of what X is going to roll out. It is teaming up with Visa for a feature called X Money where you can have
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & 'X' Worth $44B Again?
an in-app wallet, and you can send peer-to-peer payments. Linda Yaccarina announced that last week and said that was going to be rolling out later this year. So the everything app vision is slowly progressing as well.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & 'X' Worth $44B Again?
What are some things to keep in mind when filling out a bracket?
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & 'X' Worth $44B Again?
These two have mixed like oil and water or maybe bacon and strawberry ice cream. You have Unilever, which is a UK consumer goods giant. It owns things like Dove, Axe, Hellmann's and Vaseline. And then you have Ben and Jerry's, which is this company.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & 'X' Worth $44B Again?
You know, upstart, very progressive minded ice cream brand out of Vermont that was bought by Unilever in 2000 to improve its stable of ice cream brands. And these two just can't stop fighting. I'm sure there's a lot of buyers remorse. And it looks like Unilever. could get Ben & Jerry's off of its hands if it wants to because it is aiming to spin off its ice cream business, which is huge.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & 'X' Worth $44B Again?
It includes five of the top-selling 10 ice cream brands in the entire world and an Amsterdam stock listing sometime this year. So it probably is accelerating those efforts after this latest legal complaint by Ben & Jerry's.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & 'X' Worth $44B Again?
Have you taken our morning market trivia quiz yet? Top scorers will receive a custom prize, a $200 Amex gift card, and a newsletter feature.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & 'X' Worth $44B Again?
If you have the answer, go to www.morningbrew.com slash morning-market-trivia to test your stuff with the morning market trivia quiz. Who knows? You could end up on the leaderboard. Like I said, top scorers will receive prizes and a feature in the Morning Brew newsletter. I scored a 12 out of 15. I got 11 out of 15.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & 'X' Worth $44B Again?
Head on over to www.morningbrew.com slash morning-market-trivia and see if you can beat our scorers and win some goodies. Thinking about expanding your business? Lean on one of retail's most trusted names when you sell your products on Walmart.com.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & 'X' Worth $44B Again?
When you sell on Walmart Marketplace, you get access to a network of millions of customers and programs to help you scale your biz. And it just takes a few clicks to get started.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & 'X' Worth $44B Again?
Welcome to Neil's Numbers, the segment where I share three stats from the week's news that will feel like the first day of spring after a long winter. And I mean that literally. Today is the first day of spring. For my first number, Volkswagen has a booming business on its hands, but it's not cars. It's sausage.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & 'X' Worth $44B Again?
Last year, according to a Works Council report, Volkswagen sold nearly as many sausages as cars, 8.5 million sausages to 9 million vehicles across all its brands. Volkswagen makes sausage? Heck yeah, they do. Curry, worse to be specific, a staple of the German diet when combined with fries.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & 'X' Worth $44B Again?
VW began serving currywurst to employees and locals around its Wolfsburg headquarters in 1973, and it's blossomed into a huge business. Now the company sells sausage to tens of thousands of workers at its German factories, fans at the Wolfsburg football stadium, and in supermarkets around the country. But while the hot dog business is soaring, Volkswagen's car business is floundering.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & 'X' Worth $44B Again?
Last week, it reported a 3% decline in vehicle sales and a 30% drop in net profits in 2024. The largest employer in Germany, VW, has proposed up to 35,000 job cuts and closing some German factories in an unprecedented move to cut costs. Toby, pretty mind-blowing that Volkswagen sells more currywurst than cars bearing the VW logo. Let's just hope they're not using the same grills.
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Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
What does the future hold for business? Ask nine experts and you'll get 10 answers. It's a bull market. It's a bear market. Rates will rise or fall. Inflation's up or down. Can someone invent a crystal ball?
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Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
Until then, over 41,000 businesses have future-proofed their business with NetSuite by Oracle, the number one cloud ERP bringing accounting, financial management, inventory, and HR into one fluid platform. With one unified business management suite, there's one source of truth giving you the visibility and control you need to make quick decisions.
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Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
With real-time insights and forecasting, you're peering into the future with actionable data. When you're closing the books in days, not weeks, you're spending less time looking backwards and more time on what's next. Whether your company is earning millions or even hundreds of millions, NetSuite helps you respond to immediate challenges and seize your biggest opportunities.
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Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
Download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning for free at netsuite.com slash brew. That's netsuite.com slash brew. netsuite.com slash brew. Welcome to Neil's Numbers, the segment where I share three stats from the week's news that will turn you into the most insufferable know-it-all. For my first number, how much has Doge, the Department of Government Efficiency, saved American taxpayers?
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Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
It depends on who you ask. About a month into its effort to slash fraud and waste, Elon Musk's cost-cutting outfit says it saved $55 billion in federal spending. But look closer and things get a little more suspect. The Doge website itself only accounts for $16.6 billion of the $55 billion claimed to have been saved. And that $16 billion also comes with an asterisk because there is a major error.
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Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
Doge mislabeled a contract as costing $8 billion when in reality that contract cost $8 million. So when you do all the math, the total savings generated by Doge amount to about $8.6 billion, a fraction of what had been broadcast. So how'd the M and the B get screwed up?
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Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
In September 2022, D&G Support Services was awarded a contract to provide services for the Office of Diversity and Civil Rights within U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE. The original value was listed at $8 billion, and it stayed that way for years. until last month when it was adjusted to the correct amount of $8 million.
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Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
It certainly was just an $8 million contract because ICE's entire budget is around $9 billion, so an $8 billion contract is just not feasible. Either way, as Bloomberg notes, this sus accounting raises questions about Doge's reliability and accountability.
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Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
And Elon Musk has said himself that some things will be incorrect and should be corrected. But when you're putting out false numbers consistently like this and over-inflating your impact on, you know, this is the budget's trillions of dollars. And to say you found, you know, a couple few billion, you're, you know, you're going to lose trust with the public about your effort.
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Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
My next number is three, which is how many companies control an estimated 70 to 80 percent of the fire truck manufacturing market. This stunning industry concentration reported by The New York Times was on full display during the L.A.
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Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
fires last month when many firefighters who could have been deployed to the front lines were not able to get there because dozens of fire trucks were out of service, accumulating rust at the city maintenance yard. Los Angeles Fire Chief Kristen Crowley said that about 100 fire vehicles were out of service in January, which blunted their efforts to control the blazes.
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Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
He was just firing balls out left and right. Wouldn't even stop to aim. Just swing, swing, swing, swing. Made the whole round a disaster because he wouldn't even look at where he was hitting the ball on the course. It was ready, fire, aim. It's the exact wrong way to golf and the exact wrong way to run ad campaigns.
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Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
Fire leaders across the country say recent industry consolidation in fire truck manufacturing has caused higher prices and long delivery delays, impeding their ability to do their jobs. Tack on COVID, which caused major supply chain disruptions and worker shortages, and the situation at firehouses has become dire.
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Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
Auditors in Atlanta found that more than a third of the city's firefighting fleet was out of commission. Chicago firefighters held a satirical birthday party for a 30-year-old engine that had double its lifespan.
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Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
For my final number, a movie you've probably never heard of just surpassed Pixar's Inside Out 2 to become the highest grossing animated film of all time. Nezha 2, a Chinese film about a monster fighting demonic child, has earned 1.5
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Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
$7 billion since its debut over the Lunar New Year holiday, making it not only the number one animated film ever, and not only the number one Chinese film ever, but also the eighth biggest film in history. It's an astonishing result for a homegrown Chinese movie, considering that Nezha 2 is the only film in the top 20 all-time box office list whose original language is not English.
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Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
And even more remarkable, very few people internationally have seen it. Over 99% of its box office income has come from mainland China, making it the biggest haul ever in a single country by $600 million. That was a lot of superlatives, but Nezha 2's success is unprecedented, and it shows the power of the Chinese consumer market when things are clicking.
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Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
There is a good chance that this will be the highest grossing movie of 2025, depending on how Avatar 3 does later this year.
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Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
Just like taking a moment to center yourself before a golf swing will lead to better outcomes, using LinkedIn ads to target your audience by industry, company and role will prevent ad waste and get your company in front of the right people.
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Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
Let's sprint to the finish with some final headlines. U.S. support for Ukraine in their war against Russia has never been more precarious. One day after President Trump blamed Ukraine for starting the war, when in fact Russia invaded Ukraine unprovoked, he laced into Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky, calling him a dictator without elections and claimed he misused U.S. aid.
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Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
The anti-Zelensky rant on social media comes as the Trump administration is rapidly improving relations with Russia, holding high-level talks this week about resolving the war that sidelined Ukraine and European leaders. Critics blasted Trump for repeating what is essentially Russian propaganda.
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Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said it is disgusting to see an American president turn against one of our friends and openly side with a thug like Vladimir Putin.
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Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
Still, guys, go travel the world. We got the asteroid coming in 2032. You're not going to be able to get a quantum computer by then. But this is a tremendous breakthrough. And we'll see the quantum computer arms race is on before... You know, we're all blown to smithereens in a few years. Let's say you were on a flight that crash landed and flipped upside down while skidding down the runway.
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Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
How much do you think the airline should pay you for your troubles? For the passengers who survived that ordeal on Monday in Toronto, the answer is $30,000. Delta Airlines, which operated the flight that went belly up, said it was offering 30K to each passenger aboard the flight with, quote, no strings attached and does not affect rights.
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Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
Interesting to compare that to what Alaska Airlines offered passengers on its flight last year when that door panel blew out. That was $1,500.
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Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
Long live the king. That's what President Trump declared when he announced that he was killing congestion pricing in New York City. Yesterday, his transportation department rescinded its approval of the city's new tolling system, which would bar New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority from collecting tolls.
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Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
And it's super fast. It crossed the Atlantic Ocean in three days, 10 hours, and 40 minutes, which maybe doesn't sound fast because we can do it in about five hours in a plane now, but that still holds the records to this day for the transatlantic for an ocean liner crossing. So,
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Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
Pretty cool ship, and I didn't know this was a thing where they deliberately sink ships to create artificial reefs so people can go scuba diving, but it seems like a very cool use for this ship that I've seen in South Philadelphia, and anyone who drives a 95 or is around Philadelphia, through there you see this, you know, this rusting ship, and it looks like they're going to put it to some interesting use, but I have a question for you, Toby.
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Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
What does SS stand for? This is the SS United States, maybe some... I know we just got after Neil's numbers, but I still want to teach people a thing. And I didn't know this before looking it up. The SS stands for steamship.
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Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
Back in the 19th century, there was, you know, they wanted to, the marketing folks at these ocean liners wanted to distinguish from the wind-powered ships that came before. So they called it steamship. And then it also came to represent what they call screw steamers, another SS or single screw steamship. So the SS stands for steamship. A bonus Niels fact right there. Let's wrap it up there.
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Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
Thanks so much for starting your morning with us and have a wonderful Thursday. For any questions, comments, or feedback, send an email to morningbrewdaily at morningbrew.com. And if you're enjoying the show, share it with a friend, family member, or coworker. Toby, who should everyone listening share it with today? This one goes out to all the MBDOGs.
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Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
Let's roll the credits. Emily Milliron is our executive producer. Raymond Liu is our producer. Olivia Graham is our associate producer. Uchenna Waogu is our technical director. Scoop Stardaris is on audio. Hair and Makeup is considering whether to go to Boston for the U.S.-Canada hockey game tonight.
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Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
Only problem, tickets for the Four Nations face-off title game are rivaling the Super Bowl, costing upwards of $4,000. I say YOLO. Devin Emery is our chief content officer and our shows and production of Morning Brew. Great show, Danielle. Let's run it back tomorrow.
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Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy called the plan a slap in the face to working class Americans and small business owners, echoing critics who called it a tax on drivers. It's been about a month and a half since New York's first of its kind congestion pricing plan went into effect, which charges most vehicles $9 to enter the core of Manhattan at peak times.
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Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
The goal was to clean up the air, reduce car traffic in busy areas and fund $15 billion worth of transit projects. And so far it seemed to have been working. Drivers are saving about 20 to 30 minutes traveling into central Manhattan, while about 1.2 million fewer vehicles entered the area in January compared to a year earlier.
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Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
But unlike the newsies, Trump may have been too quick to declare himself king of New York. In a lawsuit against the Transportation Department, the MTA argued that the federal government does not have the authority to unilaterally kill congestion pricing and pledged to continue collecting tolls until a judge told it not to.
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Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, Trump wants to scrap New York City's congestion pricing plan, but can he?
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Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
In a statement, New York Kathy Hochul said, We are a nation of laws, not ruled by a king. We'll see you in court.
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Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
And This may be the stiffest legal challenge that congestion pricing has had, but it is certainly not the first. It was hit with lawsuit after lawsuit by New Jersey and others. It survived all of those legal challenges, and it went into effect on January 5th. After years and years and years of planning, the chair and chief executive of the MTA said, look, we've been sued— Everywhere.
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Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
We've been sued in every federal court and state court east of the Mississippi and we're batting 1000. We've won every single time. So we'll see how this this court fight plays out against perhaps the most powerful opponent of all the White House.
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Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
This is history, what we're witnessing, because first of all, this is the first congestion pricing plan that has been implemented by any United States city. It exists in London and Stockholm and Singapore and other places around the globe. But this was the first experiment that happened in the United States. So that was unprecedented.
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Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
And then what is also unprecedented is the reversal of such a large scale transportation project by the federal government. This hasn't happened before. If it sounds like a lot of whiplash, that's because you've never experienced something like this in U.S. history.
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Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
So the magnitude of what is going on is a really big deal because many other cities are watching New York to see whether they want to implement their own congestion pricing plans around the country. Now it moves to court for another drawn out legal battle.
Morning Brew Daily
Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
Good morning. If it were 2009, our Facebook wall would be pouring in with messages from randos because it is our birthday. Morning Brew Daily is turning to today. On our first episode way back in 2023, some topics we covered were meta charging for verification, Biden taking a train trip and ice cover on the Great Lakes, a real scintillating debut from your boys.
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Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
Sure. I mean, Apple's iPhones are in a bit of a slump right now. Sales fell about one percent in the holiday quarter volume. The amount of actual phones that they're shipping is pretty stagnant. Everyone kind of has a phone. They're just upgrading. So at this point, it's selling about 230 million iPhones a year. And it's just that is a number that has not
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Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
that is not going to budge in the near future. So what they need to do is raise prices to get more revenue. So this is $170 more than the last iPhone SE version. It's still cheaper than its other models. But you're right, this is, I guess, the entry-level model to get people hooked on the... Apple ecosystem.
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Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
And then maybe once they're fed up with their SE, they'll upgrade to a Pro or a Max or whatever they call it these days. That is the hope to get people, especially in international markets, into the Apple world. And then they'll continue to pay for upgrades later on.
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Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
Let's talk about the marketing strategy. Basically, when Apple has released a product in the past, there's been a huge pageantry around it. They have a huge event. They do a keynote and very buzzy marketing around product launches. This one, they just issued a press release and it went a little under the radar.
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Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
They didn't hype up this modem at all, which I don't know if it's even possible to hype up a modem, but they didn't do it, and they kind of let this fly under the radar a bit. What do you think is behind that particular strategy?
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Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
Thank you so much to all the OGs who've been listening since that first episode and to everyone who has hopped on the bandwagon since. It is a real privilege to be able to do this for two years now. And Toby, I'm pretty excited about being two. Lots of key milestones to hit. We should be able to say at least two words together. Walk up a few stairs without help and eat from a spoon.
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Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
This was a mess of a company. They were on their fourth CEO in as many years. They were losing hundreds of thousands of dollars on every truck they sold, which they weren't selling many trucks at all, even despite ramping up production. It was a symbol of the excesses of the SPAC boom that we had in 2021 and the EV boom that has faltered from both macro
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Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
conditions because higher interest rates, less demand for EVs than what was expected, but also missteps on the part of these individual companies that thinking that they could be the next Tesla and not realizing the capital that was required. And many EV companies have been accused of fraud and accounting shenanigans.
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Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
And clearly, this was a business model that didn't work for Nikola, but also many other EV startups in the space.
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Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
There are a few walking dead EV startups. One of them is Rivian. Their share price is about a tenth of where it was in late 2021, but they produce Pretty well-regarded electric pickups and SUVs, so they're still kicking. And then Lucid Motors is another EV startup that is still around. It makes luxury electric cars and SUVs at the top end of the market.
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Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
If you look at their share price this morning, it's down 95% from their peak.
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Welcome to Neil's Numbers, the segment where I share three stats from the week's news that will give you a lot to talk to your parents about. Just a little preview. For my first number, a growing share of youngsters are pulling a Saxon from White Lotus and joining up with the family business.
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Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze
The share of small businesses that employ a young adult child of an owner is up 13% year over year in January and has doubled since 2018, according to HR firm Gusto. They analyzed 400,000 payrolls to find companies where the last name of an owner over 50 years old matched the name of an employee under 30. purposefully excluding the 100 most common names in the U.S.
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Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze
It's a sign that the cooling demand for entry-level jobs and the threat of AI automation has young professionals embracing the familiar environment of the family biz despite the historical stigma that may come with it. It's also an indication that Baby Boomer and Gen X business owners are thinking seriously about succession as they plan their retirement parties.
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Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze
While the share of small business owners who employ their own children is still a small slice of the overall pie, the movement is significant, Augusto Economist told the Wall Street Journal.
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Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze
kind of an interesting uh game to play in the political office environment you know like where do you put your kid when they come in do you put them in the you know in the trenches or are they management track so you know it gets a little tricky yeah a lot of career coaches say that a lot of parents make the mistake of turning their kids into executives right when they came out of the gate which doesn't even make sense for the kid either they're not prepared to be an executive
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Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze
My next number piggybacks off my first. Not only are parents passing down businesses to their kids, they're also buying them super-duper expensive real estate. Consider this. 28% of all Manhattan homes were purchased through a trust last year, a big jump from 17% three years ago, according to a new report from real estate analytics firm Adam.
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Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze
New York brokers told Bloomberg that wealthy parents helping their kids flex on their friends was the primary driver of the jump. This highlights a couple of trends. Number one, at this point, you probably can't afford to buy a Manhattan property, especially in a desirable neighborhood without generational wealth.
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Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze
In 2024, the median sales price in the borough was $1.1 million, with all cash sales accounting for 60% of purchases. And number two, that the great wealth transfer is picking up steam.
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Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze
As we learned in the previous story about family business succession plans, the great wealth transfer is what economists have called the exchange of $124 trillion from boomers to their kids over the next two decades. And it's playing out in real time in the West Village, which is being invaded by Nepo babies.
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Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze
My final number is $2 billion, which is the value of iPhones that were airlifted to the U.S. from India in March. If that sounds like a lot, it is. The iPhone shipments marked an all-time high for a single month and roughly the same as the total number for January and February combined. At least six cargo jets were used in Operation Beat the Tariffs.
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Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze
The mythical utility player they can pitch, catch, sprint to first without pulling a hammy.
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Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze
Because that's what this rush was all about, President Trump had signaled on April 2nd he would be imposing reciprocal tariffs on the U.S. 's trading partners, so Apple wanted to get ahead of whatever was announced to make sure enough iPhones were on U.S. soil.
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Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze
Turns out it was a savvy play because Trump hit India with 26% tariffs and eventually 145% tariffs on China, the two countries where Apple makes iPhones. Later on, smartphones were exempted from Chinese tariffs for now, and India tariffs were also rolled back. But the Apple iPhone airlift shows how companies are scrambling to stockpile inventory in the U.S. given all the uncertainty around tariffs.
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Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze
Yeah, another indication of this is the pharmaceutical industry. We've talked about it on the show that there might be pharma tariffs coming. Pharmaceutical products imported to the U.S. in January and February was $37 billion compared to $31 billion during the same period last year.
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Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze
So if you're on a plane from China or India or Europe to the United States, there's probably a lot of freight alongside you. Let's sprint to the finish with some final headlines. What is this? A smuggling ring for ants? Why, yes. Yes, it is.
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Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze
On Tuesday, two Belgian teenagers pleaded guilty to the illegal possession and trade of wildlife in Kenya after they were accused by authorities of trying to smuggle thousands of ants out of the country to sell as pets.
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Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze
The 19-year-olds were arrested earlier this month after being found with more than 5,000 ants packed in test tubes stuffed with cotton wool that would allow the ants to live for months. One of them asked for leniency, saying, We did not come here to break any laws by accident and stupidity. We did.
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Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze
The Kenya Wildlife Service has called it a landmark case that shows how the wildlife trafficking trade has shifted from larger trophy animals to smaller, more exotic species. Toby, these aren't your standard ant farm ants. They had a street value of $7,700.
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Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze
The Barista Lovers Version 2 is especially versatile, incredibly velvety, frost like a dream, blends like it's made for cafe level lattes because it was.
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Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze
The biggest problem was he wasn't even there. I mean, one fan who did go told a Las Vegas news outlet, when I go to the Tom Brady experience in Boston, Tom Brady's there. And so they were wondering where Mr. Beast was. And when you're not there, you can't sort of directly, you don't have control over the experience. So you get things like a miserable goodie bag.
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Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze
You have one traveler complained of a $63 cocktail. Which sounds outrageous, but when you think about it, Las Vegas, that could happen there. So overall, a miserable experience for these people. Very much a Mr. Beast fire fest and a PR debacle that he's trying to clean up.
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Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze
Well, they said that they're either looking at a new chemical process that no one has ever seen before, or they're witnessing the first signs of biological activity outside of Earth. So kind of mind-blowing to think about. It also makes me think that, you know, We've hyped up this first encounter between humans and aliens, and it's probably not going to look like it does in the movies.
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Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze
Unfortunately, they probably won't descend from a UFO. It'll probably look a little more like this, like a peer reviewed report in the Astrophysical Journal letters. So, you know, that is just something to look forward to whether whenever we can form or deny this alien report.
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Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze
More dimethyl sulfide than I've ever seen for sure. Okay, let's wrap it up there. Thanks so much for starting your morning with us and have a wonderful Thursday. For any questions, comments, or feedback, send an email to morningbrewdaily at morningbrew.com. We want to hear all your alien theories. Let's roll the credits. Emily Milliron is our executive producer. Raymond Liu is our producer.
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Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze
Our associate producers are Olivia Graham and Olivia Lake. Scoop Stardaris is on audio. Hair and Makeup welcomes our alien overlords. Devin Emery is our president. And our show is a production of Morning Brew.
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Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze
Let's run it back tomorrow.
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Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze
Every single day, there's a new company that's caught in the crossfire of this trade war. Yesterday, we led the show with Boeing. Now, it's Nvidia. This is a much bigger player, much bigger bargaining chip. By all accounts, this was a big surprise for Nvidia. Jensen Huang, the CEO, went to Mar-a-Lago earlier this month, had dinner with Trump, and talked about that $500 billion investment.
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Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze
He was under the impression that these age 20s that they made specifically for the Chinese market were going to be exempt from all of the trade war chaos. So they went to all their Chinese clients like Alibaba, ByteDance and Tencent, said, don't worry about it. We're still going to get you your age 20s. This has all been cleared up.
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Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze
And then earlier this week, they were completely blindsided by this new ban. And that's why, you know, the stock tanked. It surprised investors as well. And Nvidia stock, after soaring more than 200 percent this year, is down, you know, about 20 percent this year. It's just been been rough sledding so far in 2025.
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Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze
Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, the gigantic economic stakes of the Harvard versus White House feud.
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Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze
But the problem is the U.S. government considers the sale of semiconductors to China in order to power their AI models a national security concern. This ban on chip exports did not start with the Trump administration. It started with Biden back in 2022 when they curbed the sale of the highest end chips to China.
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Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze
china because we had this thing like deep seek earlier this uh earlier this year where this ai model performed as good as chat gpt or other american-made models uh on a lot less firepower they probably it seems that they trained them on the h20 so from the us government's perspective whether it was a democratic or republican administration they're saying sorry nvidia i know you know you are going to have your business curd but this is a national security priority for us because we need to win the ai race against china
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Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze
The country's wealthiest university and the White House are locked in a knockdown drag out fight and the economic stakes could not be higher. On Monday, Harvard University made the surprise decision to reject the Trump administration's demands that it change how it operates, saying that appeasement would compromise its educational mission. and overall independence.
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Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze
Other schools like Columbia, who have been targeted by the government this year, have given in to the demands so that Harvard took the gloves off was somewhat of a landmark moment signaling a more adversarial approach. Retribution came fast with the Trump administration responding that it would freeze $2.2 billion in funds that had been awarded to the school for research.
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Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze
Now the two sides are digging in for a potentially long legal conflict over the $9 billion in total the government directs toward Harvard. Depending on how long it lasts, the showdown could have significant repercussions for the economy of greater Boston, where Harvard is based, and along with other research universities there, is the primary economic engine of the region.
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Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze
Harvard is the fourth largest employer in the entire state of Massachusetts. And a funding freeze would deal a blow to sectors like life sciences and biotech that have flourished in Boston because of all the talent and research breakthroughs cultivated at the colleges. So Harvard is in no doubt feeling the financial squeeze with $2.2 billion and potentially more cut off.
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Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze
But Toby, it has been preparing for this moment for years.
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Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze
Tap, tap. Is this thing on? Can you hear me? Okay, just checking because yesterday was a different story. Spotify suffered a widespread outage from about 6.20 a.m. Eastern to nearly noon, frustrating all of us who wanted to listen to podcasts or our day list in the morning. I'll say it, Toby. I was pretty much useless without my obsessed Pink Pilates princess early morning jams.
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Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze
Yeah. So this when people were learning about this story and I was too, I was wondering, well, I thought this was a private school. Why is the government sending $9 billion toward Harvard? And, you know, it sends a lot of money toward other research institutions. institutions as well. And it goes back to World War II. The U.S.
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Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze
government said, you know what, I think maybe we should outsource this whole research and development and innovative thing. Maybe colleges and universities do this better than we do. So it started funding schools for research purposes. That grew over the course of the past few decades to the point where schools are now getting billions of dollars in funding.
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Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze
And it's sort of a I scratch my back, you scratch I scratch your back, you scratch mine. I'm going to outsource all this R&D to you by giving you billions of dollars in order to conduct research and create companies through all that research and innovation.
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Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze
At the same time, you are going to produce really high-level talent and people with skills so that they can create companies and breakthroughs that will lead to the overall growing of the U.S. economy and local regions to flourish in the greater Boston area. So it's this partnership, this symbiosis that has worked for the past few decades. Now we're seeing some major fissures here in 2025.
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Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze
The two things to watch here are whether other universities follow in Harvard's footsteps, leading, you know, showing defiance to the Trump administration, which might lead to more funding cutoffs. And also the status of of Harvard as a tax exempt entity.
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Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze
Yesterday was reported that the administration is moving to revoke its tax exempt status, which is given to charities, churches, universities, so they don't have to pay taxes. federal income or property tax because they're in this umbrella of a nonprofit where you're conducting things that are for the greater good. So they give you tax exempt status.
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Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze
And now the Trump administration is looking to revoke that, which would be a huge escalation and lead to even longer legal battles.
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Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze
Yeah, the trade war has moved to TikTok. I think you're right to pour a little cold water on this. A number of brands have come out, like Lululemon, saying that the videos are just not real. This guy said that, hey, I'm looking at the Lululemon factory in this town in China, and they're like... We don't make anything in those factories.
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Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze
Many of these brands have NDAs with their contract manufacturers in China. So if a manufacturer is saying that they work with Lululemon or Louis Vuitton or Hermes, they're probably lying because they're under contract to not disclose that. So I would say if you're using DHgate, go ahead. But you are probably just buying a dupe, not a real thing.
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Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze
If you're planning to do business abroad, you've got to make sure your finances are in order. That's where Wise Business comes in. Wise Business is the account for doing business in other currencies.
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The analysis found that workers tend to put in longer hours in the months of August and December, which they suggested could be times when people feel the need to catch up after vacation or rush to hit year-end targets. Toby, 4.39 p.m., that is plenty of time to sneak in nine holes before sunset.
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ActiveTrack did say, quote, these are healthy numbers. And they also noted, interestingly enough, that weekend work is on the rise. So people are just spreading out their work over seven days rather than five. For my next number, drivers are getting fed up with all the whiz-bang technology. Automakers are infuriated. using into new vehicles.
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In a recent survey of new car buyers by Strategic Vision, just 56% said they had positive feelings about the intuitiveness of their car's controls, down from 79% a decade ago. Perceptions of new features like dashboard displays and screen interfaces plunged by a similar amount, according to the Wall Street Journal. Many complained that car makers are trying to fix something that wasn't broken.
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Take the old door handle, for instance. You might have thought we hit peak door handle. You pull a lever, the door opens, great. Let's move on to innovating other things. But no, now many EV makers are equipping handles with automation and sensors that sometimes don't work in the cold weather. And that's been a really frustrating experience.
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Last year, owners of battery electric vehicles reported door handles being difficult to use at a rate of 3.1 problems per 100 cars. up from just 0.25 years earlier, according to J.D. Power, as one Volkswagen owner told the Wall Street Journal, just give me a normal door handle.
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For my final number, the largest conveyor belt in America is now in operation. No, it's not a new addition to the Wonka factory. It's a belt used by an oil field company to transport millions of tons of sand used for hydraulic fracturing. Known as the Dune Express, the conveyor belt stretches 42 miles from the tiny town of Kermit, Texas, all the way into New Mexico.
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That's longer than the width of Rhode Island. Atlas Energy Solutions came up with the idea a few years ago after realizing that hauling mountains of sand across the Permian Basin using massive trucks was inefficient and often dangerous for everyone on the roads.
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So they decided to create an alternative highway alongside the one used for cars, a conveyor belt that looks like a really boring roller coaster schlepping sand across the desert at 10 miles per hour. Why do you need so much sand for oil drilling? Well, fracking requires liquid to be pumped into the ground at very high pressures to create holes and release oil.
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Companies use sand to make sure the holes don't close in on themselves while they're being pounded with water, oil and gas. Toby, what in the Lisan Al-Gaib is this monstrosity?
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Inflation Cools More Than Expected & 'Pokémon GO' Heads to Saudi Arabia
And I said it's the world, the longest conveyor belt in the United States. It is, in fact, not the longest conveyor belt in the world. At 61 miles, there is a conveyor belt in Western Sahara on the northwest coast of Africa that carries phosphorus from a mine. And that is the longest conveyor belt in the world. That is a long one.
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I think I know a particular YouTuber who might take you up on that challenge. Okay, let's sprint to the finish with some final headlines. One day after President Trump imposed 25% tariffs on steel and aluminum against all the U.S. 's trading partners, the response was swift.
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Canada immediately slapped retaliatory tariffs on steel and aluminum and said a levy on an additional 30 billion dollars in U.S. goods, including computers and sports equipment, would go into effect today.
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Meanwhile, the EU also announced tit for tat tariffs on the same amount of American goods and targeted iconic American industries such as whiskey, jeans and motorcycles, with up to 50 percent tariffs that go into effect next month. Jack Daniels maker Brown Foreman's stock fell 5% on the day, while Harley Davidson, ticker hog, dropped nearly 6%.
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If it wasn't clear before, the trade war is officially on.
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Inflation Cools More Than Expected & 'Pokémon GO' Heads to Saudi Arabia
Yes, in a similar vein, the EU also targeted soybeans because they're grown in Louisiana, which is the home state of House of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson. So these are very symbolic in nature.
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I like to know what's going on in the markets, okay? Who the up and coming innovators are.
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Everything's collapsed since this Amazon deal fell apart. I mean, $1.7 billion for this company sounds like a ton now, but it was going to happen until regulators, in Europe and the United States said that Amazon should not be able to buy this robot vacuum because of competition concerns. And also there were concerns that it would get all this data on your home when the Rubik comes around.
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And, you know, Amazon already has enough data as it is. They don't need any more. So after regulators blocked this deal, this company has absolutely collapsed. And in the next 12 months, it might not exist anymore. Finally, a scandal is engulfing the sport of ski jumping after two Norwegian gold medalists were accused of doctoring their suits in order to fly farther in the air.
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Marius Lindvik and Johan André Forfang were disqualified from a World Cup event that starts today after officials found added material in the crotch area of their ski suits following a whistleblower tip. It was extremely high-level manipulation, the race director said, adding that Norway's alleged scheme was absolutely by far the worst he's seen in his five years on the job.
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Toby, Norway has developed a reputation for having top-level integrity in sports. Now it's staring down crotch gate.
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Let's wrap it up there after you said something about crotches. Thanks so much for starting your morning with us and have an awesome Thursday. For any questions, comments, or feedback, send an email to morningbrewdaily at morningbrew.com. And if you're enjoying the show, share it with a friend, family member, or coworker. Toby, who should everyone listening share it with today?
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Let's roll the credits. Emily Milliron is our executive producer. Raymond Liu is our producer. Olivia Graham and Olivia Lake are associate producers. Uchenna Waogu is our technical director. Scoops Dardaris is on audio. Hair and Makeup is riding the Dune Express. Devin Emery is our chief content officer. And our show is a production of Morning Brew. Great show, Daniel. Let's run it back tomorrow.
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Inflation Cools More Than Expected & 'Pokémon GO' Heads to Saudi Arabia
Fine, I'll check out QQQ and I guess I'll figure out what my resting heart rate is too.
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Inflation Cools More Than Expected & 'Pokémon GO' Heads to Saudi Arabia
I'm taking the W here. My portfolio. really needed this. Stocks stopped their three-day slide. A really nice change of pace after weeks of some pretty bleak economic data and surveys. We finally got some encouraging news here with inflation growing at its slowest pace in four months. That steady, bumpy decline that we've been seeing over the past few years is still continuing apace.
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Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, the average workday is shrinking.
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Inflation Cools More Than Expected & 'Pokémon GO' Heads to Saudi Arabia
We'll see what tariffs and other measures have in store going forward. But But right for now, inflation is still coming down, and I think we should celebrate that.
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Yeah, Jerome Powell gave a speech last week. He said he wants proof that inflation is moving sustainably lower. One month of cooling inflation, such as we saw, lower than expected, is not necessarily any definition of sustainably. So the Fed is meeting next week. They are expected to hold interest rates steady. Bets did rise of an interest rate cut in June, but that is a long time from now.
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Inflation Cools More Than Expected & 'Pokémon GO' Heads to Saudi Arabia
There is a lot of policy shifts and new economic data that will come out in the interim, so again, wait and see. Moving on, this week CEOs of major food companies met with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and were given an ultimatum. Either you get rid of artificial dyes by the end of Donald Trump's term, or I'll do it for you.
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Inflation Cools More Than Expected & 'Pokémon GO' Heads to Saudi Arabia
The ultimatum was delivered during a Monday meeting that included the chief executives of General Mills, Pepsi, Kraft Heinz and more. They were told it is a top priority of this White House to make the American diet healthier by removing potentially harmful ingredients. Food dyes that make your Cheetos, neon orange and Kool-Aid strikingly red have been a target of health advocates for years.
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Inflation Cools More Than Expected & 'Pokémon GO' Heads to Saudi Arabia
But the movement has gotten a huge boost from RFK, who originally ran for president under an agenda to make America healthy again. RFK has called out food companies for, quote, poisoning Americans. And according to the Consumer Brands Association, during Monday's meeting, he made clear his intention to take action unless the industry is willing to be proactive with solutions.
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Inflation Cools More Than Expected & 'Pokémon GO' Heads to Saudi Arabia
The government has already begun taking steps in this direction, with the FDA last year revoking its authorization of artificial dye red number three due to possible cancer links. A number of states, red and blue, are going even beyond that, sprinting to ban even more artificial additives. Toby, the wind is behind the sails of the artificial dye removal movement.
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Inflation Cools More Than Expected & 'Pokémon GO' Heads to Saudi Arabia
Now, these companies have to figure out what their next moves are.
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Inflation Cools More Than Expected & 'Pokémon GO' Heads to Saudi Arabia
Does Vanna White have the best job in the world? On a recent radio appearance, the Wheel of Fortune co-host delivered the shocking news that she works just 34 days a year, meaning she gets 331 days off. And the pay is pretty good, too.
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Inflation Cools More Than Expected & 'Pokémon GO' Heads to Saudi Arabia
So how important is artificial dye, that neon cheeto color, to sales? Are we humans so obsessed with these very bright colors that it's so important for food companies to include them in their products? Well, if you go back through history, there are maybe some mixed messages. General Mills took artificial food dye out of their cereal in 2016. That includes Trix.
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Inflation Cools More Than Expected & 'Pokémon GO' Heads to Saudi Arabia
What they found was that people will not buy Trix that has muted colors. A year later, they put the artificial dye back in their cereals, back in Trix. So that was a warning sign to the industry. Then again, for every Trix debacle, there is a Kraft Heinz product. success story.
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Inflation Cools More Than Expected & 'Pokémon GO' Heads to Saudi Arabia
Kraft Heinz also that year took out artificial dye from their mac and cheese, and that didn't seem to affect sales at all. So we really don't know exactly how obsessed consumers are with these artificial dyes. Maybe some mixed messages throughout history.
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Inflation Cools More Than Expected & 'Pokémon GO' Heads to Saudi Arabia
After not getting a raise for 18 years, White reportedly negotiated a new contract that gave her a substantial pay increase above her existing $3 million per year salary. On the days she does work, it does sound pretty intense. The show films six episodes per day, which requires six wardrobe changes. Come on, feel bad for me, White said. Toby, do you feel bad for her?
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Inflation Cools More Than Expected & 'Pokémon GO' Heads to Saudi Arabia
This is kind of an admission by Niantic that they couldn't really find another success story after Pokemon Go. Pokemon Go is estimated to have brought in $8 billion in revenue since launching in 2016. Last year, it was the second highest grossing mobile game. But beyond Pokemon Go, this company, which spun out of Google in 2015, really hasn't been able to find another hit on their hands.
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Inflation Cools More Than Expected & 'Pokémon GO' Heads to Saudi Arabia
So they're, you know, selling Pokemon Go and their other stable of games and pivoting to this geospatial AI sector where they want to essentially create large language models, chat GPT, but for locations and geography. So it is kind of acknowledgement that, hey, we captured lightning in the bottle here, but we couldn't find the magic anywhere else.
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Inflation Cools More Than Expected & 'Pokémon GO' Heads to Saudi Arabia
And so here you go, Saudi Arabia, you want to get into gaming. Why don't you take it off our hands?
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Inflation Cools More Than Expected & 'Pokémon GO' Heads to Saudi Arabia
And Saudi Arabia is absolutely taking over the games world. They've earmarked nearly $40 billion to build an industry there. Last summer, they hosted the Esports World Cup, handed out $60 million in prizes. And then in 2027, they're working with the International Olympic Committee to host the first ever Olympic Esports Games. So the center of the gaming universe is shifting to the Gulf.
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Inflation Cools More Than Expected & 'Pokémon GO' Heads to Saudi Arabia
So one day as I was scrolling the web, I got hit with an ad for patio furniture. Dude, I live in a small New York City apartment, not relevant. So if that's happening to me, imagine the incorrect spaces your B2B marketing could be ending up. If you want to reach the right professionals, start with LinkedIn ads.
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Inflation Cools More Than Expected & 'Pokémon GO' Heads to Saudi Arabia
LinkedIn has grown to a network of over 1 billion professionals and 130 million decision makers. And in this vast pool of potential, you can target your buyers by job title, industry, company role, skills, seniority, and more if you can't believe it. If you think you're wasting budget on the wrong audiences, stop that.
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Inflation Cools More Than Expected & 'Pokémon GO' Heads to Saudi Arabia
First and foremost, and start targeting the right people with LinkedIn ads instead. LinkedIn will even give you a $100 credit on your next campaign so you can take LinkedIn ads for a spin. Just go to LinkedIn.com slash MBD. That's LinkedIn.com slash MBD. Terms and conditions apply only on LinkedIn ads.
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Inflation Cools More Than Expected & 'Pokémon GO' Heads to Saudi Arabia
We've talked about the cruise industry's growth over the past few years, and after learning about Virgin Voyages, it's clear why they're so popular.
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Inflation Cools More Than Expected & 'Pokémon GO' Heads to Saudi Arabia
Some of them have a private terrace with a hand-woven hammock you can relax on while you enjoy the view of the sea. Plus, this year they're going to new places like Iceland, the British Isles, and San Juan. See what voyages you could embark on this year at virginvoyages.com or contact your travel advisor. That's virginvoyages.com.
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Inflation Cools More Than Expected & 'Pokémon GO' Heads to Saudi Arabia
Welcome to Neal's Numbers, the segment where I share three stats from the week's news that will get you as intoxicated as St. Patrick's Day. For my first number, y'all are clocking out way earlier from work than you used to. The average American workday now finishes up at 4.39 p.m., according to a new analysis from ActiveTrack.
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Inflation Cools More Than Expected & 'Pokémon GO' Heads to Saudi Arabia
That is 36 minutes earlier than just two years ago when the average workday concluded at 5.21 p.m., The report shows how our work schedules are still shifting dramatically in the era of more flexible arrangements since the pandemic. Another interesting finding, seasonality matters a lot in how and when we work.
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
It's all super luxe. Virgin Voyages also hits so many interesting destinations. On top of exotic ports throughout the Caribbean, they're launching themed summer cruises to the British Isles, Iceland, North America, and the Mediterranean.
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
Book now at virginvoyages.com or contact your travel advisor.
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
More and more, people are looking for ways to chill out without the need for a corkscrew.
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
And Delta Beverages is leading the charge as the first THC-infused seltzer to go fully mainstream as an alcohol alternative.
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
With over 7,000 positive reviews and counting from actual Delta drinkers, you can get 20% off your first order at drinkdelta.com. That's drinkdelta.com. Welcome to Neil's Numbers, the segment where I share three stats from the week's news that will send you through the four stages of enlightenment before breakfast.
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
My first number is a milestone for YouTube and its quest for world entertainment domination. People are now spending more time watching YouTube on their TVs than on their phones or desktop. That stat was revealed by YouTube CEO Neil Mohan in his annual letter on Tuesday, who pointed out, not incorrectly, that for more and more people, watching TV means watching YouTube.
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
The platform has made tweaks that have nudged people to fire up YouTube on their big screens instead of another streaming service, or as the olds would say it, cable. It added a season feature that makes it easier to flip through series of your favorite YouTube show. It also adjusted the layout of the TV app,
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
to let you pull up the comments and descriptions on one side of the screen while the video plays on the other. And then there's the content itself. It's really good, and it's led by creators who are becoming the startups of Hollywood, according to Moen.
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
He mentioned the trickshot posse Dude Perfect, which is building a $5 million headquarters in Texas, as well as Hot Ones, perhaps the most popular interview series around today. Tobi, perhaps an inflection point for YouTube in its 20th birthday year.
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
I went to the dentist the other day, five forms, and don't even get me started on tax season.
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
I can't imagine this. I think there's two kind of people in this world. One who, for this, this seems very familiar, just firing up the YouTube TV app and watching YouTube on TV. And then there's me and the rest of the people are like, what? Like, I would never watch YouTube on my TV. I would watch it on my computer.
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
So maybe there's this bifurcation and we're becoming an extinct species, apparently.
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
And we'll sit down and watch those. We need to move on. We need to move on. Okay. My second number is from GoFundMe, which said that people donated more than $250 million on its platform to victims of the Los Angeles wildfire since they broke out in January. That is $20 million more than GoFundMe helped collect for all natural disasters globally last year.
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
That $250 million was sent by more than 1 million donors across 160 countries and it includes money for victims of the fires as well as charities that are helping on the ground like World Central Kitchen and the Salvation Army. It is an astronomical number and makes you feel pretty
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
good about humanity, but crowdfunded efforts will not remotely cover the full cost of the wildfires, which is projected to reach into the tens of billions of dollars. Still, proponents say GoFundMe campaigns can make a small but meaningful impact on people's lives and make up some of the gap not covered by insurers, the government, or the private sector.
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
As one man who raised $12,000 after losing his home in the Eaton fire said, it's definitely helped. Every little bit counts.
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
Thankfully, Wise Business knows exactly where that little red and white striped whippersnapper is hiding. They simplify everything.
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
For my final number, I wrote a little Valentine's Day poem for you all. Roses are red, violets are blue, but where do they come from? Miami International Airport. Yes, odds are if you are giving or receiving flowers on Valentine's Day tomorrow, they are coming from Miami International, which is the dominant hub for flower cargo in the United States, the AP reported.
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
90% of fresh-cut flowers sold on the holiday pass through Miami, while the other 10% arrive into Los Angeles. Flowers are MIA's top imported product by weight, with nearly 360,000 tons coming into the airport every year. Why Miami? Because it is a quick flight from flower-producing powerhouses Columbia and Ecuador, which provide approximately 86% of all flowers imported to the US by air.
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
And the air network is extensive. 12 airlines provide cargo service from Colombia into Miami, while nine airlines offer freighter service from Ecuador. From January 1st through Valentine's Day, it is pedal to the metal at MIA to offload flowers from planes and place them on trucks to send across the country for you to buy.
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
In the run-up to the holiday, officials expect that more than 1,500 tons of cut flowers will arrive each day at the cargo terminal, which is a 3% increase from last year's record-breaking year. Business is blooming.
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
And that's probably why Miami has established itself as the flower cargo hub is because they have these inspectors who live there and they built the infrastructure around it. You really think that was an all-time Neal's number? That was a good one.
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
I want your full list. Put it in the Mount Rushmore. Okay, let's sprint to the finish with some final headlines. President Trump announced a surprise phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin, saying that they'll, quote, immediately begin talks to end the Ukraine war. The 90-minute chat broke years of silence between Washington and Moscow. It was the first official call between U.S.
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
and Russian presidents since Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. It's unclear where all this leaves Ukraine, which could be sidelined in talks about its future and with less leverage in negotiations. Trump called Ukraine's Vladimir Zelensky after his talk with Putin, perhaps symbolic. A chat he said went very well.
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
Oil prices fell 2% on the news that there's been some significant movement in resolving the end of the war that shook up the global economy.
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
I don't think, I don't think we're doing the vest on there. We're just doing straight cowboy hats down in Texas. But the funny part of this is there's already competition for stock exchanges in Texas because there's another upstart exchange called the Texas stock exchange that just applied with the sec to register. So the finance, the finance sector is getting super hot in Dallas.
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
Unlikely that it will challenge New York for supremacy anytime soon. But you are seeing an exodus of companies from the Northeast, from California to into Texas, and you're starting to see some more of the capital flows there, head there as well. So interesting times in Texas.
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
I don't know whether we're going to see, you know, Wall Street in Dallas, but, you know, that sector is certainly growing down in the Lone Star State. A stunning scientific discovery was announced yesterday. Researchers said they discovered a neutrino in the Mediterranean Sea that packs a real punch.
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
It's carrying 220 million billion electron volts of energy, which sounds like something Derek Zoolander made up, but it is a real number and about 30,000 times the energy generated by the biggest particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. It is believed to be the most energetic neutrino ever recorded on Earth.
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
Neutrinos, or cosmic messengers, are subatomic particles that are essentially weightless and devoid of electrical charge. They zoom around our universe like Dash from the Incredibles, slingshotted by what are known as cosmic accelerators, maybe a supermassive black hole consuming all the matter around it, or a huge burst of gamma rays.
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
So now the goal is to find just what astrophysical cataclysm sent this neutrino on its journey.
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
No comment. The fascination with this owl is like a foreign language to me. I don't understand, but you're right. This post went insanely viral, racking up tens of millions of views.
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
And then every other brand you can think of hopped in and had to chime in on the fate of the owl from Netflix, Pizza Hut, the World Health Organization decided that it was fair game to play in this sandbox with the owl. But again, another marketing masterclass from Duolingo, which has established this owl as one of the most beloved mascots, logos in the game right now.
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
And that's what, I mean, that's what planters did. They killed off Mr. Peanut before the Super Bowl, brought him back in baby form.
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
Okay, let's wrap it up there. Thanks so much for starting your morning with us and have a wonderful Thursday. For any questions, comments, or feedback, send an email to morningbrewdaily at morningbrew.com. And if you're enjoying the show, share it with a friend, family member, or coworker. Toby, who should everyone listening share it with today?
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
Let's roll the credits. Emily Milliron is our executive producer. Raymond Liu is our producer. Olivia Graham is our associate producer. Lonnie Fiscus is our technical director. Scoop Stardaris is on audio. Hair and Makeup can buy themselves flowers. Thank you very much. Devin Emery is our chief content officer and our show is a production of Morning Brew.
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
No, this is like the end of a Marvel movie where you think everything's going fine and then you see the next villain for the next movie and our heroes have to battle it out over the next installation in the franchise. And that's exactly what's happening here with inflation. The biggest monthly increase in one and a half years. You're right. Jerome Powell is like, well...
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
Hell no, I'm not cutting rates into this environment. We have strong job growth, low unemployment and really hot, hotter than expected and hotter than comfortable inflation. So the Fed is absolutely going to stay put and consumers are feeling the pinch right now with, you said,
Morning Brew Daily
Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, a TikTok war has broken out between prebiotic soda brands, and the only winner is gut health.
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
pretty much every category across the board, especially those consumer ones, groceries, gas, airfares, prescription drugs, all went up significantly. And so this is what we're living with. There's no, the disinflation that has occurred over the past year and a half has hit a wall.
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
But just the expectation of inflation coming up could spur inflation itself. It's that self-fulfilling prophecy that economists warn about because say you're expecting inflation in the future, which we know U.S. consumers are. There was that big consumer expectation reading last Friday that showed a huge jump in inflation predictions because you're going to start
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
buying stuff now because it's only going to get more expensive. That drives more demand, that drives price increases. You're seeing this in the auto industry already. Trump has threatened tariffs, 25% tariffs on Mexico and Canada, which would, according to the Ford CEO, cause chaos.
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
in the auto industry, people are going to buy that car now if they're thinking about it over a three to six month span. You're like, why would I wait until maybe these tariffs come in and the price of a car is going to go up $3,000 on average. So just the expectation of inflation creates inflation itself.
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
Yeah, that 15 percent increase was the biggest monthly increase since 2015. And you already see large grocers like Costco, all these Trader Joe's limiting the amount that people can buy. So we really are in an egg shock, egg crisis right now. Startups named after things in the Lord of the Rings are upending the existing order in the U.S. defense industry.
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
You already know that Palantir, the military-focused data analytics company, was the best-performing stock in the S&P 500 last year. Now, Anduril, named after the sword that was reforged from the shards of Narsil in Rivendell, is making its move. The defense upstart is taking over Microsoft's $22 billion contract to make high-tech goggles for the US Army.
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
Known as the Integrated Visual Augmentation System program, it was supposed to equip soldiers with mixed reality headsets for things like identifying drones quickly or night vision capabilities. But Microsoft fumbled the bag over the past few years and now, pending Pentagon approval, will take over the project.
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
It's a breakthrough for Andrew Riel and its CEO, Palmer Luckey, who you maybe remember from founding virtual reality headset company Oculus and selling it to Facebook for $2 billion. In a blog post, he wrote that everything in his life has led to this moment, saying that he first recognized the combat potential for high-tech goggles when he was a teenager.
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
Get ready for a whole lot more Legolands in California. In response to President Trump's efforts to buy Greenland from Denmark, a satirical petition has been set up to raise money for Denmark to buy California. And as of yesterday, it's gained over 230,000 signatures.
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
If you think that sounds crazy, Lucky would agree with you. He wrote, Gandalf's hair just went from gray to white.
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
Yeah, I mean, the rise of Anduril has been pretty breathtaking. So Lucky founded it in 2017. That's three years after he sold Oculus VR to Facebook for $2 billion. That relationship did not go well, so he kind of got booted from Facebook, and then he started this other company. They are about to raise another round of funding at $28 billion. They are pledging to build...
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
A factory in Ohio that will cost them $1 billion. And this factory will produce the things that Lucky and the other defense upstarts think that the prime contractors don't do well and represent the new wave of army tech and how we fight wars, which is drones, AI, everything autonomous. They're looking at what's happening in the war in Ukraine and saying, This is the future of warfare.
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
And Northrop Grumman, Lockheed, Boeing, Raytheon, these companies are not prepared. The government procurement system is completely shattered right now. And we want to change what's going on. So they're banding with Palantir, OpenAI, SpaceX. They're forming, you might want to call it a fellowship. to bid on new contracts.
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
The goal, according to the petition's Swiss-French organizer, is to raise $1 trillion, give or take a few billion, to purchase California from Trump. and comment on the absurdity of the US wanting to buy Greenland. Toby, are the people ready for Disneyland to become Hans Christian Andersen Land?
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
And this is a massive market because the Pentagon spends $850 billion each year. So look out for these new defense tech companies. They raised a record amount of funding last year, $3 billion, and they are coming for these legacy defense contractors.
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
It has a lot of cash, and it's now locked in a TikTok fight with one of its main competitors, and this all started at the Super Bowl when Poppy bought a 60-second ad, so that's probably $14 million right now during the Super Bowl. You may have seen that. You may have not, but the real beef started when Poppy sent, and I might get Poppy and You're doing great so far. Very similar names.
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
But Poppy sent 32 vending machines full of their beverages to influencers. And these were like pretty fancy vending machines. And the idea was they would post on TikTok and Instagram and just blow up Poppy in accordance with their preferences. Super Bowl commercial, but that received a lot of backlash online. You know, some TikTok users are saying, why didn't you do a more community focused event?
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
This is just ostentatious, things like that. And then Olipop got in the comments for some reason, which we can talk about and kind of hyped up the backlash a little bit, saying that these vending machines cost twenty five thousand dollars and kind of added to the pig pile that was happening on Olipop right now. So it was
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
The prebiotic soda brands were fighting on TikTok over the past couple of days in a spat that has really captured the minds of a lot of people in the marketing industry.
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
There's a lot of money at stake. Do you think sending vending machines to influencers was a mistake in hindsight?
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
Listen to this fresh take on cruises. Let's hear it. Virgin Voyages is not your average cruise line. Let's start with the food. You get access to more than 20 eateries on board with menus curated by Michelin star chefs.
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Trump Announces 90-Day Tariff Pause & Drones Deliver Your Packages?
Bold words, especially because I'm pretty sure it's data.
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Trump Announces 90-Day Tariff Pause & Drones Deliver Your Packages?
You can even use your own phone with any Mint mobile plan and bring your phone number along with all your existing contacts.
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Trump Announces 90-Day Tariff Pause & Drones Deliver Your Packages?
Shop data plans at mintmobile.com slash morningbrew. That's mintmobile.com slash morningbrew. Upfront payment of $45 for 3-month 5GB plan required, equivalent to $15 a month. New customer offer for first 3 months only, then full price plan options available. Taxes and fees extra. See Mint Mobile for details.
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Trump Announces 90-Day Tariff Pause & Drones Deliver Your Packages?
Welcome to Neil's numbers, the segment where I share three stats from the week's news that will hopefully take your mind off of tariffs for just a few minutes. My first number is under six hours, which is how long it took one city in Japan to build an entirely new train station. And it's not just any train station.
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Trump Announces 90-Day Tariff Pause & Drones Deliver Your Packages?
It's the world's first 3D printed train station building, the railway operators say. It all went down a few weeks ago in the quiet seaside town of Arita. One night, the last train left the station at 11.57 p.m., and that's when they got to work.
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Trump Announces 90-Day Tariff Pause & Drones Deliver Your Packages?
Employees of the construction firm Serendix took the pre-painted parts, which had been fabricated elsewhere and shipped in four parts, and pieced them together using help from a large crane. By 5.45 a.m., when the first train arrived, they were done with the new station, which measures just over 100 feet.
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Trump Announces 90-Day Tariff Pause & Drones Deliver Your Packages?
well mostly done they still haven't furnished the interior with ticket machines and card readers so travelers won't be able to use it until july still the six hour 3d printed train station could be a blueprint for how japan and the rest of the world maintains railway infrastructure on the cheap and it's completely mind-blowing for those of us who watch san francisco take three years to install a public bathroom
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Trump Announces 90-Day Tariff Pause & Drones Deliver Your Packages?
Yeah, it's more of a hut than a station. But that's fine. Yeah, this train station serves, you know, 500 riders a day. But you do need to maintain it on the cheap. And maybe these 3D printed prefabricated huts or stations, if you will, will do just that. For my next number, and warning, this is not going to make you feel great.
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Trump Announces 90-Day Tariff Pause & Drones Deliver Your Packages?
A study from researchers in a New Mexico lab found that the median concentration of microplastics in a human brain was about seven grams of plastic per brain, or in other words, as much plastic as in five water bottle caps or a disposable spoon. Some caveats, the researchers looked at 24 human brains from 2024, and there is a high degree of uncertainty because of the methods used.
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Trump Announces 90-Day Tariff Pause & Drones Deliver Your Packages?
Still, it was alarming to the scientists nonetheless. Toxicologist Matthew Campin, who leads the lab, told the New York Times, I don't think I've talked to a single person who said, fantastic, love to know that there's all this plastic in my brain. Campin and his team are on a mission to discover to what extent microplastics have infiltrated humans because it is rising at a breathtaking rate.
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Trump Announces 90-Day Tariff Pause & Drones Deliver Your Packages?
The human brain samples from 2024 had almost 50% more microplastics than brain samples from 2016, and it adds to other recent studies that have found microplastics in human testes, placenta, blood, semen, breast milk, and a baby's first stool.
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Trump Announces 90-Day Tariff Pause & Drones Deliver Your Packages?
The health implications of microplastics are not yet well understood, but a first step to getting to that answer is just simply measuring the amount of plastic in the body And it's an astonishing amount.
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Trump Announces 90-Day Tariff Pause & Drones Deliver Your Packages?
Polyethylene.
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Trump Announces 90-Day Tariff Pause & Drones Deliver Your Packages?
Okay, that is a dumb question.
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Trump Announces 90-Day Tariff Pause & Drones Deliver Your Packages?
Okay, time for a palate cleanser. My final number is 100, which is how old the Great Gatsby is today. F. Scott Fitzgerald's Masterful Exploration of the American Dream was published exactly one century ago, April 10th, 1925, and has endured on high school reading lists and in culture
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Till this day, even though many of you read it in your younger and more vulnerable years, the main characters will be forever etched in your memory. Nick Carraway, Daisy Buchanan, Jay Gatsby himself. And it feels like we're all still being watched by the blue and gigantic eyes of Dr. T.J. Eggelberg.
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Trump Announces 90-Day Tariff Pause & Drones Deliver Your Packages?
Lots of celebrations are planned, including the Empire State Building being lit green tomorrow night to reference the great Gatsby's green light, which no one still knows how to interpret 100 years later. two eggs because that's all I can afford. How are you celebrating?
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Trump Announces 90-Day Tariff Pause & Drones Deliver Your Packages?
Well, Tax Act is available 24-7, so summon away. It's built for whenever you want to file day, night, 3 a.m. panic session. Doesn't matter. What if I hit a wall emotionally or numerically? They've still got you. TaxAct's Expert Assist gives you access to real tax pros who can help with the tricky stuff no matter the time.
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Trump Announces 90-Day Tariff Pause & Drones Deliver Your Packages?
It truly is, and I'm so excited. And so are many people who got the chance to go to Augusta, Georgia. The Airbnb market is insane right now. 16,400 nights have been booked this week at Airbnb and VRBO. 11% higher than Master's Week in 2024 represents $8.5 million in booked revenue.
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Trump Announces 90-Day Tariff Pause & Drones Deliver Your Packages?
There's a joke that goes around these neighborhoods saying that a family, you can rent your home during Master's Week and pay for that this year's mortgage that, um, that airport is also overrun with private jets. Everyone wants a piece of this golf course and this tournament and this event because of the mystique around it. And maybe one day we'll go.
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Trump Announces 90-Day Tariff Pause & Drones Deliver Your Packages?
Yeah, it's a very interesting agreement with CBS and ESPN where they just say, like, let's handshake. You don't have to pay us, but we do have full editorial control. Final thing, Scotty Scheffler...
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Trump Announces 90-Day Tariff Pause & Drones Deliver Your Packages?
who won last year gets to curate the champions dinner which takes place tuesday night and he gets to you know make up a menu and i want to hear you grade this he cheeseburger sliders firecrackers shrimp and meatball and ravioli bites for appetizers a texas style chili for the first course wood-fired cowboy ribeye or blackened redfish for the main course and then for dessert a warm chocolate chip skillet cookie seems basic first of all but also seems delicious
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Trump Announces 90-Day Tariff Pause & Drones Deliver Your Packages?
One more bad question, you're out of here.
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Trump Announces 90-Day Tariff Pause & Drones Deliver Your Packages?
All right, let's wrap it up there. Thanks so much for starting your morning with us and have a wonderful Thursday. For any questions, comments, or feedback, please send an email to morningbrewdaily at morningbrew.com. Let's roll the credits. Emily Milliron is our executive producer. Raymond Liu is our producer. Our associate producers are Olivia Graham and Olivia Lake. Garrett Peck is on audio.
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Trump Announces 90-Day Tariff Pause & Drones Deliver Your Packages?
Hair and makeup beats on. Votes against the current. Born back ceaselessly into the past. Devin Emery is our president, and our show is a production of Morning Brew.
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Trump Announces 90-Day Tariff Pause & Drones Deliver Your Packages?
Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, Trump paused most tariffs and the S&P 500 had its best day since 2008. Hope you bought the dip.
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Trump Announces 90-Day Tariff Pause & Drones Deliver Your Packages?
The market did go ballistic. I mean, 24 hours ago, we were sitting here saying that retailers big shift away from China for their production to Vietnam. Malaysia had backfired spectacularly because now these countries were being hit with tariffs of up to 46 percent in the case of Vietnam.
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Trump Announces 90-Day Tariff Pause & Drones Deliver Your Packages?
24 hours later, now that seemed like a much better bet because these tariffs have been mostly removed, just 10%. And you're seeing that in the share prices of retailers. Nike up 12%, Walmart up 11%, Lululemon 16% gap, 19%. The S&P 500's Consumer Discretionary Index had its largest gain since 2008. So those moves did seem to be okay after all. Another sector I want to point out is airlines.com.
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Trump Announces 90-Day Tariff Pause & Drones Deliver Your Packages?
And that's because Delta earlier in the day, as these tariffs were supposedly in effect, said ripped up their full year financial forecast. They said demand is weak. We have no idea what the heck is going to happen because of these tariffs and its impact on consumer spending.
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Trump Announces 90-Day Tariff Pause & Drones Deliver Your Packages?
A few hours later, its stock rises up 23 percent because there is a little more clarity, not a ton of clarity at all, but a little more clarity about the future direction of these tariffs.
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Trump Announces 90-Day Tariff Pause & Drones Deliver Your Packages?
Analysts and economists coming out saying, well, this was very much a relief to markets. The damage is done. KPMG's chief economist, Diane Swank, said market relief is a head fake unless the administration makes a major course correction. Uncertainty is its own tax on the economy. Analysts at Deutsche Bank said something very similar.
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Trump Announces 90-Day Tariff Pause & Drones Deliver Your Packages?
They wrote, the administration is finally signaling responsiveness to the very extreme market conditions. But even if the tariffs are permanently suspended, damage has been done to the economy via a permanent sense of unpredictability in policy. They're still...
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Trump Announces 90-Day Tariff Pause & Drones Deliver Your Packages?
huge tariffs on place by the way 125 on chinese imports this is the largest economy in the world the u.s putting a 125 percent uh tariff on the second largest economy in the world trade is going to come to a halt between these two countries unless a deal is reached 25% on steel, aluminum, autos, and all goods not covered by the U.S., Mexico, Canada trade agreement.
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Trump Announces 90-Day Tariff Pause & Drones Deliver Your Packages?
10% on nearly all other imports. So there's still very, very heavy tariffs across the board. If you had said that at the beginning of the year that we would have 125% tariffs on China, 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico, and 10% on nearly every single other good that is imported by the United States, you would have said, well, that is a lot of tariffs, and that is what
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Trump Announces 90-Day Tariff Pause & Drones Deliver Your Packages?
Who among us hasn't left something valuable in an Uber? Maybe it was your phone or AirPods that you had to scramble to recover. Others leave a lot weirder things behind. Uber just released its lost and found index for 2025, which lists the most unique items riders left in cars. They include a mannequin head with human hair, a chainsaw, a live pet turtle.
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Trump Announces 90-Day Tariff Pause & Drones Deliver Your Packages?
these economists are saying is going to serve as an overhang for the economy going forward. In explaining his reversal on massive tariffs, President Trump pointed to the turmoil in the bond market specifically, which he said was getting a little queasy. So here's what's been going on
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Trump Announces 90-Day Tariff Pause & Drones Deliver Your Packages?
over there and why it likely forced his hand since last weekend something very strange and very dangerous has been going on with u.s treasury yields they've been spiking in fact the 10 years four day jump through wednesday was the biggest since 2008. remember soaring yields equates to a bond fire sale because yields run inversely to prices This dynamic was rattling Wall Street.
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Trump Announces 90-Day Tariff Pause & Drones Deliver Your Packages?
Investors have always bought American bonds when the global economy gets jittery. Treasuries are the bedrock of global finance and probably the safest asset money can buy. So investors were feeling like they just entered the upside down in Stranger Things. Why the sell-off? Well, everyone has their own theory.
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Trump Announces 90-Day Tariff Pause & Drones Deliver Your Packages?
Some said it was being driven by highly levered hedge fund trades that were being blown up. Others hypothesized that large foreign buyers of treasuries like China and Japan were dumping them in retaliation for tariffs. And in the most pessimistic of scenarios, some claim that the selling of treasuries reflects a new era where the U.S. isn't considered the safe haven it used to be.
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Trump Announces 90-Day Tariff Pause & Drones Deliver Your Packages?
Whatever the cause of the bond sell-off, it was verging on a full-blown financial crisis that would require an emergency intervention by the Federal Reserve, and that would have been untenable for Trump. So according to multiple reports, the bond plunge, even more so than the stock plunge, led him to the 90-day pause because things were about to start breaking.
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Trump Announces 90-Day Tariff Pause & Drones Deliver Your Packages?
this is not the first time that a uh spiking yields or the bond market turmoil had led a world leader to capitulate on their uh big economic plans back in 2022 you might remember the new uk prime minister liz truss unveiled this new budget sweeping tax cuts A lot of borrowing from the government from the government to pay for that government bonds spiked.
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Trump Announces 90-Day Tariff Pause & Drones Deliver Your Packages?
It was a almost a full blown financial crisis. The Bank of England had to step in and she pulled that budget off the table and then later resigned. So the bond market is extremely powerful. The Bank of England in that case had to intervene and the Federal Reserve might have had to in a few days if things didn't calm down. And, you know, that seems to have forced Trump's hand.
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Trump Announces 90-Day Tariff Pause & Drones Deliver Your Packages?
10 live lobsters, a Viking drinking horn, a taxidermied rabbit, and someone's divorce papers. Toby, kind of wish I shared a ride with a person drinking from the Viking horn.
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Trump Announces 90-Day Tariff Pause & Drones Deliver Your Packages?
Yeah, some in the industry are saying that this is a logistics revolution that we haven't seen in many years. And Zipline is at the forefront, which is remarkable because it's competing against huge players like Amazon, who's been trying to get drone delivery going for a decade, and Alphabet's Wing. That's under Google. So they have as much money in the world as they want.
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Trump Announces 90-Day Tariff Pause & Drones Deliver Your Packages?
But Zipline is kind of this underdog that has come to be a leader. Fascinating company. They first started in Rwanda in 2016, delivering vaccines and other medical supplies over this vast expanse of Africa. And that's where they really cut their teeth. A 2023 study from the Wharton School found that Zipline's blood delivery service reduced deaths from postpartum hemorrhage by 51 percent.
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Trump Announces 90-Day Tariff Pause & Drones Deliver Your Packages?
So, you know, in a area where delivery via road is not feasible, you know, these drones have been able to step in very successfully. And now they're going to an area where delivery on roads are feasible. And we'll see how many people start ordering via drones in Texas.
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Trump Announces 90-Day Tariff Pause & Drones Deliver Your Packages?
Have you heard what's happening in Ohio lately?
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Trump Announces 90-Day Tariff Pause & Drones Deliver Your Packages?
That's right. Since it's both a private and a nonprofit corporation, Jobs Ohio is uniquely positioned to give companies very hands-on support with complete confidentiality.
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Trump Announces 90-Day Tariff Pause & Drones Deliver Your Packages?
It helps that Ohio has the third largest manufacturing workforce in the U.S. and the cost of living is 5.8% lower than the national average.
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Trump Announces 90-Day Tariff Pause & Drones Deliver Your Packages?
Do you say data or data?
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Markets Fear Recession is Near & Scientists Create Woolly Mammoth... Mice?
In my experience, a few things stand out, like leading by example, taking risks and being passionate.
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Markets Fear Recession is Near & Scientists Create Woolly Mammoth... Mice?
Explore the Range Rover Sport at rangerover.com slash us slash sport. That's rangerover.com slash us slash sport. Welcome to Neil's Numbers, the segment where I share three stats from the week's news that will send you to a higher plane of consciousness. My first number is a warning to everyone planning to see your favorite musical artist this summer.
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Start saving now because the Pink Pony Club flies first class. Tickets for concerts have exploded in recent years, far outpacing inflation and transforming concert going into a luxury good few can reasonably afford. Since this is Neil's numbers, here are some numbers per The New York Times. In 1996, the average ticket price for the top 100 tours was around $26, or $52 adjusted for inflation.
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Markets Fear Recession is Near & Scientists Create Woolly Mammoth... Mice?
By last year, that had surged to almost $136. When Bruce Springsteen went on his Born to Run tour about 50 years ago, you could see him for as little as $44 adjusted for inflation. Tickets for Taylor Swift's Heiress Tour, which began in 2023, averaged $1,088. In all, concert ticket prices increased by nearly 400% from 1981 to 2012, compared to inflation's 150% rise.
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Markets Fear Recession is Near & Scientists Create Woolly Mammoth... Mice?
And that was way before the end of COVID brought a spike in demand among people looking to get out of the house and experience life again. Toby, in a recent survey of 1,000 members of Gen Z, 86% said they overspent on live events.
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Markets Fear Recession is Near & Scientists Create Woolly Mammoth... Mice?
It's just unfathomable these days. For my next number, the number of marriages in China plunged 20% last year to a record low of 6.1 million, which is less than half the number registered in 2013. And some companies think they can help solve the depopulation crisis.
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Markets Fear Recession is Near & Scientists Create Woolly Mammoth... Mice?
Taking We're a Family Here to the next level, one Chinese chemical manufacturer sent a message to unmarried employees recently, giving them an ultimatum to start popping out babies by September 30th or else get fired. Quoted in the New York Times, the memo read, The memo went viral on social media and not in a good way.
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Markets Fear Recession is Near & Scientists Create Woolly Mammoth... Mice?
People criticized the order as tone-deaf and representative of the reasons China's millennials are shying away from parenthood to begin with. They want people to stop telling them what to do with their lives and bodies. In response to the backlash, the company withdrew the memo and the local government ordered it to undergo, quote,
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Markets Fear Recession is Near & Scientists Create Woolly Mammoth... Mice?
Toby, this feels like something Lumen would try to pull off in severance.
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Markets Fear Recession is Near & Scientists Create Woolly Mammoth... Mice?
For my final number, the NBA's Dallas Mavericks are raising season ticket prices by more than 8%. And talk about not reading the room. The price hike comes as Mavericks fans are suffering through one of the most miserable months in sports history.
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Markets Fear Recession is Near & Scientists Create Woolly Mammoth... Mice?
The Mavs said that prices were going up due to, quote, ongoing investments in the team and fan engagement and explained that full season ticket holders will save up to 23 percent compared to projected secondary market prices.
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Markets Fear Recession is Near & Scientists Create Woolly Mammoth... Mice?
But for fans, it was rich to mention ongoing investments in the team when general manager Nico Harrison traded away generational superstar Luka Doncic to the Lakers in February in one of the most flabbergasting, inexplicable trades seen in sports anywhere.
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Markets Fear Recession is Near & Scientists Create Woolly Mammoth... Mice?
How many times do I have to tell you, Toby? You don't have to tell me about your dreams while we're on air.
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Markets Fear Recession is Near & Scientists Create Woolly Mammoth... Mice?
Since that trade, Mavericks diehards have staged protests against management around their home arena and watched as more of their stars, such as Kyrie Irving, get injured and have to sit out the rest of what was once a promising season.
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Markets Fear Recession is Near & Scientists Create Woolly Mammoth... Mice?
Toby, one fan's post on social media pretty much sums up the state of despair, the audacity of this ownership group to come in and destroy the soul of the fan base, and then price gouge. It is disgusting.
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Markets Fear Recession is Near & Scientists Create Woolly Mammoth... Mice?
Well, the Mac has actually been one of the few bright spots for Apple as iPhone sales have stagnated. The Mac line in Q4 grew 16%, which is way more than expectations. And Tim Cook said that the MacBook Air was one of the reasons. And now he gives it a $100 price shave, even in the face of tariffs on China.
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Markets Fear Recession is Near & Scientists Create Woolly Mammoth... Mice?
And you can see that that might even spur more demand, which has already been pretty strong for these computers. Moving on, the world's largest iceberg has ran aground in the shallow waters near South Georgia in the South Atlantic, where it'll spend its final days gazing at macaroni penguins and elephant seals before melting and breaking up into a bunch of smaller bergs.
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Markets Fear Recession is Near & Scientists Create Woolly Mammoth... Mice?
This iceberg, named A23A, is almost unimaginably big. It weighs nearly 1 trillion tons, is larger than the state of Rhode Island, and has cliffs that tower over 1,300 feet. Scientists have been watching its moves with great curiosity ever since it broke off the continental Antarctic shelf in 1986 and later got stuck literally treading water in the Weddell Sea for about three decades.
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Markets Fear Recession is Near & Scientists Create Woolly Mammoth... Mice?
Toby, is the Titanic finally getting a sequel? Well, the Titanic looks puny in comparison.
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Markets Fear Recession is Near & Scientists Create Woolly Mammoth... Mice?
I hate to burst your big brain bubble, but it sounds like you were dreaming about the Invesco QQQ ETF. You can get access to the most innovative companies across the country in every one of those industries you were dreaming about. Well, in my dream, I could also fly. I will say DreamToby is a way better investor than AwakeToby.
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Markets Fear Recession is Near & Scientists Create Woolly Mammoth... Mice?
But also, you mentioned that Titanic Berg was much smaller, and that really is the danger for commercial fishing and shipping operations. When it's so big like this, you can easily avoid it. When it breaks up into a million small pieces, that's where it gets a little more dangerous. So look out. For the first time ever, the World Cup is getting a halftime show.
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Markets Fear Recession is Near & Scientists Create Woolly Mammoth... Mice?
Yesterday, FIFA announced that the final match of the 2026 tournament held at MetLife Stadium in our backyard of New Jersey will feature a Super Bowl-style halftime show. And here's the catch. The lineup will include a list of artists curated by Coldplay. It's going to be electric when Ed Sheeran performs his diss track for Benson Boone.
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Markets Fear Recession is Near & Scientists Create Woolly Mammoth... Mice?
All I can say is only in Florida, Neil. What is the resale value of this when it comes out the other end?
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Markets Fear Recession is Near & Scientists Create Woolly Mammoth... Mice?
Let's wrap it up there. Thanks so much for starting your morning with us and have a wonderful Thursday. This week is moving right along. For any questions, comments, or feedback, send an email to morningbrewdaily at morningbrew.com. And if you're enjoying the show, share it with a friend, family member, or coworker. Toby, who should everyone listening share it with today?
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Markets Fear Recession is Near & Scientists Create Woolly Mammoth... Mice?
Let's roll the credits. Emily Milliron is our executive producer. Raymond Liu is our producer. Olivia Graham is our associate producer. Eugenia Waogu is our technical director. Scoop Stardaris is on audio. Hair and Makeup is taking out a loan to see the Gracie Abrams show. Devin Emery is our chief content officer and our shows are production of Morning Brew.
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Markets Fear Recession is Near & Scientists Create Woolly Mammoth... Mice?
Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, the company trying to de-extinct the woolly mammoth is making progress. They just created woolly mice.
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Markets Fear Recession is Near & Scientists Create Woolly Mammoth... Mice?
Yeah, so Ford, GM, Stellantis, these executives got on the phone with Trump on Tuesday and said these tariffs are going to raise costs for us, and we're going to have to pass it on to consumers. Trump said, OK, I will grant you an exemption for one month, but you do have to qualify for a tariff-free crossing across the border under USMICA, I guess it's called, which is the U.S.-Mexico Convention
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Markets Fear Recession is Near & Scientists Create Woolly Mammoth... Mice?
Canada Free Trade Agreement, which is essentially NAFTA 2.0 that Trump crafted with Canada and Mexico in 2020. Any automaker covered under this agreement, you have a tariff-free passage across the border. To qualify, you need to have a certain percentage of your parts sourced from North America, and the goal there was to source more parts from North America.
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Markets Fear Recession is Near & Scientists Create Woolly Mammoth... Mice?
All these automakers said they comply, so they get a one-month reprieve. We still don't know what's going to happen at the end of this one-month exemption. And the vast majority of tariffs, 25 percent tariffs on Mexico and Canada, an additional 10 percent on China that were introduced on Tuesday, are still in effect.
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Markets Fear Recession is Near & Scientists Create Woolly Mammoth... Mice?
So when you look at companies like Target that said they were going to raise prices for produce coming across the Mexico border, Best Buy as well. Those are still in place, which will only extend the stock market jitters and perhaps some of those economic warning signs that you mentioned.
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Markets Fear Recession is Near & Scientists Create Woolly Mammoth... Mice?
Well, we'll find actually some hard data coming out tomorrow with the jobs report. That'll be very closely watched given the widespread cuts across the government that Doge is doing. And it's the really, you know, you talked about the soft data that we've been getting these surveys. Well, this is hard data of how many jobs were added today.
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Markets Fear Recession is Near & Scientists Create Woolly Mammoth... Mice?
Yesterday, there was a private survey of jobs that ADP does, which is essentially the preview of the government jobs report. And that also did not look very good. Seventy seven thousand jobs were added, according to ADP, which is about half of expectations. So this jobs report is going to be so key tomorrow morning.
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Markets Fear Recession is Near & Scientists Create Woolly Mammoth... Mice?
Like your company's CEO during peak COVID, the federal government is trying to shed its vacant or underutilized office space in a doge-led attempt to cut down on costs. On Tuesday, the real estate arm of the government, the General Services Administration, posted a list online of 443 properties it was considering selling, saying these properties were, quote, not core to government operations.
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Markets Fear Recession is Near & Scientists Create Woolly Mammoth... Mice?
If you were on social media at all last year, you probably saw this viral picture of a Flamin' Hot Cheeto that uncannily resembles the rare Pokemon Charizard. Well, that single Cheeto, dubbed Cheetosard, has now been sold at auction for $88,000 to an anonymous buyer who beat out 60 other offers for the prize. And what is the prize?
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Markets Fear Recession is Near & Scientists Create Woolly Mammoth... Mice?
The list was sweeping in scope, covering buildings in 47 states and and including prominent structures in Washington, D.C., such as the headquarters of the DOJ, Social Security Administration, and Census Bureau. But then, a plot twist. Before anyone could place a bid, the list was pared back by 100 properties later on Tuesday, and then by Wednesday morning, it vanished altogether.
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Markets Fear Recession is Near & Scientists Create Woolly Mammoth... Mice?
Instead, a message was posted on the GSA website reading, "'Non-core property list coming soon.'" Whatever buildings the final list contains, the prospect of the government ditching its vast real estate portfolio has received both support and criticism.
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Markets Fear Recession is Near & Scientists Create Woolly Mammoth... Mice?
But it certainly sent shockwaves through a commercial real estate sector that is still trying to recover after its worst downturn since World War Two. Washington, D.C., which is especially vulnerable to a government real estate fire sale, ended 2024 with an office vacancy rate at a near record 19.9 percent.
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Markets Fear Recession is Near & Scientists Create Woolly Mammoth... Mice?
Now, some D.C. officials might be happy to see the government shed office space and have a private sector employer move in because the federal government is tax exempt for paying property taxes. So they're taking up all this space in your downtown, which would really help your tax rolls if someone was actually paying taxes.
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Markets Fear Recession is Near & Scientists Create Woolly Mammoth... Mice?
So they are in support of generally moving the government out of these buildings if they are underutilized, if they are vacant and get a private sector employer to move in. The question is, Say you're a private company and you see the Department of Agriculture give up their big office space. That is not a new building.
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Markets Fear Recession is Near & Scientists Create Woolly Mammoth... Mice?
And the data show that private sector employers don't really want to move into older buildings. They want to move into, you know, the Hudson Yards of D.C. if those exist. Trophy and Class A plus buildings account for just 23%. of DC's inventory, but they've captured 59% of all private sector relocation volume since 2020.
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Markets Fear Recession is Near & Scientists Create Woolly Mammoth... Mice?
So if you're a private company that wants to move HQs, the chances are that you would want to move to a government building that is not new is quite low.
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Markets Fear Recession is Near & Scientists Create Woolly Mammoth... Mice?
And we had the list go up 443 properties. We had the list go down. And then we had a message saying, we'll let you know what the properties are for sale in the future. So it is just a waiting game at this point.
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Markets Fear Recession is Near & Scientists Create Woolly Mammoth... Mice?
According to the auction house, Cheetosard comes affixed to a customized Charizard card and encapsulated in a clear card storage box, presumably to keep this piece of processed cornmeal from decaying. Toby, I decided not to bid on this one. I'm waiting for the Pikachu-shaped Cheez-It.
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Markets Fear Recession is Near & Scientists Create Woolly Mammoth... Mice?
Is this marketing hype? Is this a technological breakthrough? The answer is yes. All of the above. There might be a little, you know, this PR team on Colossal Works overtime at any time. They probably make some genetic tweaks to an animal that scientists can already do, nothing that's new before. They can put out a press release and we'll all cover it because these mice are so adorable.
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Markets Fear Recession is Near & Scientists Create Woolly Mammoth... Mice?
But there appears to be truly a technological breakthrough here because what Colossal is trying to do is edit genes of animals simultaneously, multiple genes simultaneously, and that is a technique that hasn't really been done before. They're using these new techniques brought about by technologies like CRISPR.
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Markets Fear Recession is Near & Scientists Create Woolly Mammoth... Mice?
And some independent scientists are looking at what Colossal is doing and saying, hey, this is actually innovation here. So in their pursuit of the woolly mammoth, or we should really say this, it's not going to be a woolly mammoth. It's going to be a genetically engineered Asian elephant to resemble certain traits of a woolly mammoth, like being able to, you know, weather the cold weather.
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Markets Fear Recession is Near & Scientists Create Woolly Mammoth... Mice?
Then that is pretty impressive. And you are making some real progress along the way.
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Markets Fear Recession is Near & Scientists Create Woolly Mammoth... Mice?
And how are they going to make money is the question. And they already have spun out two health care companies from this progress. So maybe that's the way. They're going to create these new technological innovations as they're trying to create woolly mammoths. That will lead to commercialization opportunities because they're worth $10 billion. They've raised over $400 million.
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Markets Fear Recession is Near & Scientists Create Woolly Mammoth... Mice?
Those investors are going to be expecting some sort of return. And that return may not exactly be so satisfying if it's just 10,000 quasi-woolly mammoths. Gromping around the tundra.
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Fed Workers Weigh Trump’s Buyout Offer & Tesla Sales Struggle in Europe
Trust in the federal government is abnormally low, while youth depression is abnormally high. As one historian at Hillsdale College summed it up, we're so wealthy but so unhappy.
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Fed Workers Weigh Trump’s Buyout Offer & Tesla Sales Struggle in Europe
Toby's tallies right there. Ladies and gentlemen. I hijacked your segment there. It was great. I learned a lot. Okay, for my second number, here's a question that's asked frequently. Who talks more, men or women? Many people would say women, and that'd be correct for the most part.
Morning Brew Daily
Fed Workers Weigh Trump’s Buyout Offer & Tesla Sales Struggle in Europe
According to a large new study out of University of Arizona, researchers found that women spoke on average about 3,000 more words per day than their male counterparts. But there's a catch. This is only holding true between the ages of... This only holds true between the ages of 25 and 65.
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Fed Workers Weigh Trump’s Buyout Offer & Tesla Sales Struggle in Europe
Significant gender differences did not appear in the study's other age cohorts such as in adolescence or older adulthood. This was a closely watched study because it was from the same researchers who published a viral paper in 2007, or whatever the virality was in 2007, that pushed back on the stereotype that women gab more than men.
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Fed Workers Weigh Trump’s Buyout Offer & Tesla Sales Struggle in Europe
That study found that men and women speak roughly the same number of words per day. But that 2007 study was quite limited in scope. So over a decade later, the same researchers decided to blow up the sample size and geographic reach to get a more comprehensive sense of chattiness differences between genders.
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Fed Workers Weigh Trump’s Buyout Offer & Tesla Sales Struggle in Europe
And they found that women do talk more than men during the life stages of early and middle adulthood.
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Fed Workers Weigh Trump’s Buyout Offer & Tesla Sales Struggle in Europe
We all know some chatterboxes, and we love them. For my final number, what could be the world's most expensive musical instrument is up for auction tomorrow at Sotheby's in New York. No, it's not Toby's recorder from middle school. It's a violin made from the famed Antonio Stradivari in 1714, and it could fetch anywhere from $20,000. $12 million to $18 million.
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Fed Workers Weigh Trump’s Buyout Offer & Tesla Sales Struggle in Europe
At the top end of the range, it beat out the current record holder, another Stradivarius made in 1721. So why is this violin so remarkable? First, the guy who made it, Stradivari, is considered the best violin maker ever, even if he was toiling in a shop 300 years ago in Italy. Violinists rave about the richness and tone they can get from his instruments.
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Fed Workers Weigh Trump’s Buyout Offer & Tesla Sales Struggle in Europe
Top soloist Joshua Bell compared it to being a painter and having access to thousands of colors to paint from rather than dozens of colors. Second, this violin has gotten a halo effect by the people who have owned it before. Violin virtuosos Joseph Joachim of Hungary and Sihon Ma of China, who gifted it to the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston upon his death.
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Fed Workers Weigh Trump’s Buyout Offer & Tesla Sales Struggle in Europe
Toby, this is the most fit of fiddle you'll ever see.
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Fed Workers Weigh Trump’s Buyout Offer & Tesla Sales Struggle in Europe
And so I wonder who's going to buy it. I know. And Griffin step in here. I don't know. You know, he's the guy who buys the T-Rex and he buys the U.S. Constitution. But, you know, players can't afford it. So usually you have these big pocketed philanthropists or donors who come in, buy these expensive Stradivari and then.
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Fed Workers Weigh Trump’s Buyout Offer & Tesla Sales Struggle in Europe
lend it out to virtuoso performers to play it at Carnegie Hall or Boston Symphony Hall or whatever. But I think one of the coolest parts about this is that it was donated to the New England Conservatory.
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Fed Workers Weigh Trump’s Buyout Offer & Tesla Sales Struggle in Europe
So they're going to use this, however much it's sold for, $18 million to fund scholarships for their school and hopefully train a new generation of amazing classical performers, which is near and dear to my heart. Okay, let's sprint to the finish with some final headlines. Google has become the latest big tech company to pull back from DEI in the Trump era.
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Fed Workers Weigh Trump’s Buyout Offer & Tesla Sales Struggle in Europe
It told employees yesterday that it is scrapping its goal of hiring more workers from historically underrepresented groups and reviewing some of its DEI programs, such as releasing annual diversity reports. It is a major reversal from 2020 when, after George Floyd's murder, Google pledged to increase the share of leadership representation of underrepresented groups by 30% by 2025.
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Fed Workers Weigh Trump’s Buyout Offer & Tesla Sales Struggle in Europe
According to its latest diversity report, 5.7% of its U.S. employees are black and 7.5% are Latino, a smidge higher than 3.7% black and 5.9% Latino four years earlier.
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Fed Workers Weigh Trump’s Buyout Offer & Tesla Sales Struggle in Europe
Well, you once showed up to work without your computer, so I'm going to go with me.
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Fed Workers Weigh Trump’s Buyout Offer & Tesla Sales Struggle in Europe
Totally. This is the big kahuna because if you look at agencies that Doge has taken aim at already, USAID accounts for less than 1% of the federal budget. Other doors they've been knocking on. I mean, even the federal workforce as a share of how much the government spends is tiny. But when you start looking at things like
Morning Brew Daily
Fed Workers Weigh Trump’s Buyout Offer & Tesla Sales Struggle in Europe
medicare and medicaid and social security that is where you're talking about 22 of the federal total budget things like that so this is where if you were to find a lot of places to cut this would be the place the problem is is a very sensitive uh program along with social security these two are account for you know two-thirds of the federal budget at the same time they're politically uh
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Fed Workers Weigh Trump’s Buyout Offer & Tesla Sales Struggle in Europe
a third rail. Like, these are programs that people absolutely need, absolutely want, and you can't really touch them. So we'll see what Doge does. And, you know, there have been concerns raised about whether these unelected people getting into sensitive documents. And when you're talking about health as well, like, are they going to be able to see health markers for individual people?
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Fed Workers Weigh Trump’s Buyout Offer & Tesla Sales Struggle in Europe
It handles multiple currencies, connects you to your accounting software, and has no hidden fees. Plus, it's devilishly handsome. Okay, I said you're responsible, not a supermodel. Just remember your computer, okay? Wise can always save you.
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Fed Workers Weigh Trump’s Buyout Offer & Tesla Sales Struggle in Europe
And officials have stressed that Doge access is read-only. And they said this across all these agencies that these guys have tried to target.
Morning Brew Daily
Fed Workers Weigh Trump’s Buyout Offer & Tesla Sales Struggle in Europe
We should have seen this coming. I mean, whenever a commodity or a product spikes in price, you always see a corresponding spike in thefts. It happened with olive oil and grease, butter in Russia, copper wire, catalytic converters from cars. And now in hindsight, so obvious that eggs would be targeted. I mean, now do you have to put eggs in an armored car to protect them? They're so valuable.
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Fed Workers Weigh Trump’s Buyout Offer & Tesla Sales Struggle in Europe
Another question here is the logistics, right? Eggs are not so easy to move. How do you take 100,000 eggs and move them without cracking a few?
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Fed Workers Weigh Trump’s Buyout Offer & Tesla Sales Struggle in Europe
And media outlets are having so much fun with it. The New York Post said that thieves poached the eggs from a truck, leaving Pete and Jerry's shell shocked. Cleveland.com's headline was PA police scramble to crack the case. So you can roll your eyes at those. Okay, let's wrap it up there. Thanks so much for starting your morning with us and have a wonderful Thursday.
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Fed Workers Weigh Trump’s Buyout Offer & Tesla Sales Struggle in Europe
For any questions, comments, or feedback, send an email to morningbrewdaily at morningbrew.com. And if you're enjoying the show, pass it along to a friend, family member, or coworker whose morning news consumption currently consists of scrolling Instagram Reels. For a more specific sharing idea, Toby's here with some inspo.
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Fed Workers Weigh Trump’s Buyout Offer & Tesla Sales Struggle in Europe
Let's roll the credits. Emily Milliron is our executive producer. Raymond Lute is our producer. Olivia Graham is our associate producer. Uchenua Ogu is our technical director. Scoop Stardaris is on audio. Hair and makeup has been a little chatterbox this morning. Devin Emery is our chief content officer and our show is a production of Morning Brew.
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Fed Workers Weigh Trump’s Buyout Offer & Tesla Sales Struggle in Europe
Today marks a big test for President Trump and Elon Musk's plans to dramatically shrink the federal workforce. It's the deadline for more than 2 million federal workers to decide whether they will accept the deferred resignation offered to them. To recap how we got here, last week, most federal employees were sent an email with the subject line, a fork in the road.
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Fed Workers Weigh Trump’s Buyout Offer & Tesla Sales Struggle in Europe
It gave them the option to resign by today and still get paid for another eight months until the fall. It's one of the centerpieces of the Trump administration's push to cull the federal workforce. It remains to be seen how many people will actually take the offer. So far, the Trump administration said that at least 40,000 employees have taken the deal, about 2% of the federal workforce.
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Fed Workers Weigh Trump’s Buyout Offer & Tesla Sales Struggle in Europe
That's much lower than the goal of a 5% to 10% reduction set out by the administration. And one hang-up that could be keeping federal workers from leaving their jobs... It's unclear whether this move is legal. Three unions that represent more than 800,000 federal workers have filed the lawsuit seeking a restraining order to halt the deadline.
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Fed Workers Weigh Trump’s Buyout Offer & Tesla Sales Struggle in Europe
Or in more practical terms, the employees might be hesitating to resign because they're not sure whether they can trust the government to keep paying them and make good on this promise or what their job prospects might look like after resigning. So a whole lot of question marks, but a big day for the millions of people employed by the government.
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Fed Workers Weigh Trump’s Buyout Offer & Tesla Sales Struggle in Europe
Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, a fork in the road. Will government workers take Doge's offer of deferred resignation?
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Fed Workers Weigh Trump’s Buyout Offer & Tesla Sales Struggle in Europe
Right. And that March 14th, the government would shut down, in which case federal agencies wouldn't be funded and employees would be furloughed. So that is a major question mark. I mean, employment lawyers, their phones must be ringing off the hook. And I think
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Fed Workers Weigh Trump’s Buyout Offer & Tesla Sales Struggle in Europe
From what we understand, the general consensus is that they're advising employees to not take the offer based on all of the big legal questions that you raise. The administration pushes back, saying that Trump signed an executive order giving agencies more leniency and to providing more administrative leave for federal workers in order for this to comply. So big questions here.
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Fed Workers Weigh Trump’s Buyout Offer & Tesla Sales Struggle in Europe
And the another one is that how many of these workers would have resigned anyway? I mean, if you look at the national attrition rate, natural attrition rate for the government workforce, it's six percent a year. So two percent is lower than that, obviously. And how many of these workers would have been a part of that six percent turnover that the federal government has anyway?
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Fed Workers Weigh Trump’s Buyout Offer & Tesla Sales Struggle in Europe
It's like when you send a party invite, no one replies until the very end. So it is true that you might see a huge spike today.
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Fed Workers Weigh Trump’s Buyout Offer & Tesla Sales Struggle in Europe
Yeah, this debt sale is a very interesting education in how leveraged buyouts work. So we know that Musk paid $44 billion to buy Twitter at the time. Of that $44 billion, banks provided $13 billion in financing. Once the acquisition went through, now they owned all of this debt in this new company, typically when banks finance an acquisition, they quickly offload that.
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Fed Workers Weigh Trump’s Buyout Offer & Tesla Sales Struggle in Europe
There's been so much talk about government efficiency here in the U.S., but over in the Czech Republic, they're absolutely chewing through red tape. And that's all thanks to some cost cutting beavers. Here's the story. So there's this nature park where local authorities have been trying to build a dam for seven years to restore water areas.
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Fed Workers Weigh Trump’s Buyout Offer & Tesla Sales Struggle in Europe
They don't want to hold that debt for long. They quickly offload it to other investors who might be interested in investing in the company that they just helped take private. So typically, banks will shed this within months like they already have buyers lined up. This, in this case, I mean, it's been over two years. That's because these loans were underwater.
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Fed Workers Weigh Trump’s Buyout Offer & Tesla Sales Struggle in Europe
This company fired 80% of its staff and, uh, advertisers had been pulling away. Its finances were in the dumps. Now that it's creeping back up, Musk wrote in a January email that, uh, we are barely breaking even, which I guess is a positive is seen as a positive. So, uh, there's certainly momentum around this company a little bit due to Musk's relationships with the president.
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Fed Workers Weigh Trump’s Buyout Offer & Tesla Sales Struggle in Europe
So that's why banks were able to get maybe face value for this loan to dump it to investors who were pretty eager to buy into this company.
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Fed Workers Weigh Trump’s Buyout Offer & Tesla Sales Struggle in Europe
and we're all wondering why this is there are a couple of factors that could be at play one is that tesla is gearing up an updated version of its model y which is coming in march so consumers might be uh waiting on that the others increased competition we know that china has made a lot of inroads in europe not in the united states but there are a lot of chinese evs that have undercut the market there
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Fed Workers Weigh Trump’s Buyout Offer & Tesla Sales Struggle in Europe
The other is certainly it's hard to measure, but Elon Musk has been certainly dabbling in European politics. He's vocally supported an ultra far right, ultra nationalist party in Germany. And we saw a huge plunge of Tesla cars in Germany. He's also been beefing with the UK prime minister, Keir Starmer. He's used the platform we just talked about, X, to be this megaphone for him to
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Fed Workers Weigh Trump’s Buyout Offer & Tesla Sales Struggle in Europe
But the project has been frustratingly held up over getting the necessary building permits to start construction. Enter a family of eight beavers who in two days built a dam that humans have been trying to set up since 2018, and it was in the perfect spot. One environmental official said beavers always know best.
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Fed Workers Weigh Trump’s Buyout Offer & Tesla Sales Struggle in Europe
have a very strong opinion and controversial opinion in European politics. It's unclear whether this is a consumer response to his meddling in their affairs.
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Fed Workers Weigh Trump’s Buyout Offer & Tesla Sales Struggle in Europe
So to start the show, we talked about Elon Musk's involvement in government. And then our next story was about Elon Musk's businesses. Obviously, it raises huge questions of conflicts of interest. The White House press secretary was asked about these conflicts of interest yesterday and what could be done to prevent Elon Musk from enriching his companies and himself personally.
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Fed Workers Weigh Trump’s Buyout Offer & Tesla Sales Struggle in Europe
through his involvement and the government. She said, this is Caroline Leavitt, she said that Elon Musk himself will determine if there are conflicts of interest. So there are no outside checks on this. Elon Musk will reportedly recuse himself from any conflicts of interest should they arise as determined by him.
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Fed Workers Weigh Trump’s Buyout Offer & Tesla Sales Struggle in Europe
The places where they build dams are always chosen just right, better than we can design it on paper. They estimate that the beavers, who have now become famous, saved the government $1.2 million. That's Doge done right.
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Fed Workers Weigh Trump’s Buyout Offer & Tesla Sales Struggle in Europe
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Welcome to Neal's Numbers, the segment where I share three stats from the week's news that will have you sounding smarter than Marissa Tomei and my cousin Vinny. My first number is a long-awaited report card on America's well-being published this week by a diverse group of 14 scholars. Their conclusion is a startling one. In terms of wealth, the U.S. gets an A.
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Fed Workers Weigh Trump’s Buyout Offer & Tesla Sales Struggle in Europe
On every other metric, we scored something like a D or worse. It's not a report your mom would want to hang on the fridge. First, the good. Since the 1990s, U.S. economic growth has been the envy of the world, and we've outperformed most of our peers in terms of innovation and productivity. For instance, in 1990, U.S. GDP was 28% higher than the euro area. Now the gap is 80%.
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Fed Workers Weigh Trump’s Buyout Offer & Tesla Sales Struggle in Europe
But on other metrics, less related to the economy and more related to health and well-being and culture, the U.S. is a significant laggard. According to The New York Times, we have the lowest life expectancy of any rich country. That was not true in the 20th century. We have the highest murder rate of any rich country and the world's highest rate of fatal drug overdoses.
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Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
Neil, what's one way you rely on tech in your everyday life? I got a lot of health tracking apps running constantly to let me know how the body's holding up.
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Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
The Quip Ultra is a smart sonic electric toothbrush that's packed full of some pretty cool tech you'll want to use daily.
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Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
And it's equipped with a timer that monitors your progress and your pressure to help you brush at just the right intensity.
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Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
Still brushing the analog way? Get 15% off your Quip Ultra at getquip.com slash brew. And subscribe for auto-shipping of BrushPod refill heads to earn exclusive perks. That's G-E-T-Q-U-I-P dot com slash brew.
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Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
Theory is known for creating collections with exceptional fit, innovative fabrics, and enduring styles. Now they're doing it again with Motionwool.
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Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
Whether you've got a long day of meetings or you're packing for a long-haul flight, Motion Wool is made to move with you. It's also designed to keep its shape over time so you can keep arriving in style.
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Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
Welcome to Neil's Numbers, the segment where I share three stats from the week's news that will get you to God's country. My first number is 5%, which is the share of all avocados consumed in the US bought by Chipotle. That's 143 million pounds of avocados used across its 3,700 locations each year. But when you buy 5% of the U.S.
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Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
's avocados and the vast majority of them come from a single country, Mexico, you need to diversify your supplier base because being that concentrated is bad. Not only are you at the mercy of the weather in a single area, but Mexico has also been a frequent target of U.S. tariffs that could raise prices.
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Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
According to the Wall Street Journal, Chipotle started this diversification process seven years ago. scouring the globe for other sources of avocados besides Mexico, which had accounted for 85% of its avocados. The U.S.
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Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
is one option, but we don't make nearly enough of the fruit to fulfill Chipotle's demands, so they started scooping up avocados from farms in Peru, the Dominican Republic, Brazil, Guatemala, and Colombia, transforming local economies along the way. Now, after years of building a new food supply line,
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Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
Chipotle has reduced its reliance on Mexican avocados to just 50% from 85%, but diversification also brings a number of new challenges.
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Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
And it's super critical because about half of all Chipotle customers order guacamole every time they go in, which is a lot higher share than I was expecting. For my next number, you might consider yourself a fan of a musical artist or an athlete, but I can guarantee that the fans in Japan go harder than you.
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Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
According to a survey by two Tokyo marketing firms, 11% of Japan's population engage in Oshikatsu, a term describing activities that support their favorite celebs, mascots, anime characters, and VTubers, or virtual YouTubers. In most cases, showing love for your idol involves spending money.
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Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
According to Reuters, respondents in the survey spent an average of $1,700 per year on Oshikatsu, equivalent to a $23 billion annual influx of consumer spending into the world's fourth largest economy.
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Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
That's just 2.1% of Japan's total annual sales each year, but it's a share that is increasing and the sector has even caught the eye of economists and the Bank of Japan who are looking for any areas of growth to stimulate lackluster spending. So how does one engage in Oshikatsu? What are they actually spending money on?
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Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
Well, merch for one, but also things like buying ad space as a gift for your hero on their birthday. Or in another case, a woman went to a Tokyo cafe to sit in the same seat where a member of a boy band she loved once visited and created a shrine to him for a photo op. Toby, Oshikatsu is a force in the Japanese economy.
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Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
For my final number, the leaders of the world's largest atom smasher have dreamed up a new atom smasher that is going to smash the current one to bits. The top nerds at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, released the blueprints for a project a decade in the making.
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Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
I mean, I wouldn't say a foreign language, but sure, it can be complicated.
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Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
a new particle collider that will eventually replace the Large Hadron Collider, a network of magnets used to smash particles against one another at velocities approaching the speed of light in order to unlock the mysteries of the universe. Okay, let's get to the numbers, sorry for the wait. The Future Circular Collider, the new smasher,
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Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
will be a 56.5-mile loop below Lake Geneva on the French-Swiss border, with tunnels 16 feet in diameter and buried 656 feet below ground. For comparison, the Large Hadron Collider, the current one, is just 17 miles around, so the new one is going to be at least three times as big.
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Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
CERN says the future circular collider will be the, quote, most extraordinary instrument ever built by humanity to study the constituents and the laws of nature at the most fundamental levels. But the most extraordinary instrument ever built by humanity doesn't come cheap. It'll cost $17 billion to construct. And even if funding is secured, they won't start smashing atoms until 2046.
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Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
It doesn't have to be all Greek to you. TaxAct actually makes your taxes simple. They walk you through everything step by step, whether you're filing individually or bundling with your small business. What if I get something wrong? What if the IRS shows up at my door? What if Zeus smites me? First of all, relax.
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Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
We have no idea. The clock is ticking. Trump could extend the deadline a little bit more. But of course, all of this TikTok sales contingent on a blessing from Beijing and from what was announced yesterday with Liberation Day and the 54 percent tariffs on China. It is very clear that TikTok sale or whatever happens to TikTok is just going to be part of a larger negotiation around trade.
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Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
So TikTok's fate is intertwined with the trade war. Maybe Mark Zuckerberg was expensing all of his trips to UFC fights all along. Yesterday, Meta inked a multi-million dollar multi-year partnership with UFC to become the, quote, official fan technology partner of the Mixed Martial Arts League he adores.
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Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
It's essentially a sponsorship deal that will result in UFC integrating with Meta across its portfolio products, including Meta Glasses, WhatsApp Threads, Instagram, Facebook, and MetaQuest. You'll also see meta branding featured in UFC's octagons for pay-per-view and fight night events.
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Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
In a statement to CNBC, Zuckerberg, an avid MMAer, said, I love this sport and I'm looking forward to working with UFC to let fans experience it in new ways.
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Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
Second, every return is backed with an accuracy guarantee so you can file with confidence. Ooh, I do like confidence. That is a language I do speak. File smarter, not harder at taxact.com before the April 15th deadline. I went to Liberation Day and all I got was this global trade war.
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Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
I was looking for flights to Myrtle Beach yesterday because they play in Conway, South Carolina, which is just a 50-minute drive to Myrtle Beach, and I think I'm not the only one. This is a great promotion that got Coastal Carolina on a lot of people's radar and hopefully builds long-term loyalty with their fans.
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Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
Yes, they're going to eat a couple million dollars throughout the football season, but they're hoping that leads to long-term success. I mean, this sounds like the best football game ever to go to. I mean, the fact that you can make multiple visits, too.
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Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
Have a lot of popcorn for free. Okay, let's wrap it up there. Thanks so much for starting your morning with us and have a wonderful Thursday. For any questions, comments, or feedback, send an email to morningbrewdaily at morningbrew.com. Let's roll the credits. Emily Milliron is our executive producer. Raymond Liu is our producer. Olivia Graham and Olivia Lake are our associate producers.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
Uchenua Ogu is our technical director. Scoops Garderas is on audio. Hair and Makeup would love to be invited to your Mario Kart party. Devin Emery is our chief content officer, and our show is a production of Morning Brew.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
In a speech at the Rose Garden yesterday afternoon, President Trump took a stick of dynamite to the longstanding global economic system centered on free trade. He announced a minimum 10% tariff on all exports to the United States, plus much higher reciprocal rates on countries he said maintain unfair trade barriers on American products. reciprocal. That means they do it to us and we do it to them.
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Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
Very simple. Can't get any simpler than that, Trump said. Holding up a chart with a list of countries and percentages, Trump ran down the list and revealed how much the U.S. would now be tariffing each one. To name a few big ones, Japan, 24%, South Korea, 25%, the EU, 20%, and other eye-watering amounts like 54% on China, which is 34%, on top of the existing 20%.
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Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
The president said this was a discounted reciprocal tariff on other countries because he's kind. Trump argues the tariffs will usher in a, quote, golden age of America because companies will begin to build factories in the United States to avoid the tariffs.
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Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
He cited multi-billion dollar announcements from companies like Apple, SoftBank, and Taiwan Semiconductors since his election as evidence this plan was working. Economists see universal tariffs much differently, arguing they slow economic growth, cause uncertainty for businesses, and cause a spike in inflation.
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Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
Remember, a tariff is a tax paid by the importer of a foreign product, say Target importing bedsheets. Maybe Target will eat some of the tax, even if it eats their profits, but studies show that often that tax is passed along illegally. to the consumer in the form of higher prices. Toby, the White House kept these tariff rates under wraps until Trump's announcement.
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Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
And of all the scenarios investors had considered, this was about the worst case. Dow futures are down more than 1,000 points currently. The S&P is down nearly 3%, and the Nasdaq more than 3%.
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Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, stocks are tumbling and businesses are scrambling after President Trump announced sweeping tariffs on Liberation Day.
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Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
And let's dive into some other countries that are getting hit with tariffs like at much higher levels than others. One nation that a lot of people were looking to and raising their eyebrows was Vietnam. So Vietnam is going to have a 46 percent duty on imports from to the United States on their exports to the United States.
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Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
And, you know, Vietnam was a huge winner of Trump's first trade war on China, because when those tariffs went on China in 2018, so many manufacturers, apparel makers, electronics makers, set up shop in Vietnam because there were low tariff rates on Vietnam and started shipping their products to the United States. So Vietnam's economy was one of the fastest growing in the world.
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Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
Now they're getting hit with a 46% tariff and all of those companies that had moved all of their operations or more of their operations to Vietnam are getting whacked on the stock market this morning. Nike manufacturers, 25% of its footwear now in Vietnam, uh, you know, over the past few years, its stock is down 8 percent. Deckers, which is the owner of UGG and Hoka, is down 10 percent.
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Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
Restoration Hardware, a ton of furniture makers expanded their operations in Vietnam over the past few years. Restoration Hardware is down 26 percent. So if you go down the line from furniture makers, toy makers, apparel makers, their stocks are getting crushed this morning specifically because of those very high tariff rates on Vietnam.
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Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
Yeah, the big picture from this announcement, according to analysts and banks who were digesting all this information, is this is a massive shock to the economy. JP Morgan put out this note last night as the information was rolling out that was widely shared. And here were their main points.
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Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
These tariffs raised just under $400 billion in revenue, which would be the largest tax increase since 1968. The tariffs would boost consumer prices by 1% to 1.5% this year. The hit to purchasing power could take real disposable personal income growth into negative territory by the end of the year and also send consumer spending into negative territory.
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Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
So much news to get to today, but first, some random fun facts. Gotta get that brain stretched out in the morning before putting it to work. A few days ago, an ex-user posted, does anyone have any random fun facts about a very niche subject?
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Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
To quote JP Morgan here, this impact alone could take the economy perilously close to slipping into a recession. So we are waiting for these tariffs to come into effect. The auto tariffs are coming into effect today, 25% on foreign vehicles. The tariffs that were announced yesterday, the reciprocal ones, are going into effect April 9th, about a week from now.
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Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
And you can be sure that the phones are going to be ringing off the hook in the White House as other countries think about retaliating in response to these reciprocal tariffs or try to cut deals with the Trump administration to lower these planned tariffs.
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Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
And people delivered with great tidbits like, crickets are actually tiny thermometers because their chirp count correlates to the temperature, or the earth actually takes 365 days and six hours to orbit the sun, hence a leap year every four years. Tell me, You got any other fun facts?
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Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
Snip, snap. We kind of saw this coming because early reports from around the world showed Tesla sales falling off a cliff in Australia. In Germany, they declined more than 70 percent in February. In China, it's a key market, second biggest market. Sales were down 11.5 percent in March from last year. In the U.S., sales were down 2 percent in the first two months of the year.
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Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
In California, they were down another big market. They were down 12 percent last So the writing was on the wall, this drip of bad news, you know, all these protests that were going on. We knew this number was going to be bad for the first three months of the year, but it was worse than expected.
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Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
And it shows the number of challenges that Tesla has from Elon Musk down to an aging vehicle lineup and, you know, a very slow pivot to autonomous cars, which is where its valuation is mostly based right now.
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Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
So what could Tesla do to turn things around? Well, this summer, there could be two big announcements that could rev it back up to growth. There's a June deadline for these two big announcements. One is the production of a more affordable Tesla.
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Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
Investors have been waiting for this for years so that it can compete with BYD, but also legacy car makers that are rolling out new EVs at a much cheaper price point than what Tesla sells for. So One is the affordable car. The other is this robo taxi service that Tesla has said it will launch in June in its backyard of Austin.
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Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
Waymo is already working there and offering robo taxi rides in Austin right in its backyard. Tesla is playing catch up, but it's hoping that during the summer it will have these new announcements to roll out, plus a refreshed Model Y, which some analysts say was a reason for these these bad delivery numbers.
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Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
Investor analysts generally think that Nintendo stuck the landing a la Simone Biles with this particular launch because it's doing it in conjunction with this new Mario Kart game. This one analyst from the research firm Omdia says that Nintendo will sell 14.7 million of the new Switch 2 consoles.
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Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
This year, which would easily top the sales of the original Switch for its first year, which was $13 million, and it's going to be, even with the higher price tag of $450, because of Mario Kart World, it's going to come in this package for a little bit of an upsell with Switch. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. was owned by half of all Switch users. This is an insanely popular game.
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Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
This was the talk of the town yesterday after this was released. So I think this game, at least according to analysts, is going to allow the Switch 2 to maybe even leapfrog its predecessor.
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Markets Wrap Up a Shaky Q1 & Elon Musk Sells ‘X’ To... 'xAI'
Literally all the time. Just ask my lower back. Yeah, my knee is saying the exact same thing. Well, no one's found a way to stop aging yet, but Timeline has created a supplement that can change the way aging feels, helping your body to bounce back faster by giving your cells a refresh.
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Markets Wrap Up a Shaky Q1 & Elon Musk Sells ‘X’ To... 'xAI'
And it's super easy to add to your routine. It just takes two soft gels a day to reboot your cells from the inside out.
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Markets Wrap Up a Shaky Q1 & Elon Musk Sells ‘X’ To... 'xAI'
I am sweating over here. Relax. TaxAct is there to soothe your beating heart. It simplifies tax filing for both your small businesses and your individual taxes. And if you bundle them together, you can save some cash.
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Markets Wrap Up a Shaky Q1 & Elon Musk Sells ‘X’ To... 'xAI'
Why aren't we using them? I mean, if the rule states that they just have to be a certain dimension and made of a solid piece of wood, it is kind of mind boggling that the folks in in Major League Baseball around the teams haven't figured this out sooner. And we've been using the same design bat for decades. But I guess that's just how disruption works.
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Markets Wrap Up a Shaky Q1 & Elon Musk Sells ‘X’ To... 'xAI'
You kind of think insularly and not outside the box. like this guy does, Len Hart. And it's a very fascinating story that shows how analytics has really infiltrated the game of baseball and sports more broadly. Last year, Aaron Judge, the star of the Yankees, was complaining that the analytics department was not speaking to the players enough in a simple enough fashion.
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Markets Wrap Up a Shaky Q1 & Elon Musk Sells ‘X’ To... 'xAI'
So the analytics department, who are all these data nerds, are finding these insights. They're reviewing tape. They're running computer programs. But when they would try to translate those insights to the players, it wasn't a good communication system. So what the Yankees did was hire this guy, Len Hart, who is this former MIT physicist who taught physics at Michigan for seven years.
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Markets Wrap Up a Shaky Q1 & Elon Musk Sells ‘X’ To... 'xAI'
And he's on that side of the ball. But he's also a former baseball coach as well. So he's the perfect marriage between what these two emerging trends in the game, he can bring things together. And he also had this, you know, remarkable design for a bat that is probably going to be the hottest product since the Stanley cup.
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Markets Wrap Up a Shaky Q1 & Elon Musk Sells ‘X’ To... 'xAI'
That's the beauty of TaxAct's Expert Assist. They've got real 100% credentialed tax experts, all based in the U.S., who will answer any tax questions you've got. It's like having your own personal tax superhero.
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Markets Wrap Up a Shaky Q1 & Elon Musk Sells ‘X’ To... 'xAI'
They'll probably win the national championship, but they probably won't win any legal case against HBO or the white Lotus because under the first amendment artists have really strong protections to use well-known trademarks for artistic and expressive purposes. Just think of Saturday night live, uh,
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Markets Wrap Up a Shaky Q1 & Elon Musk Sells ‘X’ To... 'xAI'
Jeopardy probably does not like that they use celebrity Jeopardy to make raunchy jokes for decades, but they can because this is a free country. We have the First Amendment and you can use trademarks in your artistic work. What you can't use a trademark for is to do people into thinking you are Duke when you're not Duke.
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Markets Wrap Up a Shaky Q1 & Elon Musk Sells ‘X’ To... 'xAI'
Plus, every return is backed with an accuracy guarantee, so you can file confidently and sleep easy. No bad dreams of W-2s chasing you down.
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Markets Wrap Up a Shaky Q1 & Elon Musk Sells ‘X’ To... 'xAI'
So say you started a college and then you called it Duke University and had similar branding, obviously has the same name. That probably wouldn't fly under trademark law. But when you're making art like Mike White does with White Lotus, you have a wide latitude.
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Markets Wrap Up a Shaky Q1 & Elon Musk Sells ‘X’ To... 'xAI'
So legal experts chimed in on this case and said that, you know, Duke as a business doesn't really have any case here to pursue legal action, but they can complain.
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Markets Wrap Up a Shaky Q1 & Elon Musk Sells ‘X’ To... 'xAI'
Okay, it's Monday, so here are the major events you need to know about in the week ahead. Everyone is watching what tariffs will be announced on Wednesday, which President Trump has dubbed Liberation Day. Depending on the size and extent of the tariffs, it could lead to a reorganization of the global economy we haven't seen in decades.
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Markets Wrap Up a Shaky Q1 & Elon Musk Sells ‘X’ To... 'xAI'
Toby, don't stress. Just file with TaxAct before the April 15th deadline, and you're good. Visit TaxAct.com to get started today.
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Markets Wrap Up a Shaky Q1 & Elon Musk Sells ‘X’ To... 'xAI'
On Wednesday, Trump has vowed to place reciprocal tariffs on all countries that tax imports from the United States, while the next day, 25% tariffs on foreign cars will go into effect. We should also expect countries to announce retaliatory tariffs against the U.S. that day, sending this trade war into nuclear territory.
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Markets Wrap Up a Shaky Q1 & Elon Musk Sells ‘X’ To... 'xAI'
In a sign of just how impactful these tariffs will be, some auto dealers across the country were packed this weekend as Americans scrambled to buy cars before prices rise.
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Markets Wrap Up a Shaky Q1 & Elon Musk Sells ‘X’ To... 'xAI'
Yeah, 48 hours. We still have really no idea what's about to come down the pipeline. But really, the global economy hangs in the balance. Even as tariffs dominate Wall Street shadow, investors will face another big test on Friday with the jobs report. Economists estimate that employment growth is expected to have slowed to 128,000 jobs added in March from about 150K in February.
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Markets Wrap Up a Shaky Q1 & Elon Musk Sells ‘X’ To... 'xAI'
And special attention will be paid to whether Elon Musk's sweeping doge layoffs of the federal workforce will show up in the data.
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Markets Wrap Up a Shaky Q1 & Elon Musk Sells ‘X’ To... 'xAI'
And remember the TikTok ban? Well, time to start thinking about it again because on Saturday, Trump's extension that delayed a U.S. ban on TikTok will expire, meaning the Chinese app could leave app stores once again as it did in January. Trump is trying to get Beijing to greenlight a sale to a U.S. entity by relaxing tariffs.
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Markets Wrap Up a Shaky Q1 & Elon Musk Sells ‘X’ To... 'xAI'
But if that doesn't happen by Saturday, which doesn't seem to be in the cards, Trump said he'll extend the deadline again.
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Markets Wrap Up a Shaky Q1 & Elon Musk Sells ‘X’ To... 'xAI'
Can it still be March Madness if it takes place in April? Sure. Why not? The men's Final Four is set and it's all number one seeds. Florida will play Auburn and Duke will play Houston on Saturday. The winners will face off in the championship game a week from today. And then on the women's bracket, the Final Four will be solidified today.
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Markets Wrap Up a Shaky Q1 & Elon Musk Sells ‘X’ To... 'xAI'
South Carolina and UCLA have already punched their ticket to the Final Four.
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Markets Wrap Up a Shaky Q1 & Elon Musk Sells ‘X’ To... 'xAI'
And this is the first time that it's been all number one seeds in the Final Four since 2008. And nothing bad happened in 2008. So I'm sure that's not an omen whatsoever. All right, let's wrap it up there. Thank you for starting your morning with us and have a wonderful start to the week. For any questions, comments, or feedback, send an email to morningbrewdailyatmorningbrew.com.
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Markets Wrap Up a Shaky Q1 & Elon Musk Sells ‘X’ To... 'xAI'
Let's roll the credits. Emily Milliron is our executive producer. Raymond Liu is our producer. Olivia Graham and Olivia Lake are our associate producers. Uchenua Ogu is our technical director. Scoop Stardaris is on audio. Hair and makeup, we need a torpedo mic stat. Devin Emery is our chief content officer and our shows of production of Morning Brew. Great show, Daniel. Let's run it back tomorrow.
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Markets Wrap Up a Shaky Q1 & Elon Musk Sells ‘X’ To... 'xAI'
Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, why Elon Musk sold one of his companies to Elon Musk.
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Markets Wrap Up a Shaky Q1 & Elon Musk Sells ‘X’ To... 'xAI'
The sports metaphors were strong in that one, Toby, so kudos on that. Yeah, let's start by looking internationally, because we do focus a lot on the United States, but there were a lot of fireworks afield. I want to start with China, actually. So they have their own Magnificent Seven, and that includes big tech companies like Alibaba, Tencent,
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Markets Wrap Up a Shaky Q1 & Elon Musk Sells ‘X’ To... 'xAI'
BYD, which is this EV maker, Baidu, JD.com, they are soaring. The MSCI China index has jumped more than 30% since the end of August. DeepSeek was sort of their open AI breakthrough moment for artificial intelligence, and investors have been plowing money into the Chinese stock market, whereas for years it had been kind of stagnant. So There's been a real changing of the guard over there.
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Markets Wrap Up a Shaky Q1 & Elon Musk Sells ‘X’ To... 'xAI'
You mentioned Magnificent 7 stocks have shed $2 trillion in value. Terrific 10 is maybe another name to know over in China where they're absolutely soaring. So we've seen the script flipped a little bit.
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Markets Wrap Up a Shaky Q1 & Elon Musk Sells ‘X’ To... 'xAI'
Let's talk about that report on Friday. It was a true double whammy. So there was this inflation measure that comes out, which the Fed is really keyed in on. It shows inflation and then it also shows consumer spending. And we went 0 for 2 because inflation came in hotter than expected. It rose by 0.4 percent in February. It picked up pace for the 4th. straight month.
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Markets Wrap Up a Shaky Q1 & Elon Musk Sells ‘X’ To... 'xAI'
And then you had consumer spending did not go up at all, went up 0.1%. So you're seeing less consumer spending, higher inflation. That is a recipe for what has become sort of the boogeyman on Wall Street right now, which is this word called stagflation, where you have higher inflation and lower growth, and it leads to Really bad outcomes for the economy and as well as the stock market.
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Markets Wrap Up a Shaky Q1 & Elon Musk Sells ‘X’ To... 'xAI'
One example of this is Goldman Sachs has this basket of stocks that do really well in stagflation times. There aren't many, but there are a few like in defensive sectors like health care, which thrive during recessions. And that is up nearly 20 percent this year compared to the S&P 500's 5 percent drop.
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Markets Wrap Up a Shaky Q1 & Elon Musk Sells ‘X’ To... 'xAI'
What a difference 200 miles makes. On Saturday, New York City was in full-on summer mode as temperatures reached 80 degrees. But just above I-95, the weather could not have been any different. On the same day, people living in Boston were hit with freezing rain and temps in the mid-30s. That 45-degree temperature gap between Boston and New York City isn't just good material for small talk.
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Markets Wrap Up a Shaky Q1 & Elon Musk Sells ‘X’ To... 'xAI'
Or if you've invested in gold bars and those are lining your homes because gold is up 17% this year already for its best start to a year since 1986. You know that meme where Obama gives himself a medal? That's kind of what Elon Musk just did with parts of his business empire.
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Markets Wrap Up a Shaky Q1 & Elon Musk Sells ‘X’ To... 'xAI'
On Friday, the world's richest person said he had sold X, his social media company, to XAI, his artificial intelligence company. According to Musk, the all-stock deal values XAI at $80 billion and X at $33 billion, down from the $44 billion he spent on Twitter. So why do this? Isn't this basically just shuffling money around?
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Markets Wrap Up a Shaky Q1 & Elon Musk Sells ‘X’ To... 'xAI'
Musk said that the deal cements that XAI and X's futures are intertwined. Today, he declared, we officially take the step to combine the data, models, compute, distribution, and talent. Outside observers, such as Axios' Dan Primock, Also added an important piece of context, this is an attempt to prevent his X investors from losing money.
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Markets Wrap Up a Shaky Q1 & Elon Musk Sells ‘X’ To... 'xAI'
Remember, at one point, X's value had plunged 70% from when Musk bought it, and while business has rebounded, it remains on shaky financial footing. Toby, while this was a surprising announcement, the writing had been on the wall since X and XAI were sharing loads of resources, and Elon Musk has pulled off something similar among his various businesses.
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Markets Wrap Up a Shaky Q1 & Elon Musk Sells ‘X’ To... 'xAI'
What do you think this link-up says about his ambitions?
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Markets Wrap Up a Shaky Q1 & Elon Musk Sells ‘X’ To... 'xAI'
xai this this fountain of proprietary data that they can now use to try to separate from the pack of this very crowded space of lms which is why some analysts look at this deal and said hey that was pretty smart i could see other smaller players in ai and other smaller social media players it's doing similar things.
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Markets Wrap Up a Shaky Q1 & Elon Musk Sells ‘X’ To... 'xAI'
Maybe they don't have the same owner, but they might link up in order to gain scale and command higher valuations. I mean, the valuation for XAI at $80 billion, that's more than the combined market values of Snap, Pinterest, and Reddit. Right now, Google pays Reddit to train its... large language model on Reddit data. Well, what if they were the same company?
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Markets Wrap Up a Shaky Q1 & Elon Musk Sells ‘X’ To... 'xAI'
It's history. Meteorologists said it was the widest temperature difference between the two cities on record. Meanwhile, in Connecticut, they couldn't decide which side to take per usual.
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Markets Wrap Up a Shaky Q1 & Elon Musk Sells ‘X’ To... 'xAI'
They would also have training data and they would have distribution like Grok has. Grok is a large language model that anytime you log into Twitter or X, you can see it being used. So it might spur more partnerships, maybe even some mergers between smaller players in AI like Anthropic or Perplexity and smaller players in social media like Snap, Pinterest or Reddit.
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Markets Wrap Up a Shaky Q1 & Elon Musk Sells ‘X’ To... 'xAI'
And in 2016, Elon Musk did something similar when he used Tesla stock to buy his other company, SolarCity. Okay, let's head to our winners of the weekend, the segment where Toby and I pick two things whose Sunday morning eggs were sunny side up. I won the pre-show extreme ironing contest, so I get to go first.
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Markets Wrap Up a Shaky Q1 & Elon Musk Sells ‘X’ To... 'xAI'
And my winner is fraudsters because some of the most notorious white-collar criminals of the past several years are now free men. On Friday, President Trump issued a flurry of pardons to business leaders who were found guilty of fraud. The first pardon went out to Trevor Milton, the founder of electric truck maker Nikola, which is now bankrupt.
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Markets Wrap Up a Shaky Q1 & Elon Musk Sells ‘X’ To... 'xAI'
Milton was sentenced to four years in prison and fined $1 million after he was convicted by a jury of fraud for misleading investors about the capabilities of Nikola's trucks, pumping up the stock with unfounded claims. When asked about the pardon, Trump said it had come highly recommended by many people he knew.
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Markets Wrap Up a Shaky Q1 & Elon Musk Sells ‘X’ To... 'xAI'
Trump also granted clemency to Carlos Watson, the media executive who founded Aussie Media. When Watson heard the news, he was literally on his way to report to prison to serve a 10-year sentence for fraud. In July, Watson was found guilty of fraud for inflating revenue figures when courting investors and lying about having completed business deals that were either made up or not finalized.
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Markets Wrap Up a Shaky Q1 & Elon Musk Sells ‘X’ To... 'xAI'
During the sentencing, the judge told Watson the quantum of dishonesty in this case was exceptional. Watson maintained his innocence throughout and on Friday said, I am profoundly grateful to President Trump for correcting this grave injustice. Toby, big weekend in the world of fraud.
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Markets Wrap Up a Shaky Q1 & Elon Musk Sells ‘X’ To... 'xAI'
And while those two guys were walking free on Friday, another fraudster is awaiting her prison sentence because Charlie Javis, remember her, she's that Forbes 30 under 30 who founded this fintech Frank, which sold to JP Morgan for one hundred and seventy five million dollars, was convicted of fraud for, quote, falsely and dramatically inflating the number of the company's customers average.
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Markets Wrap Up a Shaky Q1 & Elon Musk Sells ‘X’ To... 'xAI'
After JP Morgan bought Frank, they had a ton of buyer's remorse because they sent out this email to the supposed list of more than 4 million Frank customers only to return just a few small percentage percentages of those emails. Turns out that Javis and and one of the other executives at Frank had been artificially inflating their email list.
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Markets Wrap Up a Shaky Q1 & Elon Musk Sells ‘X’ To... 'xAI'
Oh, you're doing Boston dirty. Now a word from our new sponsor, Tax Act. Toby, you look a little pale today. What is going on?
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Markets Wrap Up a Shaky Q1 & Elon Musk Sells ‘X’ To... 'xAI'
So now Javis was convicted by a jury on Friday and she awaits a prison sentence later this summer.
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Markets Wrap Up a Shaky Q1 & Elon Musk Sells ‘X’ To... 'xAI'
Setting up your account is super easy, and it takes just a few seconds to make payments in over 40 different currencies.
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AppleTV+ is Losing $1B/Yr & Boeing Banks Big Defense Deal
an aerial edge in a potential war in East Asia. It'll have greater range, enhanced stealth and better tech than the F-22. All capabilities the Pentagon thinks are table stakes to confront China's increased military prowess. back?
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AppleTV+ is Losing $1B/Yr & Boeing Banks Big Defense Deal
Robert Frost called. He wants his, uh, he wants his line back. Um, there is greater, uh, scrutiny around whether manned or crude aircraft are even viable or necessary in 2025 in this new age of warfare. Elon Musk has publicly campaigned against crude aircraft. He called them obsolete in the age of drones. The Russia Ukraine war has really brought drones to the forefront. Uh,
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AppleTV+ is Losing $1B/Yr & Boeing Banks Big Defense Deal
I'm more of a wait until things are on fire kind of guy.
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AppleTV+ is Losing $1B/Yr & Boeing Banks Big Defense Deal
Some people in the military apparatus said we should be investing way more in drones, not in crude aircraft. The Air Force, Trump administration, is pushing back. Secretary of Defense Pete Hex has said, no, actually, when we fight China, if we fight China, then crude aircraft like the F-47 will be very critical for establishing air superiority to penetrate China.
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AppleTV+ is Losing $1B/Yr & Boeing Banks Big Defense Deal
air defenses so there is an internal debate about whether we should invest more in drones or whether we should invest more in these very high-tech crude aircraft like the f-47 like the f-35 like the f-22 and there is a lot of scar tissue from the f-35 contract because those things are extremely expensive they cost taxpayers 1.7 trillion dollars they cost about 80 million dollars per aircraft there have been a ton of delays ton of technical difficulties
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AppleTV+ is Losing $1B/Yr & Boeing Banks Big Defense Deal
Tons of cost overruns, and these fighters, the F-47, are expected to cost way more than $80 million per aircraft.
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AppleTV+ is Losing $1B/Yr & Boeing Banks Big Defense Deal
Yeah, let's start with StubHub. I mean, interesting company that's been on an absolute roller coaster over the past few years since COVID. It was bought by Viagogo, which is a European ticketing company, for $4 billion in early 2020. I wonder what it would have fetched a few months later when no one was going out, no one was buying tickets.
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AppleTV+ is Losing $1B/Yr & Boeing Banks Big Defense Deal
And then there was that huge roar back during the Erez Tour era when people were scooping up live tickets left and right. There are signs that the ticket and live industry, live events industry is moderating a bit. So we'll see whether investors want to hop on the StubHub roller coaster because it could be a ride.
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AppleTV+ is Losing $1B/Yr & Boeing Banks Big Defense Deal
Vivid Seats, which is a rival of StubHub, may give an indication of how what the appetite is for this kind of company. Stock price has fallen more than 45 percent over the past year. It's reportedly seeking a buyer. So that's go to the StubHub website. S1 prospectus that I just gave you right there.
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AppleTV+ is Losing $1B/Yr & Boeing Banks Big Defense Deal
Luckily, with Sophos, there's no need for scrambling. They take a proactive approach using over 500 cybersecurity experts to identify and eliminate threats before they impact your business.
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AppleTV+ is Losing $1B/Yr & Boeing Banks Big Defense Deal
Yeah, I mean, CoreWeave is a massive company. They want a valuation of around $35 billion. They've pretty much grown in lockstep with NVIDIA because they've just hoovered up all these NVIDIA chips. NVIDIA owns a 5% stake in CoreWeave. In 2024, sales jumped more than 700% to nearly $2 billion. Those are basically NVIDIA numbers.
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AppleTV+ is Losing $1B/Yr & Boeing Banks Big Defense Deal
So if you want another play similar to NVIDIA and you want to ride with this this AI roller coaster as well, then Coreweave is the company that can do that. One problem with Coreweave is that it has only two main customers and one of them accounts for 60% of its revenue. That one customer is Microsoft. It's Monday, so here is your preview of the big events coming this week.
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AppleTV+ is Losing $1B/Yr & Boeing Banks Big Defense Deal
With the Fed meeting in the rear view, this week's economic calendar is a little lighter, but we'll get the monthly reading of the Fed's preferred inflation gauge, an updated look at consumer confidence, and a final reading of Q4 GDP, plus earnings from the likes of Dollar Tree, Lululemon, and GameStop.
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AppleTV+ is Losing $1B/Yr & Boeing Banks Big Defense Deal
And good news. The S&P 500 did break its four week losing streak last week. And futures are up bigly this morning over reports that President Trump's planned tariffs, reciprocal tariffs on April 2nd, which he called Liberation Day, will be more narrow than expected.
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AppleTV+ is Losing $1B/Yr & Boeing Banks Big Defense Deal
In culture, speaking of Apple TV+, Seth Rogen's new show, The Studio, premieres on the service on Wednesday, and it has nearly a perfect Rotten Tomatoes score, so that's pretty exciting. Over on Max, Paul American, the new reality series following the lives of Jake and Logan, Paul, drops on Thursday. And in music, new albums are out Friday from Lucy Dacus of Boy Genius and Mumford & Sons.
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AppleTV+ is Losing $1B/Yr & Boeing Banks Big Defense Deal
In sports, baseball's opening day is on Thursday with 28 of the 30 teams playing on the unofficial start of spring. The season soft launched last week with two games in Tokyo between the Dodgers and the Cubs, which highlighted the booming popularity of baseball in Japan.
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AppleTV+ is Losing $1B/Yr & Boeing Banks Big Defense Deal
It's cybersecurity designed around prevention, not reaction. Also, buy a phone case. You're stressing me out.
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AppleTV+ is Losing $1B/Yr & Boeing Banks Big Defense Deal
Twenty five million people watch the Tokyo series in Japan, bigger than any American baseball audience since game seven of the 2017 World Series.
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AppleTV+ is Losing $1B/Yr & Boeing Banks Big Defense Deal
And Shohei Otani, the hometown boy, put on a show. March Madness is rolling on. The men kick off Sweet 16 games starting on Thursday while the women's begin the Sweet 16 on Friday. Toby, how's your bracket looking?
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AppleTV+ is Losing $1B/Yr & Boeing Banks Big Defense Deal
Let's wrap it up there. Thank you for starting your morning with us and have a wonderful start to the week. For any questions, comments, or feedback, send an email to morningbrewdaily at morningbrew.com. Let's roll the credits. Emily Milliron is our executive producer, and you can go to her with any college basketball questions. Raven Liu is our producer.
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AppleTV+ is Losing $1B/Yr & Boeing Banks Big Defense Deal
Olivia Graham and Olivia Lake are our associate producers. Uchenua Ogu is our technical director. Scoops Dardaris is on audio. Hair and Makeup has decided Derrick Queen did not travel. Devin Emery is our chief content officer and our show is a production of Morning Brew.
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AppleTV+ is Losing $1B/Yr & Boeing Banks Big Defense Deal
Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, Apple may want to sever itself from its streaming service, which is losing $1 billion each year.
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AppleTV+ is Losing $1B/Yr & Boeing Banks Big Defense Deal
First of all, no shade on Houston. It seems like a perfectly fine place to go on spring break. They just had the world's largest rodeo there this past weekend and a couple weeks ago. There is a long tradition of economists not just using hard data, but also using behavioral measures to indicate whether the economy is growing or whether the economy is slowing.
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AppleTV+ is Losing $1B/Yr & Boeing Banks Big Defense Deal
There's something called the Lipstick Index, which suggests that people buy more lipstick when things are in a downturn because it is just that little luxury thing. That you can afford Fed chair, the former Fed chair, Alan Greenspan, also coined the men's underwear index to find out whether how the economy is doing by gauging men's underwear sales.
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AppleTV+ is Losing $1B/Yr & Boeing Banks Big Defense Deal
There's also the hemline index theory, which posits that skirt lengths get longer during a downturn. So this is. as old as the economics profession and field itself is looking at certain societal and behavioral attitudes and consumption trends to see how the economy is going. Music has been often thrown out there.
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AppleTV+ is Losing $1B/Yr & Boeing Banks Big Defense Deal
And I guess this Lady Gaga album, people are pointing to that as one reason why they're feeling a little more uncertain about the economy.
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AppleTV+ is Losing $1B/Yr & Boeing Banks Big Defense Deal
One area where you're actually seeing a significant slowdown in consumer spending is snacks. I don't know. Should we just coin the snacks recession indicator? But, uh, To a T, all of these big consumer food companies have come out in the past two weeks saying we're seeing a big snacking slump. U.S. convenience store sales are down 4.3% over the past year.
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AppleTV+ is Losing $1B/Yr & Boeing Banks Big Defense Deal
General Mills has come out and said people are buying less Cheerios and our snacks. J.M. Smucker's, as well as sales of their sweet baked snacks, fell 7% in the most recent quarter. You go down the line. Campbell's is also forecasting a big snacking slowdown. So maybe you just learn the new indicator right here, which is a snacking slump.
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AppleTV+ is Losing $1B/Yr & Boeing Banks Big Defense Deal
Apple TV Plus' Severance just wrapped up one of the buzziest seasons of television this year, but buzz isn't translating to profits. A new report from the information revealed that Apple's streaming service is losing more than $1 billion annually six years after it was created.
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AppleTV+ is Losing $1B/Yr & Boeing Banks Big Defense Deal
The report also found that Apple TV Plus has just 45 million subscribers, far lower than streaming competitors like Netflix and Disney Plus. For comparison, Netflix has over 300 million paying subscribers, and Disney Plus has 126 million. Now, some context is needed. Apple overall is one of the most profitable companies on Earth, with net income of nearly $100 billion last year alone.
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AppleTV+ is Losing $1B/Yr & Boeing Banks Big Defense Deal
A $1 billion loss will hardly make a financial dent. Plus, it's not out of the norm for streaming services to be unprofitable as they ramp up Netflix, Disney Plus, Peacock, and others all lost billions of dollars for years until they started to make money. Still, given Apple TV Plus' shockingly bad performance, the entertainment industry is asking, why does this exist?
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AppleTV+ is Losing $1B/Yr & Boeing Banks Big Defense Deal
Why is Apple lighting money on fire when there isn't a clear business case? Even competitors are throwing shade. In a recent interview, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos said, I don't understand it beyond a marketing play, but they're really smart people.
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AppleTV+ is Losing $1B/Yr & Boeing Banks Big Defense Deal
Hope you all had a great weekend, the first weekend of spring. Odds are you didn't make it to a movie theater. Disney's Snow White live-action remake pulled in just $43 million in its domestic box office debut, a really disappointing haul for a film the company spent nearly $300 million to make.
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AppleTV+ is Losing $1B/Yr & Boeing Banks Big Defense Deal
So there is a theory why Apple has rolled out a streaming service. It's no secret. It's basically the Costco hot dog and soda idea where you get people into your ecosystem so they buy other products. The goal for Apple is obviously to sell as many smartphones and computers as possible. The theory is...
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AppleTV+ is Losing $1B/Yr & Boeing Banks Big Defense Deal
is that if you get people hooked on your streaming service, then they will buy your gadgets as well. The thing is, that hasn't necessarily panned out, or actually, we don't know because according to this information report, Apple doesn't have the data to show whether its streaming subscribers are buying their products or staying within their ecosystem.
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AppleTV+ is Losing $1B/Yr & Boeing Banks Big Defense Deal
So they are living in this foggy situation that no one has much clarity on. The fact that they don't have data on this is quite damning because that is the first thing you'd want to check, whether your streaming service loss leader, Costco, hot dog and soda combo is actually bringing people into your business.
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AppleTV+ is Losing $1B/Yr & Boeing Banks Big Defense Deal
In fact, the controversy-plagued Snow White posted the worst opening weekend of all Disney live-action remakes. Surely this will be the end of these remakes, Toby.
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AppleTV+ is Losing $1B/Yr & Boeing Banks Big Defense Deal
I'm not sure how many grills you find when you walk into the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, but you will find the George Foreman Grill. That's how iconic and important it was to American culture, especially in the 1990s when it came out. One of its biggest innovations, perhaps its biggest innovation.
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AppleTV+ is Losing $1B/Yr & Boeing Banks Big Defense Deal
was that the grooved grilling surface was pitched 20 degrees so that the fat would drain from the meat into this little plastic tray.
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AppleTV+ is Losing $1B/Yr & Boeing Banks Big Defense Deal
We just showed a bunch of the infomercials here on the screen, and you can just see all of these fat droppings into this tray that you're not eating, and a low-fat diet was so big in the mid-1990s, and it just hit perfectly, resonated with consumers, and George Foreman was the perfect pitchman for this product. He put his heart and soul into it.
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AppleTV+ is Losing $1B/Yr & Boeing Banks Big Defense Deal
Taking your business international can feel like sailing through a sea of red tape, regulations, and unpredictability. Is attracting global business worth the global hassle? Wise Business can help. Your Wise account has everything you need to operate your global business. With Wise Business, you can process payments, get paid, and manage your money internationally.
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AppleTV+ is Losing $1B/Yr & Boeing Banks Big Defense Deal
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AppleTV+ is Losing $1B/Yr & Boeing Banks Big Defense Deal
Setting up your account is super easy, and it takes just a few seconds to make payments in over 40 different currencies. To learn more about how you can use Wise Business to save time, money, and stress, visit wise.com slash business. That's W-I-S-E dot com slash business. Neil, what's one way you rely on tech in your everyday life?
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AppleTV+ is Losing $1B/Yr & Boeing Banks Big Defense Deal
I got a lot of health tracking apps running constantly to let me know how the body's holding up.
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AppleTV+ is Losing $1B/Yr & Boeing Banks Big Defense Deal
The Quip Ultra is a smart sonic electric toothbrush that's packed full of some pretty cool tech you'll want to use daily.
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AppleTV+ is Losing $1B/Yr & Boeing Banks Big Defense Deal
And it's equipped with a timer that monitors your progress and your pressure to help you brush at just the right intensity.
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AppleTV+ is Losing $1B/Yr & Boeing Banks Big Defense Deal
Still brushing the analog way? Get 15% off your Quip Ultra at getquip.com slash brew. And subscribe for auto-shipping of BrushPod refill heads to earn exclusive perks. That's G-E-T-Q-U-I-P dot com slash brew. Welcome to Winners of the Weekend, the segment where Toby and I pick two things whose brackets are actually looking not so bad.
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AppleTV+ is Losing $1B/Yr & Boeing Banks Big Defense Deal
I won the pre-show George Foreman grill off, so I get to go first. And here's a sentence you haven't heard in a long time. Boeing just scored a huge win. On Friday, President Trump announced plans for a next generation fighter jet called the F-47, and Boeing was chosen to make it.
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AppleTV+ is Losing $1B/Yr & Boeing Banks Big Defense Deal
We don't know the details of the deal, but estimates put the contract at an initial $20 billion, though experts say it could rise well above that. It is a much-needed endorsement for the struggling Boeing, which lost nearly $12 billion last year amid a safety and confidence crisis around its commercial planes.
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AppleTV+ is Losing $1B/Yr & Boeing Banks Big Defense Deal
Shares rose 3% on the news, while shares of Lockheed Martin, the contractor that lost to Boeing for the deal, fell nearly 6%. So what is the point of this ultra pricey F-47? It's all about countering China in the skies. The jet is the centerpiece of the Air Force's next generation air dominance program, which seeks to replace the F-22 Raptor with a plane that can give the U.S.
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Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
And you can still save money as you go global. Wise Business has no hidden fees, no markups on the exchange rate and no ongoing subscription cost.
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Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
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Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
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Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
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Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
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Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
This is an incredibly remarkable and sophisticated operation. Home Depot sends a team to Paris Fashion Week each year to keep up with the latest color trends. They're planting all of these gardens, 25 trial gardens, in nine climate zones across the United States to test safety. uh, different genetic varieties of these particular plants.
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Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
Then they sift from 800 down to 40 to 50 that they eventually put in their stores for you to see some of these gardens. Actually, in fact, most of them, you don't know where they are because they're protected like a high security prison. Uh, behind cornfields, because this is truly a huge moneymaker for Home Depot. They can't give away any of their secrets. And you're right.
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Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
The ultimate goal, as we heard from Home Depot leaders every single time, was that they need to turn one-time customers into repeat customers. So they need to make particular variations to the genetic makeup of these plants so that, you know, people like you and I can't kill them as easily as we would.
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Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
My winner is The Wall because this novel piece of arena design is giving the Los Angeles Clippers a major home court advantage as the NBA playoffs get going. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, The Wall is a key feature of the $2 billion Intuit Dome, a new stadium the Clippers began playing in this year.
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Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
It's the brainchild of owner Steve Ballmer, who had the idea to create an uninterrupted section of seats, 51 rows deep, ultra steep, behind one of the baskets that can only be occupied by diehard Clippers fans. The goal was to throw opposing shooters off their game by stuffing all of the craziest fans on the wall who would provide distractions.
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Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
And it has worked to a degree few thought possible, according to an analysis by Sportico. Visiting teams made just 73.5% of their foul shots when shooting against the wall this season, compared to 76.1% they made at the other end of the floor. That 73% would have ranked last for any arena in the NBA. And the advantage goes beyond foul shots.
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Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
Road teams made 32.9% of their three-pointers while facing the wall, compared to the league average of 36%. We'll see if this home court advantage comes through in the playoffs. The Clippers will host Game 3 of their series versus the Denver Nuggets Thursday night.
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Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
Yeah, here's the problem. The team they're facing, the Nuggets, actually has the best home court advantage of any team in the NBA, and Denver teams do have the best home court advantage across sports because they're up a mile high, and it's very hard for opposing teams to come in. acclimated with that elevation, and the Clippers already lost game one.
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Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
They're playing game two tonight, so they may go back home to the wall at an 0-2 deficit because the one team that has a better home-court advantage is the team that they're playing. It's Monday, so here's what you need to know about the week ahead. Top finance leaders from around the world will gather in a post-peak cherry blossom Washington, D.C.
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Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
for the IMF and World Bank spring meetings, a major summit to discuss the most pressing global economic issues. Of course, the trade war and negotiations on deals to lower tariffs will take center stage, including in the IMF's closely watched World Economic Outlook forecast released tomorrow.
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Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
The IMF said it will slash its own growth forecast due to the trade war, previewing notable markdowns, but not a recession.
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Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
Can you believe that this is the first time we said tariffs in the show? I know. All the way down here.
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Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
If you don't know how to read a financial statement, time to brush up because this week has more than 120 earnings on tap. In the Magnificent Seven, Tesla and Alphabet will drop their Q1 performance. Corporate America, Star Wars, Boeing, AT&T, Procter & Gamble, and Pepsi are also on the docket, plus Chipotle, Southwest, and American Airlines.
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Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
Investors will be listening to how execs see the trade war impacting their businesses.
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Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
The Boston Marathon, the world's oldest modern marathon, is happening later this morning in picture-perfect weather. But the runners might have to dodge a few war reenactors along the way, because this weekend, Boston... held major celebrations marking the 250th anniversary of the start of the Revolutionary War.
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Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
Friday was the 250th anniversary of the ride of Paul Revere, while the next day people staged a reenactment of the Battle of Lexington in Concord, which started the war back in 1775. Toby, more impressive, running the Boston Marathon or Paul Revere's 16-mile midnight ride?
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Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
I think if there's a year for it to do, it's the 250th anniversary of the start of the Revolutionary War. So let's go, Connor. In team sports, the big event this week is the NFL draft beginning on Thursday in Green Bay, Wisconsin. The Tennessee Titans are on the clock with the first pick. And while we could consult Mel Kiper, here's how Google's Gemini AI thinks the draft will go.
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Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
The Titans will take Miami QB Cam Ward at number one. Then the Browns will take Colorado's two-way star Travis Hunter at two. And the Giants at three will take Shadur Sanders, the quarterback from Colorado, and the son of the Buffaloes coach Deion Sanders. How did Gemini do?
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Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
Also in sports, in a way, the world's first sperm race will be held on Friday at the Hollywood Palladium in Los Angeles. This is a real thing. A couple of teenage millionaires have created a startup called Sperm Racing in which they'll pit representatives from UCLA and USC against each other in a contest meant to raise awareness around male fertility issues. The track is insane.
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Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
eight inches long and sperm typically swim at five millimeters per minute. So each race, there will be three, will take at least 40 minutes. The hosts say there will be play-by-play commentary, instant replays, leaderboards, and betting through Polymarket. According to the Sperm Racing Manifesto, it's about turning health into a competition.
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Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
In the heavy metal world of credit cards, there is a new rock star in town. On Friday, regulators gave their blessing to Capital One's $35 billion acquisition of Discover, clearing the final hurdle for the formation of the new biggest credit card company in the United States. The acquisition was announced last year and was under regulatory review.
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Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
It's about making male fertility something people actually want to talk about, track, and improve.
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Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
Let's wrap it up there. Thanks so much for starting your morning with us and have a wonderful start to the week. For any questions, comments, or feedback, send an email to morningbrewdaily at morningbrew.com. Let's roll the credits. Emily Milliron is our executive producer. Raymond Liu is our producer. Our associate producers are Olivia Graham, who celebrated her birthday this weekend.
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Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
Happy birthday, Olivia. and Olivia Lake. Uchenua Ogu is our technical director. He's here all week, folks. Scoop Sardaris is on audio. Hair and Makeup has a green thumb for all your gardening needs. Devin Emery is our president, and our show is a production of Borny Brew.
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Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
Now, company leaders say they expect to complete the merger early next year. This completely changes the credit card landscape. With Discover, Capital One will add a payment network to its arsenal.
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Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
So not only will it issue credit cards like banks such as JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, and Citi, but it will also present a new major challenger to the companies that dominate the infrastructure for processing transactions, Visa, MasterCard, and American Express. Meanwhile, adding Discover will give it a war chest to go up market.
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Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
Capital One currently focuses on subprime customers, those with lower credit scores, but adding Discover will give it an extra $1.2 billion in annual revenue to go after higher income customers who want things like airport lounges and fancy perks to come with their credit cards. Toby, this is Capital One joining the big leagues and its rivals are on notice.
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Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
So Capital One has really dominated the market for subprime, those customers who are in the credit range around 600. They've had this amazing data operation that finds an arbitrage opportunity where others have not. Their stock has increased 13% each year since it went public in 1994.
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Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
That's far better than most credit card companies besides Amex, which gets this premium because they cater to more wealthy customers. But the problem is These people who are Capital One customers are improving their credit scores and they're looking for other options.
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Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, humanoid robots ran a half marathon in China. They're already taking our jobs. They're going to take our hobbies too.
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Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
Capital One says it has 42 million subprime customers who have improved their credit card enough to qualify for better products and pricing. And once they do qualify for those better products, they are looking elsewhere beyond Capital One. They're looking to JP Morgan. They are looking elsewhere. to American Express.
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Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
So Capital One thinks by adding Discover, by adding a payments network, by adding more customers there, unlocking all of this revenue, they can spend on airport lounges and other perks. I mean, American Express is everywhere. It gives all of these perks. You can go to a sporting event and skip the line. You can go to JFK or LaGuardia and get into a really fancy lounge.
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Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
Capital One thinks that by improving those capabilities, it can keep those customers with it over the course of their credit building journey.
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Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
Totally. Watching these robots, I saw myself in them. I mean, very few got past the finish line. There was another one that crashed into a wall and broke up. Most of them needed a battery recharge, which certainly reminded me of needing some water along the way, running 13 miles. But you're right. This was a showcase for China's robotics industry.
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Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
The government has made a huge push to invest in this sector. They want to be the world leader by 2027. And to a T, all of these executives that were interviewed who made the robots were saying, this is, you know, we want to make robots that can replicate humans. This is our goal. That's why we're building a humanoid robot. What's a better test of what a human can do than run a race?
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Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
And they called out the West saying, I don't see anybody over there doing anything remotely close to this. So they kind of boasted about their prowess, even if, you know, the fastest one finished in two hours and 40 minutes. It's still finished, and they just think this is a sign of big things to come, not necessarily in the running world, but more to build up their industrial base.
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Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
Big news out of Vatican City this morning. Pope Francis has died at age 88, one day after Easter Sunday.
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Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
Yeah. Maybe it was more like a motorsport, like designing a F1 vehicle for these for these robots to run instead of, you know. Yeah. Instead of like a road race, it was more of a of a motor race. But certainly this rivalry is heating up and the companies in the West are dying. you know, pursuing robotics.
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Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
The first pope in history from Latin America, he was Argentinian, Francis was known for bucking his predecessor's more rigid views by taking progressive stances for the Catholic Church, like advocating for the world's marginalized and poorest people, criticizing capitalism and climate change, and calling nuclear weapons and the death penalty immoral.
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Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
I mean, Tesla, Elon Musk says that his Optimus robot will be a $10 trillion unit one day as part of Tesla. They've completely reframed their company in that regard. Meta started a new team under its Reality Labs division earlier this year. to produce humanoid robots.
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Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
NVIDIA, Jensen Huang, the CEO, said at his keynote speech at CES this January, just a few months ago, that the chat GPT moment for general robotics is just around the corner. Amazon, Apple, Google are also making humanoid robots. Jensen says that they're going to come to factories near you within a few years. So this is the next frontier.
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Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
This is possibly the next frontier in this tech rivalry between U.S. and China.
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Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
It is a very exclusive club that Coogler is joining in getting this rights reversion deal. It's in only his fifth movie. I mean, there are very few directors who have managed to negotiate this with studios. And the reason they have been able to do that is A, they're God tier directors and B, that they took Very extreme risk to make the movie and often self-finance it. So this club is very few.
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Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
Mel Gibson owns the Passion of the Christ. Richard Linklater has partial ownership of Boyhood, which he filmed in stops and starts over 11 years. And then Quentin Tarantino is getting ownership back of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood in a couple of decades, which was attributed to a deal that he signed with Miramax before it went to the studio that it did. So this is a very small club.
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Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
Francis had not been in good health this year, coming off a lengthy hospital stay for pneumonia, but he had been making several public appearances in recent weeks, including meeting Vice President J.D. Vance yesterday. So Toby, I saw a conclave, but what happens next?
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Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
Kugler is not is a amazing director, but he's only directed five films now. So that's what studio execs were saying. They're like, well, if Kugler is going around demanding rights reversions from the studios that he's pitching these movies to, what does it mean for the entire industry? We're already reeling from the collapse of theaters post pandemic. What does it mean for us?
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Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
Last week, I mean, we talked about the fact that original films were – unable to break through. There was a ton more flops than successes. And then here we have a major success from certainly not any IP that anyone had heard of because there was no IP behind it. And it has this massive opening, the best for an original film in many years.
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Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
So overall, a massive success for Sinners, for Coogler, who I would love to meet up with his negotiating team. Up next, it's our winners of the weekend. If you're planning to do business abroad, you've got to make sure your finances are in order. That's where Wise Business comes in. Wise Business is the account for doing business in other currencies.
Morning Brew Daily
Klarna Wants to Replace Humans with AI & Spirit Leverages Southwest Debacle?
Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, as Southwest tries to calm a spiraling PR crisis, a refreshed spirit wants to steal its customers.
Morning Brew Daily
Klarna Wants to Replace Humans with AI & Spirit Leverages Southwest Debacle?
Williams and Wilmore have been true champs about all this, saying that they love being in space and that they're not stranded and that they're staying occupied and NASA has... provided everything for them that they needed on their very much extended stay. And that may somewhat be genuine because astronauts don't get that many chances to be in space.
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Klarna Wants to Replace Humans with AI & Spirit Leverages Southwest Debacle?
So they've both spent a quarter century at NASA and they've only been to space twice.
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Klarna Wants to Replace Humans with AI & Spirit Leverages Southwest Debacle?
twice and so it's unlikely or doubtful whether they'll be going back to space so for them this might be their last chance they've worked their entire life for this this might be their last chance to ever be in space so yes they've had a few months uh more than planned in space but i think they're thinking to themselves now this is my last chance i'm not gonna be able to go back to space so might as well enjoy it while i'm here
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Klarna Wants to Replace Humans with AI & Spirit Leverages Southwest Debacle?
That's a very optimistic take.
Morning Brew Daily
Klarna Wants to Replace Humans with AI & Spirit Leverages Southwest Debacle?
So. So looking ahead in the next few days after this crew switchover happens, Williams and Wilmore will eventually descend to Earth, hopefully barring any weather mishaps here on our on our blue planet. And they will return to their families. We can't wait for them to do that. My winner is law schools because they are swimming in applicants.
Morning Brew Daily
Klarna Wants to Replace Humans with AI & Spirit Leverages Southwest Debacle?
According to the Wall Street Journal, the number of people applying to the U.S. 's nearly 200 law schools has surged 20.5% compared to last year, making it one of the biggest influx of applicants in recent memory. Some schools, such as the University of Michigan, have seen demand surge even more, up 30% annually, making it their most competitive year on record.
Morning Brew Daily
Klarna Wants to Replace Humans with AI & Spirit Leverages Southwest Debacle?
There are a number of factors contributing to the spike in aspiring 1Ls. One is the current tough job environment for white collar workers. When your employment prospects are dim, you go to grad school to level up. Another could be more tech related. Law offers the prospect of a stable, high paying career at a time when AI advances are threatening certain professional services positions.
Morning Brew Daily
Klarna Wants to Replace Humans with AI & Spirit Leverages Southwest Debacle?
I am excited to see what you come up with. In the meantime, if you actually own a business, big or small, you deserve enterprise-grade protection with Sophos. Learn more at Sophos.com. That's S-O-P-H-O-S.com.
Morning Brew Daily
Klarna Wants to Replace Humans with AI & Spirit Leverages Southwest Debacle?
Also helping, the LSAT tweaked its test, which could have attracted more people to take it. And law school applications have historically jumped in election years when the legal profession is in the spotlight, as it is now with all the cases surrounding the Trump administration's executive actions. Toby, while this is great for law schools, it is not great if you're applying to one.
Morning Brew Daily
Klarna Wants to Replace Humans with AI & Spirit Leverages Southwest Debacle?
And we are seeing massive application numbers. I mean, if you're applying to law school, I will say good luck. Georgetown University Law Center received 14,000 applications to fill 650 spots. University of Michigan will take 320 people in this class. They received more than 8,900 applications. So you're right.
Morning Brew Daily
Klarna Wants to Replace Humans with AI & Spirit Leverages Southwest Debacle?
The floodgates have been opened and law schools are about to see their acceptance rate drop dramatically. Okay, it is Monday, so here is what you need to know about the week ahead. The Fed is meeting on Wednesday at a pivotal point for the economy, with tariffs and potentially higher inflation spooking investors.
Morning Brew Daily
Klarna Wants to Replace Humans with AI & Spirit Leverages Southwest Debacle?
Stocks posted their worst week in two years last week, and the S&P 500 briefly fell into correction territory, down 10% from its record high. The Fed is not expected to lower interest rates as part of Jerome Powell's wait-and-see approach. But, of course, his press conference will be appointment viewing for his thoughts on the market mayhem.
Morning Brew Daily
Klarna Wants to Replace Humans with AI & Spirit Leverages Southwest Debacle?
Disney's live-action adaptation of Snow White hits theaters on Friday, but what should have been a slam-dunk blockbuster has turned into a colossal dumpster fire. Disney dramatically scaled back promotion following an unending string of controversies since the project was first announced in 2021.
Morning Brew Daily
Klarna Wants to Replace Humans with AI & Spirit Leverages Southwest Debacle?
The movie is going to cost Disney $450 million all in with production, advertising, and prints, and it may be lucky to make back even a fraction of that.
Morning Brew Daily
Klarna Wants to Replace Humans with AI & Spirit Leverages Southwest Debacle?
The NCAA tournament begins this week, which means it's time to acquire a second or third monitor at work and start developing intense opinions about colleges you only learned about earlier in the day. After the play-in games today and tomorrow, the men's tournament gets going for real on Thursday. The top four seeds are Auburn, Duke, Houston and Florida.
Morning Brew Daily
Klarna Wants to Replace Humans with AI & Spirit Leverages Southwest Debacle?
On the women's side, the top four seeds are UCLA, South Carolina, USC and Texas. Toby, the best week in sports has arrived.
Morning Brew Daily
Klarna Wants to Replace Humans with AI & Spirit Leverages Southwest Debacle?
Also in sports, the baseball season will soft launch in Japan this week when homegrown superstars Shohei Ohtani and the Dodgers take on the Cubs over two games. To give you an idea of Ohtani's ridiculous popularity in his home country, tickets at the Tokyo Dome are going for as much as $2,000.
Morning Brew Daily
Klarna Wants to Replace Humans with AI & Spirit Leverages Southwest Debacle?
And finally, in related news to baseball's return, the first day of spring is on Thursday. Boy, am I glad to see you.
Morning Brew Daily
Klarna Wants to Replace Humans with AI & Spirit Leverages Southwest Debacle?
here all right let's wrap it up on that uh high note thanks so much for starting your morning with us have a wonderful monday and a very happy saint patty's day for any questions comments or feedback send an email to morning brew daily at morningbrew.com and if you're enjoying the show share it with a friend family member or co-worker toby who should everyone listening share it with today
Morning Brew Daily
Klarna Wants to Replace Humans with AI & Spirit Leverages Southwest Debacle?
That is a very good point. Let's roll the credits. Emily Milliron is our executive producer. Raymond Liu is our producer. Olivia Graham and Olivia Lake are our associate producers. Uchenua Ogu is our technical director. Scoops Dardaris is on audio. Hair and Makeup is splitting the G. Devin Emery is our chief content officer. And our show is a production of Morning Brew.
Morning Brew Daily
Klarna Wants to Replace Humans with AI & Spirit Leverages Southwest Debacle?
You're absolutely right. There's a lot of juicy storylines to dig into with Klarna's IPO. The A plot is the IPO of a major fintech company and one of the few buy now pay later giants to go public. The B plot is this major test for AI's promise to transform the workforce. As you mentioned, Klarna has bear hugged AI like forever. few other companies have.
Morning Brew Daily
Klarna Wants to Replace Humans with AI & Spirit Leverages Southwest Debacle?
It's been developing its own in-house AI system based on OpenAI's ChatGPT, and its CEO has said the quiet part out loud, while many tech CEOs, when asked about whether AI will replace human workers, they kind of hedge a little bit, and they'll say, no, it's a compliment, and we want our human workers to work alongside AI. He's come right out and said that he hopes
Morning Brew Daily
Klarna Wants to Replace Humans with AI & Spirit Leverages Southwest Debacle?
Welcome back to the week and happy St. Patrick's Day to everyone of Irish descent and pretty much anyone else who wants to have a good time. And there are a lot of you. While only one in nine people in the US claim Irish heritage, about 61% of Americans plan to celebrate St. Patrick's Day. And that means big business for your local bar.
Morning Brew Daily
Klarna Wants to Replace Humans with AI & Spirit Leverages Southwest Debacle?
He's bragged that AI will automate his workforce, and he hopes to dwindle his workforce from 5,000 people working at Klarna at a peak to ultimately just 2,000.
Morning Brew Daily
Klarna Wants to Replace Humans with AI & Spirit Leverages Southwest Debacle?
Now, in terms of buy now, pay later, that sector that has grown a ton over the past six years or so where you can pay online in installments had that big boom during the pandemic. There was that big slump after the pandemic, but now it's coming back in a big way. It is still very popular. I mean, just look at the recent holiday season from November 1st to December 31st.
Morning Brew Daily
Klarna Wants to Replace Humans with AI & Spirit Leverages Southwest Debacle?
The usage of buy now, pay later services jumped nearly 10 percent year over year. amounting to $18.2 billion in total online spending. That's about 7.5% of overall online sales. So as much as people bought over the holiday, 7.5% used buy now, pay later. Klarna, Affirm, Afterpay are the giants in this space. Whether they will be successful on the public markets is a different question entirely.
Morning Brew Daily
Klarna Wants to Replace Humans with AI & Spirit Leverages Southwest Debacle?
Affirm went public yesterday. A few years ago and its stock has fallen 57 percent since its IPO. And the market is quite turbulent right now. It's not exactly a time when a big company would want to go public. So we are watching to see whether Klarna will actually go public or get cold feet in the next month or so.
Morning Brew Daily
Klarna Wants to Replace Humans with AI & Spirit Leverages Southwest Debacle?
You are well aware that stocks have taken a bruising from the rapid fire tariff announcements coming from Washington, D.C. But there's been another high profile casualty of the policy uncertainty, the U.S. dollar. The greenback is having its worst start to a year since 2008, declining more than 4 percent since New Year's Day.
Morning Brew Daily
Klarna Wants to Replace Humans with AI & Spirit Leverages Southwest Debacle?
which treats the holiday like the alcohol-soaked version of Black Friday. According to Moody's, St. Patrick's Day is the number one day for beer consumption in the U.S., with sales jumping 174% above the average. Toby, dry January has never felt more distant.
Morning Brew Daily
Klarna Wants to Replace Humans with AI & Spirit Leverages Southwest Debacle?
The slump, depending on how long it lasts, could have dramatic impacts on everything from Fed rate cuts to inflation to where you decide to go on vacation. At a very high level, the strength of a country's currency reflects demand for that currency, and by proxy, the expectation of economic growth. Generally, if your currency is gaining, it means your economy is looking good. Congrats.
Morning Brew Daily
Klarna Wants to Replace Humans with AI & Spirit Leverages Southwest Debacle?
And that's been the story for the U.S. dollar for more than a decade. as America's economic growth has sailed past those of peers like Europe. But events of the past few weeks have shaken those foundations.
Morning Brew Daily
Klarna Wants to Replace Humans with AI & Spirit Leverages Southwest Debacle?
Trump's trade war with every country on Earth, combined with Europe's massive spending plans to rebuild its military and infrastructure, have been ripping through currency markets, sending the dollar to its biggest weekly loss against the euro since 2009. Toby, the dollar is looking a little less almighty.
Morning Brew Daily
Klarna Wants to Replace Humans with AI & Spirit Leverages Southwest Debacle?
Yeah, strong dollar, which has been the case for a long time is great for American vacationers abroad. Recently, the U.S. dollar last year hit its highest level versus the Japanese yen in 34 years, which led to a huge surge in tourism to Japan for the food. And last week, we talked about the skiing as well. Why does Trump and J.D. Vance, who's the vice president, want a weaker dollar?
Morning Brew Daily
Klarna Wants to Replace Humans with AI & Spirit Leverages Southwest Debacle?
They've been very vocal about wanting a weaker dollar, and that's because it would boost American manufacturers and exports. If the dollar is strong, it makes us selling goods abroad much more expensive. Sometimes you hear when the dollar is strong, multinational companies hop on their earnings calls and say, this strong dollar really hit our earnings overseas.
Morning Brew Daily
Klarna Wants to Replace Humans with AI & Spirit Leverages Southwest Debacle?
I remember companies like Pepsi say this, strong dollar, it's bad for our sales in foreign markets. So they've been quite vocal saying we want a weaker dollar to help domestic manufacturing because it would make it easier. The U.S. consumer would be the victim of that. Strong dollar does make things cheaper for American goods. Buying stuff from abroad, a weaker dollar makes stuff more expensive.
Morning Brew Daily
Klarna Wants to Replace Humans with AI & Spirit Leverages Southwest Debacle?
No, it is much smaller than Southwest Airlines. The way Spirit thinks it can win in the new aviation market is by moving up market. It is now offering flight options with tiered prices so you can pay more online. on Spirit to get extra legroom, which is a policy it didn't have before.
Morning Brew Daily
Klarna Wants to Replace Humans with AI & Spirit Leverages Southwest Debacle?
It's selling these bundled fares that include bigger seat, priority boarding, free bags, internet service, snacks and drinks, which is a big departure from its previous strategy of just selling these a la carte seats. So you can pay for every single little thing. Now it's bundling things together. And you've seen a Airlines jockey for position here.
Morning Brew Daily
Klarna Wants to Replace Humans with AI & Spirit Leverages Southwest Debacle?
Upscale travel is what is making money right now. These Delta is rolled out. You know, Delta has these lounges and the business class like that is where the money is had right now in airlines. And Spirit thinks that it needs to skate where the puck is going to win back customers.
Morning Brew Daily
Klarna Wants to Replace Humans with AI & Spirit Leverages Southwest Debacle?
So one day as I was scrolling the web, I got hit with an ad for patio furniture. Dude, I live in a small New York City apartment, not relevant. So if that's happening to me, imagine the incorrect spaces your B2B marketing could be ending up. If you want to reach the right professionals, start with LinkedIn ads.
Morning Brew Daily
Klarna Wants to Replace Humans with AI & Spirit Leverages Southwest Debacle?
LinkedIn has grown to a network of over 1 billion professionals and 130 million decision makers. And in this vast pool of potential, you can target your buyers by job title, industry, company role, skills, seniority, and more if you can't believe it.
Morning Brew Daily
Klarna Wants to Replace Humans with AI & Spirit Leverages Southwest Debacle?
If you think you're wasting budget on the wrong audiences, stop that first and foremost and start targeting the right people with LinkedIn ads instead. LinkedIn will even give you a $100 credit on your next campaign. so you can take LinkedIn ads for a spin. Just go to linkedin.com slash mbd. That's linkedin.com slash mbd. Terms and conditions apply only on LinkedIn ads.
Morning Brew Daily
Klarna Wants to Replace Humans with AI & Spirit Leverages Southwest Debacle?
What does the future hold for business? Ask nine experts and you'll get 10 answers. It's a bull market. It's a bear market. Rates will rise or fall. Inflation's up or down. Can someone invent a crystal ball?
Morning Brew Daily
Klarna Wants to Replace Humans with AI & Spirit Leverages Southwest Debacle?
Until then, over 41,000 businesses have future-proofed their business with NetSuite by Oracle, the number one cloud ERP bringing accounting, financial management, inventory, and HR into one fluid platform. With one unified business management suite, there's one source of truth giving you the visibility and control you need to make quick decisions.
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Klarna Wants to Replace Humans with AI & Spirit Leverages Southwest Debacle?
With real-time insights and forecasting, you're peering into the future with actionable data. When you're closing the books in days, not weeks, you're spending less time looking backwards and more time on what's next. Whether your company is earning millions or even hundreds of millions, NetSuite helps you respond to immediate challenges and seize your biggest opportunities.
Morning Brew Daily
Klarna Wants to Replace Humans with AI & Spirit Leverages Southwest Debacle?
Okay, I'll bite. Why are you excited about Sophos? Well, they provide cybersecurity for growing businesses. You don't have a growing business, though.
Morning Brew Daily
Klarna Wants to Replace Humans with AI & Spirit Leverages Southwest Debacle?
Download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning for free at netsuite.com slash brew. That's netsuite.com slash brew. netsuite.com slash brew. Welcome to Winners of the Weekend, the Monday segment where Toby and I pick two things that had a better weekend than Rick Pitino. Toby, you won the pre-episode fashion show, you catwalk queen. So you get to go first.
Morning Brew Daily
How ‘SNL’ Adapted to Changing Media After 50 Years
Yeah. At one point, it was estimated that the top 10 grossing movie comedies in history all starred alums of SNL. I think you could point to internal factors within SNL saying the cast just isn't as good. Lorne Michaels is not doing a good job of talent scouting or people have moved on to comedians have pursued different paths because there are so many ways to get famous now, not just SNL.
Morning Brew Daily
How ‘SNL’ Adapted to Changing Media After 50 Years
as the gatekeeper anymore. It could also point to broader trends of movie comedies dying and not being a force in the box office anymore. Before the show, the whole Morning Brew office, we were trying to list off the most relevant comedy movies of the last decade, and we literally could not come up with anything.
Morning Brew Daily
How ‘SNL’ Adapted to Changing Media After 50 Years
So it's probably some sort of combination between SNL as not necessarily the golden standard for comedians to get famous anymore, and just the broad decline of comedies at the box office in general.
Morning Brew Daily
How ‘SNL’ Adapted to Changing Media After 50 Years
I wasn't scared per se, but I certainly pulled the sprint back inside after putting the trash by the driveway more than a few times.
Morning Brew Daily
How ‘SNL’ Adapted to Changing Media After 50 Years
I think it also speaks to the rise of TV over movies. We saw streaming platforms come in with massive budgets. Netflix spends $15 billion per year on TV, and a lot of actors, whether they're comedic actors or dramatic actors, have started to do more TV rather than movies because it pays you know, just as good, if not more. And people do watch a lot of streaming services.
Morning Brew Daily
How ‘SNL’ Adapted to Changing Media After 50 Years
And there has been success in the TV realm, as you mentioned. I mean, Ted Lasso was a phenomenon starring Jason Sudeikis. That was on TV, not a movie. But if it was a movie, then, you know, we'd probably be talking it in a similar breath to some of these comedians of SNL of old. So I think it does speak to the broader rise of TV over movies in the cultural cachet.
Morning Brew Daily
How ‘SNL’ Adapted to Changing Media After 50 Years
And that's a really good transition because one of the most fascinating aspects of SNL's 50 years of existence is how it's mirrored and adapted to the different ways people consume media. The most prominent example is the rise of YouTube, which NBC says it's responsible for and contributed to its later acquisition by Google. Here's the story. On December 15th, 2005, YouTube officially launched.
Morning Brew Daily
How ‘SNL’ Adapted to Changing Media After 50 Years
Same should go for your advertising. That's where LinkedIn can help. LinkedIn ads lets you target and filter your audience by industry, company, and role. So you're not just firing ads off willy-nilly into the dark. No more accidentally serving ads for cloud servers to servers at Outback. And no more AI ads going to Allen Iverson fans.
Morning Brew Daily
How ‘SNL’ Adapted to Changing Media After 50 Years
Two days after that, the Lonely Island comedy group, led by Andy Samberg, premiered their digital short Lazy Sunday on Saturday Night Live. The lo-fi music video, a satirical rap about watching the Chronicles of Narnia movie, was uploaded to the platform shortly after, and... quickly became a sensation.
Morning Brew Daily
How ‘SNL’ Adapted to Changing Media After 50 Years
It got 2 million plus views in its first week alone, which was unheard of at the time, and drove YouTube traffic 83% higher. For many people in my generation, millennials, it was the first YouTube video we ever saw. Less than a year later, Google bought YouTube for $1.5 billion,
Morning Brew Daily
How ‘SNL’ Adapted to Changing Media After 50 Years
NBC contends that Lazy Sunday was the clip that built YouTube, but YouTube has responded that it would have been popular no matter what. Whichever theory you subscribe to, it was historic. Lazy Sunday was the first TV show clip to have a viral second life online, something that seems so commonplace today.
Morning Brew Daily
How ‘SNL’ Adapted to Changing Media After 50 Years
And it's very ironic, I guess, that NBC wanted to take down its clips, Saturday Night Live clips, from YouTube because, you know, that is where most people consume, not most people, I don't have the data, that is where anecdotally A large number of people consume SNL these days. I don't think I've talked to a single person who watches it live.
Morning Brew Daily
How ‘SNL’ Adapted to Changing Media After 50 Years
And NBC, SNL has done a large initiative by putting their clips on YouTube. And that is where SNL lives in the minds of many. And it's very, you know, uncertain about what happens to SNL the future as a live show because So many of its clips, like so many other types of media that we consume, is on YouTube.
Morning Brew Daily
How ‘SNL’ Adapted to Changing Media After 50 Years
And Lonely Island started it, NBC wanted it off, and now they're very intentional about crafting clips and putting their live segments, their sketches, on YouTube because that is where we watch it nowadays.
Morning Brew Daily
How ‘SNL’ Adapted to Changing Media After 50 Years
What were you able to dig up? Well, I want to hand out some host superlatives. The person who's hosted SNL the most times is Alec Baldwin with 17 appearances, and he's one of only five people to host SNL at least 10 times, along with Steve Martin, John Goodman, Buck Henry, and Tom Hanks.
Morning Brew Daily
How ‘SNL’ Adapted to Changing Media After 50 Years
In other host history, the oldest host was Betty White, and the youngest host was Drew Barrymore at seven years old in 1982 after starring in E.T. That must have been past her bedtime. I have some fun facts.
Morning Brew Daily
How ‘SNL’ Adapted to Changing Media After 50 Years
And the best part is LinkedIn will give you a $100 credit on your next campaign so you can try it yourself. Just go to LinkedIn.com slash MBD. That's LinkedIn.com slash MBD. Terms and conditions apply only on LinkedIn ads.
Morning Brew Daily
How ‘SNL’ Adapted to Changing Media After 50 Years
There is an episode of Seinfeld where George does that, so I assume that is exactly what Larry David did. He just shows up the next day as if nothing happened.
Morning Brew Daily
How ‘SNL’ Adapted to Changing Media After 50 Years
Well, that is all the time we have. Thanks so much for starting your morning with us and taking a trip through memory lane for SNL. Have a wonderful President's Day holiday. We'll be back tomorrow with our regularly scheduled programming. For any questions, comments, or feedback, send an email to morningbrewdaily at morningbrew.com.
Morning Brew Daily
How ‘SNL’ Adapted to Changing Media After 50 Years
And if you're enjoying the show, share it with a friend, family member, or coworker. Toby, who should everyone listening share it with today?
Morning Brew Daily
How ‘SNL’ Adapted to Changing Media After 50 Years
Let's roll the credits. Emily Milliron is our executive producer. Raymond Liu is our producer. Olivia Graham is our associate producer. Lonnie Fiscus is our technical director. Scoop Stardaris is on audio. Hair and Makeup is a Debbie Downer. Wah, wah. Devin Emery is our chief content officer and our show is a production of Morning Brew.
Morning Brew Daily
How ‘SNL’ Adapted to Changing Media After 50 Years
It has stuck around. Remarkable staying power. 50 years for a comedy show on network television. Incredible feat. It's older than The Simpsons, older than Family Feud, older than CBS Sunday Morning. Blows law and order out of the water. SNL has won more Emmy Awards than any TV show in history with 90. What's second place? Game of Thrones with 49.
Morning Brew Daily
How ‘SNL’ Adapted to Changing Media After 50 Years
Good Morning Brew Daily show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, Saturday Night Live is celebrating 50 years on television.
Morning Brew Daily
How ‘SNL’ Adapted to Changing Media After 50 Years
Creator and executive producer Lauren Michaels, who we will chat about a little later, has 102 Emmy nominations, the most ever for an individual and 21 wins. So while there are certain questions about how SNL is adapting to the changing media landscape, it's worth remarking on the run that it's had for 50 years.
Morning Brew Daily
How ‘SNL’ Adapted to Changing Media After 50 Years
And whenever, you know, history has been made over the past half century, SNL has been there. I'm thinking about that first show after 9-11, when then New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani got up there flanked by firefighters and police officers and even had this funny back and forth with with Lorne Michaels, where Michaels asked, can we be funny? And Giuliani responded, why start now?
Morning Brew Daily
How ‘SNL’ Adapted to Changing Media After 50 Years
And then another, of course, really important cultural and political moment for SNL was Tina Fey's parody of Sarah Palin, who was the vice presidential candidate of John McCain in 2008. And there was an actually an academic study that was published. They surveyed young adults and these researchers. This was published in an academic journal.
Morning Brew Daily
How ‘SNL’ Adapted to Changing Media After 50 Years
They found evidence that exposure to Tina Fey's impersonation of Sarah Palin's performance in the vice presidential debate of that year was associated with changes in attitudes toward her selection as a VP candidate and presidential vote intentions. Those effects were most pronounced among self-identified independents and Republicans.
Morning Brew Daily
How ‘SNL’ Adapted to Changing Media After 50 Years
How did Saturday Night Live get off the ground 50 years ago? You can thank Johnny Carson. In 1974, the legendary late night host complained to NBC that he no longer wanted the network to air reruns of The Tonight Show on Saturday nights. So NBC had this gap to fill. The company's new president, Herbert Schlosser, had an idea for a live broadcast from Rockefeller Center called Saturday Night.
Morning Brew Daily
How ‘SNL’ Adapted to Changing Media After 50 Years
He took a meeting with a Canadian TV writer and producer named Lorne Michaels, who pitched him on a comedy concept that would seem as if kids had sneaked into the studio after the adults went home. And that pitch worked. Lorne got the job and began rounding up a cast for the show's debut in 1975. He hired friends from Canada, including Dan Atkinson. and an absurdist comic named John Belushi.
Morning Brew Daily
How ‘SNL’ Adapted to Changing Media After 50 Years
Happy President's Day. Merry President's Day. Anyway, last night, some of you may have watched the 50th anniversary celebration of Saturday Night Live. And the sheer star power of the event made you forget it was on a Sunday.
Morning Brew Daily
How ‘SNL’ Adapted to Changing Media After 50 Years
He also locked in what would later be the first Hollywood star to emerge from SNL, Chevy Chase. This troupe of misfit comics called themselves the not-ready-for-prime-time players, and that really was the perfect description. They represented an avant-garde, boundary-pushing style of sketch comedy that marked a departure from the more suited-up era embodied by Carson.
Morning Brew Daily
How ‘SNL’ Adapted to Changing Media After 50 Years
And another tradition of SNL, which is that the cast members come and leave pretty quickly to go on to maybe bigger and better things, maybe a movie career, also happened in the first season. Chevy Chase was so popular in his role as SNL that he left after the first season to go pursue a Hollywood career. And who did Lorne Michaels replace him with was Bill Murray, who also...
Morning Brew Daily
How ‘SNL’ Adapted to Changing Media After 50 Years
Alumni like Tina Fey, Eddie Murphy, OG cast member Chevy Chase were all there, along with frequent hosts Dave Chappelle and Steve Martin and powerhouse musical guests like Paul McCartney, Miley Cyrus and Sabrina Carpenter. It was a show of force that reminded you just how influential the show was in shaping American culture.
Morning Brew Daily
How ‘SNL’ Adapted to Changing Media After 50 Years
had a pretty good career. Now, you can't really talk about SNL without diving into the man, the myth, Lorne Michaels, because while hundreds of stars have come and gone, he's been the rock and ringleader of the circus for nearly all of the 50 years in its existence, spawning all sorts of theories into his management styles, talent scouting, and philosophy on comedy and entertainment more broadly.
Morning Brew Daily
How ‘SNL’ Adapted to Changing Media After 50 Years
He's been compared to Obi-Wan Kenobi by Tracy Morgan, the great and powerful Oz by Kate McKinnon, and Tom Ripley by Bill Hader. But perhaps the most appropriate parallel is the leader of the Lost Boys in Peter Pan presiding over a group of kids that never grow up because they're constantly getting replaced. Even if you don't know what Lorne Michaels is all about,
Morning Brew Daily
How ‘SNL’ Adapted to Changing Media After 50 Years
you do because he is reportedly the inspiration for dr evil in austin powers snl alum mike myers adopted lauren's right into the character and dr evil raises a pinky to his mouth when plotting which alludes to how lauren would bite his nails when considering which sketches to cut toby he's such an interesting case study in leadership How do you manage all of these egos in one room?
Morning Brew Daily
How ‘SNL’ Adapted to Changing Media After 50 Years
How do you keep a show consistent when the cast is constantly changing? How do you adapt to changing consumer taste for comedy and the ways people watch TV? Only Dr. Evil can pull it off.
Morning Brew Daily
How ‘SNL’ Adapted to Changing Media After 50 Years
And these decisions aren't made until right before the show starts. Now, I didn't know this. Maybe you didn't know this. But at 8 p.m. on Saturday, they do a full dress rehearsal. There's a live audience there. They do everything as they would in the show. There are many sketches in there that actually don't make the show. Lauren is sitting there watching the show. Talk trans.
Morning Brew Daily
How ‘SNL’ Adapted to Changing Media After 50 Years
He's talking to his assistant who's writing down notes furiously. He's gauging whether the audience is laughing or not engaging the audience reaction to the show. So the show goes on at 8 p.m., three and a half hours before it goes live. And a number of sketches are cut.
Morning Brew Daily
How ‘SNL’ Adapted to Changing Media After 50 Years
during that dress rehearsal, other writers and actors for Saturday Night Live said, you know, those notes that are taken during that dress rehearsal are the most, you know, the most rich TV notes that one could ever have if you want to be, to learn how to be a producer.
Morning Brew Daily
How ‘SNL’ Adapted to Changing Media After 50 Years
And Lorne, before we before we leave Lorne, you know, he had some really interesting thoughts and philosophies on comedy that I think and entertainment that you might want to hear about. He has these little quips. So, you know, one of them was to not over explain. He told his writers not to over explain. Let your viewers make key connections.
Morning Brew Daily
How ‘SNL’ Adapted to Changing Media After 50 Years
Give the audience two plus two and let them make four connections. He told writers not to write in angry people. He said, it's really difficult to make anger funny. Idiots play better than a-holes.
Morning Brew Daily
How ‘SNL’ Adapted to Changing Media After 50 Years
And then finally, he does not like improvising, which is really interesting because so many of the comics that you see on SNL you assume are great improvisers, but everything is written out to a T beforehand and He likes those cue cards, no teleprompters.
Morning Brew Daily
How ‘SNL’ Adapted to Changing Media After 50 Years
So everything is written on a cue cards and he just likes to do the work beforehand, which I sympathize with to eliminate the amount of improvising that needs to happen on stage.
Morning Brew Daily
How ‘SNL’ Adapted to Changing Media After 50 Years
What traits do you think are the most important? In my experience, a few things do stand out, like leading by example, taking risks, and being passionate.
Morning Brew Daily
How ‘SNL’ Adapted to Changing Media After 50 Years
That's definitely a match made in heaven.
Morning Brew Daily
How ‘SNL’ Adapted to Changing Media After 50 Years
Just ask my lower back. Yeah, my knee is saying the exact same thing. Well, no one's found a way to stop aging yet, but Timeline has created a supplement that can change the way aging feels, helping your body to bounce back faster by giving your cells a refresh.
Morning Brew Daily
How ‘SNL’ Adapted to Changing Media After 50 Years
And it's super easy to add to your routine. It just takes two soft gels a day to reboot your cells from the inside out.
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Smartphones Exempt From Tariffs… For Now & Meta vs. FTC in Antitrust Trial
Fund your account in five minutes or less and you could earn up to $10,000. Yes, $10,000. when you transfer your old investment portfolio. Start at public.com slash morningbrew. That's public.com slash morningbrew. Paid for by Public Investing. Full disclosures in podcast description.
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Smartphones Exempt From Tariffs… For Now & Meta vs. FTC in Antitrust Trial
Welcome to Winners of the Weekend, the segment where Toby and I pick two things that had a better weekend than your CPA friend who sees the light at the end of the dark tax filing tunnel. I won the pre-show dramatic 1099 reading, so I get to go first. And my winner is thrifting, because if there's anyone that may benefit from tariffs, it's your local thrift store.
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Smartphones Exempt From Tariffs… For Now & Meta vs. FTC in Antitrust Trial
With 125% tariffs on Chinese imports threatening to drive up prices substantially on clothes and other home goods, consumers may increasingly turn to resellers for their weekend outfits, since those clothes are already in large part in America already and therefore tariff-free. That's not the only tailwind behind this industry.
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Smartphones Exempt From Tariffs… For Now & Meta vs. FTC in Antitrust Trial
Trump also closed the so-called de minimis loophole that allowed companies like Shein and Taimou to ship in products for ultra-cheap. Resale has already been booming before these tariffs were applied. The U.S. market for secondhand apparel surged by 14% in 2024, its biggest growth year since 2021, and it's expected to reach $74 billion overall by 2029. Tariffs could push those numbers even higher.
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Smartphones Exempt From Tariffs… For Now & Meta vs. FTC in Antitrust Trial
A thredUP study found that nearly 60% of consumers and 70% of millennials would seek more affordable options like secondhand if tariffs make apparel more expensive.
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Smartphones Exempt From Tariffs… For Now & Meta vs. FTC in Antitrust Trial
They're fired. All right. And now let's hear a word from our new sponsor, Planet Oat. Toby, you know how a good soundtrack can make an okay movie feel epic?
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Smartphones Exempt From Tariffs… For Now & Meta vs. FTC in Antitrust Trial
That's not the rules of this game.
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Smartphones Exempt From Tariffs… For Now & Meta vs. FTC in Antitrust Trial
I mean, some things are so a part of your life where you don't realize how kind of weird and bizarre they are. And yesterday, as we were thinking about this story, I was like, wow, this person wins a golf tournament and they get a jacket that is green. Like, that's a little weird. But in terms of the secondhand secondhand sales, the Masters does not like that this is happening.
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Smartphones Exempt From Tariffs… For Now & Meta vs. FTC in Antitrust Trial
So in 2010, they declared ownership over the green jacket. And now you can't. They're clamping down on all these secondhand auctions. Rory McIlroy or whoever wins the Masters is the only person who can wear that. the green jacket outside of the grounds of Augusta National Golf Club over the year.
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Smartphones Exempt From Tariffs… For Now & Meta vs. FTC in Antitrust Trial
So it's become a system very much like the Oscars, where they retain ownership because they don't want these things being sold on the secondhand market. They want to kind of keep it all in house and you can rent it out. And that's kind of how they've played this, because they don't want
Morning Brew Daily
Smartphones Exempt From Tariffs… For Now & Meta vs. FTC in Antitrust Trial
And, you know, people like Toby come around being like, did you see how like this green jacket was sold for X number of dollars on on at the thrift store? So that's kind of what they've been clamping down. Everything in the Masters is kind of very buttoned up. And so is these jackets.
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Smartphones Exempt From Tariffs… For Now & Meta vs. FTC in Antitrust Trial
That's what Planet Oat does for your coffee or your cereal or your smoothie. It doesn't just show up, it elevates everything around it.
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Smartphones Exempt From Tariffs… For Now & Meta vs. FTC in Antitrust Trial
All right, it's Monday, so here's what you need to know about the big events of the upcoming week. Katy Perry will finally realize her goal of living like an extraterrestrial. Later this morning, a Blue Origin rocket will launch from Texas carrying an all-female crew, the first time since 1963 that a spacecraft will launch with only women aboard.
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Smartphones Exempt From Tariffs… For Now & Meta vs. FTC in Antitrust Trial
The passengers are pop star Katy Perry, TV journalist Gayle King, producer Carrie Ann Flynn, former NASA scientist Aisha Bowe, civil rights activists Amanda Wynne and Jeff Bezos' girlfriend, Lauren Sanchez. The suborbital mission is set to launch from West Texas at 10 a.m. Eastern time and will last all of about 11 minutes in the air.
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Smartphones Exempt From Tariffs… For Now & Meta vs. FTC in Antitrust Trial
Back here on Earth. earning season gets going in a big way after other banks like JP Morgan topped estimates last week. Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and Bank of America will hog the spotlight to start this week. And then later on, Taiwan Semiconductor, United Health, Netflix and American Express will share their Q1 results to a crowd of jittery investors.
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Smartphones Exempt From Tariffs… For Now & Meta vs. FTC in Antitrust Trial
I toss them into my coffee and I swear it feels like I paid eight bucks for it, even though I made it right at home.
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Smartphones Exempt From Tariffs… For Now & Meta vs. FTC in Antitrust Trial
Elsewhere on the economic calendar, the government will release its monthly retail sales data on Wednesday, offering insight into consumer spending during these uncertain tariff filled times.
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Smartphones Exempt From Tariffs… For Now & Meta vs. FTC in Antitrust Trial
Yesterday, the NBA's regular season wrapped up, an 82-game roller coaster defined by shocking trades and coaching changes, and the play-in tournament for the playoffs starts tomorrow. The top three seeds in the East are the Cavs, Celtics, Knicks, and the West, it's the Thunder, Rockets, and Lakers.
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Smartphones Exempt From Tariffs… For Now & Meta vs. FTC in Antitrust Trial
And in other sports news, don't want to leave out my hockey fans out there. The NHL playoffs start on Saturday. And then finally, it's going to be a short trading week since markets are closed for Good Friday on Friday. And two days later is Easter Sunday, which is also 420. I hope you stockpiled those eggs, everyone, because they're going to be expensive. Let's wrap it up there.
Morning Brew Daily
Smartphones Exempt From Tariffs… For Now & Meta vs. FTC in Antitrust Trial
Thanks so much for starting your morning with us and have a wonderful start to the week. For any questions, comments, or feedback, send an email to morningbrewdaily at morningbrew.com. Let's roll the credits. Emily Milliron is our executive producer. Raymond Liu is our producer. Our associate producers are Olivia Graham and Olivia Lake. Dan Bauza is on audio. Hair and makeup is gone thrifting.
Morning Brew Daily
Smartphones Exempt From Tariffs… For Now & Meta vs. FTC in Antitrust Trial
Devin Emery is our president, and our show is a production of Morning Brew.
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Smartphones Exempt From Tariffs… For Now & Meta vs. FTC in Antitrust Trial
Planet Oat, the complete symphony of oat milk.
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Smartphones Exempt From Tariffs… For Now & Meta vs. FTC in Antitrust Trial
Neil, just another weekend on the tariff beat. Still, this is good news for Apple. I mean, all indications point to the fact that even if they move these tariffs to a separate bucket, right now, you know, those widespread reciprocal tariffs on China are at 145%. The sectoral tariffs that we've seen the Trump administration apply on things like aluminum steel autos. Those are at 25 percent.
Morning Brew Daily
Smartphones Exempt From Tariffs… For Now & Meta vs. FTC in Antitrust Trial
So it doesn't look like we're getting to the doubling of price that would have happened under the previous tariff regime for these specific electronics products. But yeah, this is this is overall very good news for Apple. Its stock is ripping this morning since that initial tariff announcement. Apple has lost $640 billion. The cost of an iPhone was projected to go up to as much as $3,500.
Morning Brew Daily
Smartphones Exempt From Tariffs… For Now & Meta vs. FTC in Antitrust Trial
They were shipping in planes of iPhones. People were panicked buying iPhones. Now it looks like Apple's iPhones and other products are going to be at the same price point, at least for the next few weeks and months.
Morning Brew Daily
Smartphones Exempt From Tariffs… For Now & Meta vs. FTC in Antitrust Trial
Good morning, Bird Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, Meta heads to court to fight for its right to keep Instagram and WhatsApp.
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Smartphones Exempt From Tariffs… For Now & Meta vs. FTC in Antitrust Trial
The estimates are like $3,500.
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Smartphones Exempt From Tariffs… For Now & Meta vs. FTC in Antitrust Trial
Yeah, they are. count for nearly a quarter of U.S. imports, these exceptions that were made. And another big exception is the semiconductor equipment made by companies like ASML. We're trying to make semiconductors here in the United States. Biden tried it through incentives. Trump is trying it through tariffs.
Morning Brew Daily
Smartphones Exempt From Tariffs… For Now & Meta vs. FTC in Antitrust Trial
Those semiconductor machines that make semiconductors were under this tariff regime, 125%, 145%. And now those are going to be moved to a different bucket under a different tariff rate. So, yes, markets are exhaling this morning. S&P and Nasdaq are up over 1 percent. Apple's up 5 percent. So a, you know, a short term reprieve. We'll see what comes down the pipe.
Morning Brew Daily
Smartphones Exempt From Tariffs… For Now & Meta vs. FTC in Antitrust Trial
You know that quote, there are decades where nothing happens and there are weeks where decades happen? Certain people on Wall Street were saying last week was that moment where perhaps we're seeing this reordering of the U.S.-led economic system because you just don't see a simultaneous sell-off in equities, bonds, and the dollar at the same time. That's exactly what happened.
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Smartphones Exempt From Tariffs… For Now & Meta vs. FTC in Antitrust Trial
Then you have leaders coming out, analysts saying, I think what we're seeing is this massive sea change with markets
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Smartphones Exempt From Tariffs… For Now & Meta vs. FTC in Antitrust Trial
you know enormous consequences the chief investment officer at jp morgan asset management there is now a very good case for the end of american dollar exceptionalism here's deutsche bank strategist george saravellos the market is reassessing the structural attractiveness of the dollar as the world's global reserve currency and is undergoing a process of rapid de-dollarization.
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Smartphones Exempt From Tariffs… For Now & Meta vs. FTC in Antitrust Trial
Good morning, welcome back to the week. To kick off the show, we wanna give a huge shout out to our coworkers and incredible business creators, Macy Gilliam and Dan Toomey, who have been nominated for Webby Awards, aka the best of the internet. Dan was nominated for his hilarious Good Work series, which explores big questions like, what does Palantir actually do?
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Smartphones Exempt From Tariffs… For Now & Meta vs. FTC in Antitrust Trial
And finally, Minneapolis Fed President Neil Kashkari, great name. Normally, when you see big tariff increase, I would have expected the dollar to go up. The fact that the dollar is going down at the same time, I think, lends some more credibility to the story of investor preferences shifting. This would be a massive shift.
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Smartphones Exempt From Tariffs… For Now & Meta vs. FTC in Antitrust Trial
Like the the most important thing that happens on the economic calendar now is the auction of the 10 year U.S. Treasury bond. Everyone is looking forward to when these happen to see what demand is. It happened last week and it calms some fears because there did appear to be, you know, a good amount of demand.
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Smartphones Exempt From Tariffs… For Now & Meta vs. FTC in Antitrust Trial
But that's basically what, you know, everyone is Wall Street is paying attention to is these these bond auctions, which, you know, are typically kind of under the radar, I would say. More than a decade ago, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission gave Facebook its blessing to buy WhatsApp and Instagram, two acquisitions that ultimately cemented Mark Zuckerberg's dominance in the social media sector.
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Smartphones Exempt From Tariffs… For Now & Meta vs. FTC in Antitrust Trial
Now it wants a take back. Starting today, the FTC and Meta, as the company is now called, square off in a landmark antitrust trial that could shape the future of social media feeds everywhere. The FTC has accused Facebook of illegally monopolizing the personal social networking market through its purchases of WhatsApp and Instagram to would-be competitors and wants those acquisitions unwound.
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Smartphones Exempt From Tariffs… For Now & Meta vs. FTC in Antitrust Trial
Regulators say there are no serious alternatives to Meta's apps when it comes to staying up to date and connecting with friends and family in a shared social media space online. Meta has responded, Are you for real? To quote a spokesperson, the evidence at trial will show what every 17-year-old in the world knows.
Morning Brew Daily
Smartphones Exempt From Tariffs… For Now & Meta vs. FTC in Antitrust Trial
Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp compete with Chinese-owned TikTok, YouTube, X, iMessage, and many others. Over the next few weeks, both Meta and the government will trot out evidence that supports their claims and the stakes could not be higher. Meta derives billions of dollars in revenue from Instagram and a forced separation could leave it without its cash cow.
Morning Brew Daily
Smartphones Exempt From Tariffs… For Now & Meta vs. FTC in Antitrust Trial
Plus, it's the rare antitrust trial that involves products billions of people use every day. So the world will be watching how it plays out. Toby, this is an existential threat to Meta. It can't lose Instagram.
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Smartphones Exempt From Tariffs… For Now & Meta vs. FTC in Antitrust Trial
And is Zinn gonna kill me and the boys? Macy was nominated for her incredible video in which she worked as a New York City hot dog cart vendor for the day. You can head to the Webby website to vote or check out the Brew newsletter this morning for the direct links.
Morning Brew Daily
Smartphones Exempt From Tariffs… For Now & Meta vs. FTC in Antitrust Trial
Now, you might be wondering, like, why is the FTC going after Meta? Lina Khan, who was the chair of the FTC, was known as this big tech critic. She's gone, along with the rest of the Biden administration. So is this new guy, Andrew Ferguson, who leads the FTC, really going to go after Zuck? After all, Zuck has been trying to— cozy up to the Trump administration.
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Smartphones Exempt From Tariffs… For Now & Meta vs. FTC in Antitrust Trial
He donated a million dollars to the inaugural fund. He's visited three times with Trump, and he has reportedly requested Trump specifically, personally, to drop this case. Ferguson, the FTC chair, has said, you know what, I'm going to just do what the FTC does, which is try to prevent monopolies.
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Smartphones Exempt From Tariffs… For Now & Meta vs. FTC in Antitrust Trial
So he's tried to distance himself from the sort of political maneuvering that Zuck and Trump have seemed to have been doing behind the scenes. And he says, This case was brought originally under the first Trump administration in 2020. Lina Khan continued it, and now we're here back to do another Trump administration. It looks like Zuck's lobbying has not been successful so far in this realm.
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Smartphones Exempt From Tariffs… For Now & Meta vs. FTC in Antitrust Trial
The best B2B marketing sometimes ends up in front of the wrong people. It's like advertising fishing gear to a fish. That's a fitting metaphor.
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Smartphones Exempt From Tariffs… For Now & Meta vs. FTC in Antitrust Trial
That's what LinkedIn ads is built for. LinkedIn has grown to a network of over 1 billion professionals. Of those, 130 million are decision makers. You can target your buyers by job, title, industry, company, role, seniority, revenue, so many options all in one place. Don't waste precious budget on the wrong audience. Tap into LinkedIn ads to find your people.
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Smartphones Exempt From Tariffs… For Now & Meta vs. FTC in Antitrust Trial
LinkedIn will even give you a $100 credit on your next campaign so you can try it yourself. Just go to LinkedIn.com slash MBD. That's LinkedIn.com slash MBD. Terms and conditions apply only on LinkedIn ads. Got five minutes to spare? Let's face it, if you're listening to a podcast, you have five minutes to spare. Then you have time to become a more serious investor with Public.com.
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Smartphones Exempt From Tariffs… For Now & Meta vs. FTC in Antitrust Trial
Plus, Public has Alpha, an AI-powered investment research assistant that can answer questions about any stock.
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US Markets vs the World & OpenAI's ‘PhD-Level’ AI Agent?
This year's conference came at an inflection point for sports analytics. More than two decades since the release of Moneyball showed how teams could leverage big data and AI to make smarter decisions, analytics has infiltrated sports leagues worldwide. leading to optimized strategies, but also concerns that analytics is worsening the product and entertainment value.
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US Markets vs the World & OpenAI's ‘PhD-Level’ AI Agent?
The NBA has been the poster child of those criticisms this year. Teams are jacking up more three-pointers than ever because the data shows that that's your best bet to win the game, but viewership has slumped, putting pressure on Commissioner Adam Silver to tweak the rules and reintroduce variety back into the game.
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US Markets vs the World & OpenAI's ‘PhD-Level’ AI Agent?
In fact, one of the panels this weekend was called Have the Nerds Ruined Basketball?, Toby X's and O's have been replaced by ones and zeros and executives are scrambling to respond.
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US Markets vs the World & OpenAI's ‘PhD-Level’ AI Agent?
It's just a remarkable rise for the analytics movement. What was just very niche a few decades ago is now completely changed these leagues and the pro sports industry completely. If you go on websites to work for the Lakers or the Eagles or the Knicks or the Edmonton Oilers, you're about to see probably as many
Morning Brew Daily
US Markets vs the World & OpenAI's ‘PhD-Level’ AI Agent?
data engineers and software developers on their big data scientists on their hiring board pages than anything else. And that's because data and AI has completely overwhelmed these leagues. The problem for the commissioners is that aesthetics does not or analytics has no use for aesthetics.
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US Markets vs the World & OpenAI's ‘PhD-Level’ AI Agent?
And oftentimes the incentives are misaligned where you have solved games like the NBA or MLB, where teams are using strategies derived from big data, don't necessarily lead to a better on the field product, which is how these leagues make money through TV deals. So matching those up and creating better incentives are absolutely top of mind for all sports executives.
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US Markets vs the World & OpenAI's ‘PhD-Level’ AI Agent?
At a time when so many things are competing for people's attention, Stephen A. has the ability to keep your eyeballs glued to the screen, which is the most valuable thing you can have for a media company. It's why you're seeing huge contracts go to a select few at the very top end of the market. ESPN did a licensing deal with Pat McAfee for The Pat McAfee Show.
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US Markets vs the World & OpenAI's ‘PhD-Level’ AI Agent?
That was worth $85 million over five years. Fox paid Tom Brady, $300 million to be a sport, to be an NFL color commentator for 10 years. Even as Disney, broadly as a company, is cutting staff. Last week, it cut nearly 66% of its workforce across ABC News and Disney Entertainment Network's operations.
Morning Brew Daily
US Markets vs the World & OpenAI's ‘PhD-Level’ AI Agent?
So even as they're cutting, let's say, the middle class of their workforces, they're paying up for the high end because they think that's worth the value.
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US Markets vs the World & OpenAI's ‘PhD-Level’ AI Agent?
Every morning after we finish the podcast and hit the gym, Toby snags a raspberry almond butter smoothie while I go for a blueberry.
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US Markets vs the World & OpenAI's ‘PhD-Level’ AI Agent?
It's Monday, so here's your preview of the big events of the week ahead. The saga of the astronauts stuck on the International Space Station might be entering its final chapter.
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US Markets vs the World & OpenAI's ‘PhD-Level’ AI Agent?
On Wednesday, NASA will launch a SpaceX capsule to bring Butch Wilmore and Sonny Williams home nine months after they left on what was supposed to be an eight-day trip before it got derailed by problems with Boeing's Starliner. The mission, launching Wednesday, will carry four other astronauts up to the ISS,
Morning Brew Daily
US Markets vs the World & OpenAI's ‘PhD-Level’ AI Agent?
where they'll catch up with Wilmore and Williams for a week until the two end their extended space opera with a return trip on March 16th.
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US Markets vs the World & OpenAI's ‘PhD-Level’ AI Agent?
On Tuesday, one of the most closely watched elections around the globe will take place in Greenland, not normally on the top of most people's radars. The Greenland vote could chart a different future for the island at a time when President Trump has ramped up threats to buy or take over the territory, which has been owned by Denmark for centuries.
Morning Brew Daily
US Markets vs the World & OpenAI's ‘PhD-Level’ AI Agent?
The top issues of this election are Trump and independence from Denmark, a splitting off that all the leading candidates support.
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US Markets vs the World & OpenAI's ‘PhD-Level’ AI Agent?
Which is why Invesco QQQ ETF is such a welcome break from that parade of sameness.
Morning Brew Daily
US Markets vs the World & OpenAI's ‘PhD-Level’ AI Agent?
And then the madness is upon us. Conference college basketball tournaments are happening all week long as teams jockey for position ahead of selection at Sunday, which is on Sunday. And the brackets for the men's and women's field will be revealed. I already have goosebumps.
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US Markets vs the World & OpenAI's ‘PhD-Level’ AI Agent?
But the best part of this week in particular is all of the smaller schools that win their conference championship games and punch their ticket to the NCAA tournament like High Point did yesterday for their first time. They're going dancing. So it'll be just a super fun week leading up to Selection Sunday. And then in celebrations, Purim is Thursday night. Holi is on Friday.
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US Markets vs the World & OpenAI's ‘PhD-Level’ AI Agent?
And Friday is also Pi Day. Toby, I'm looking for 200 digits out of you this year. 200.
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US Markets vs the World & OpenAI's ‘PhD-Level’ AI Agent?
Okay. I'll start studying. All right. Let's wrap it up there. Thanks so much for starting your morning with us and have a wonderful start to the week. For any questions, comments, or feedback, send an email to morningbrewdailyatmorningbrew.com. And if you're enjoying the show, share it with a friend, family member, or coworker. Toby, who should everyone listening share it with today?
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US Markets vs the World & OpenAI's ‘PhD-Level’ AI Agent?
Let's roll the credits. Emily Milliron is our executive producer. Raymond Liu is our producer. Olivia Graham is our associate producer. Eugenia Waogu is our technical director. Scoop Stardaris is on audio. Hair and Makeup would like to buy a vowel. Devin Emery is our chief content officer, and our show is a production of Morning Brew.
Morning Brew Daily
US Markets vs the World & OpenAI's ‘PhD-Level’ AI Agent?
Healthcare, communications services, industrials, you name it, this ETF has it. So we start changing up our orders then? Nah, leave the variety to Invesco. With Invesco QQQ, you can rethink what's possible. Before investing, consider the fund's investment objectives, risks, charges, and expenses. Visit Invesco.com for a prospectus with this information. Read it carefully before investing.
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US Markets vs the World & OpenAI's ‘PhD-Level’ AI Agent?
Full disclosure in podcast description. For more than a decade, one of the surest bets on Wall Street was that American stocks were going to beat international stocks. But that may no longer be the case. Due to uncertainty over the White House's on and off again tariff threats, U.S. stocks are getting trounced by foreign companies so far in 2025. The broadest measure of the U.S.
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US Markets vs the World & OpenAI's ‘PhD-Level’ AI Agent?
stock market, the S&P 500, is coming off its worst week since last September, while the tech-focused Nasdaq has entered a correction down 10% from a recent peak. As your 401k has taken a licking, shares outside the U.S. are booming. The leader in the clubhouse is the Hang Seng Index in Hong Kong, which is up roughly 20% this year compared to the S&P's 2% decline.
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US Markets vs the World & OpenAI's ‘PhD-Level’ AI Agent?
Booming Chinese stocks like electric vehicle maker BYD and tech giant Alibaba are leading the charge over in Asia. Meanwhile, in Europe, indexes such as the DAX notched record highs after an earth shattering week in which countries like Germany pledged to spend hundreds of billions of dollars rearming their militaries, giving defense stocks and other corporations an unprecedented tailwind.
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US Markets vs the World & OpenAI's ‘PhD-Level’ AI Agent?
Toby, it's still early in 2025, but investors say there's been a clear shift in their calculus. U.S. stocks are no longer the only game in town.
Morning Brew Daily
US Markets vs the World & OpenAI's ‘PhD-Level’ AI Agent?
Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, the once-dominant U.S. stock market is getting lapped by other countries in 2025. What's behind the changing of the guard?
Morning Brew Daily
US Markets vs the World & OpenAI's ‘PhD-Level’ AI Agent?
Now, on Friday, as stocks were falling, we did receive some economic good news. The jobs report came out, which we previewed Friday morning. 151,000 jobs added unemployment at a very low 4.1 percent rate. Fed Chair Jerome Powell was asked about the state of the U.S. economy, which has had a greater deal of uncertainty recently. He said despite elevated levels of uncertainty. The U.S.
Morning Brew Daily
US Markets vs the World & OpenAI's ‘PhD-Level’ AI Agent?
economy continues to be in a good place. President Trump was also asked about the faltering stock market and increased business concern in an interview on Sunday. And he said, I can't necessarily rule out a recession. I'm in a period of transition now. We're trying to move fast and break things here. We're in a period of transition.
Morning Brew Daily
US Markets vs the World & OpenAI's ‘PhD-Level’ AI Agent?
And he, you know, acknowledged that there was a little turbulence now, but said that, you know, over the long term, things would be all right. So there's what you're seeing from U.S. policymakers over this slight changing of the guard here.
Morning Brew Daily
US Markets vs the World & OpenAI's ‘PhD-Level’ AI Agent?
To understand why these companies are rolling out AI agents at a price tag of something like $20,000 a month, you kind of have to look at their balance sheets. OpenAI lost about $5 billion last year. It is raising even more money now. It is...
Morning Brew Daily
US Markets vs the World & OpenAI's ‘PhD-Level’ AI Agent?
you know, in not necessarily financial dire straits, but it needs to start monetizing all of these chatbots and AI models that they're pouring so much money into. You see it across the AI sector where they're rolling out these products in order to start making money because they need to start making money.
Morning Brew Daily
US Markets vs the World & OpenAI's ‘PhD-Level’ AI Agent?
They think that PhD level AI agents that replace workers is one of those ways that they can start become more a more sustainable business.
Morning Brew Daily
US Markets vs the World & OpenAI's ‘PhD-Level’ AI Agent?
Good morning. Welcome back to the week. It might be a rougher start to the day than usual, especially if you're a parent of a young kid or dog, because overnight on Sunday, Americans lost an hour of sleep as daylight saving time began. The idea of daylight saving time is to add more sunshine in the evening over the summer to encourage more activity and get us all to spend more money.
Morning Brew Daily
US Markets vs the World & OpenAI's ‘PhD-Level’ AI Agent?
There's no question that going forward in the next few years, you know, company management will be looking at their payrolls and saying, OK, we have a million dollars to spend. Are we going to do it on this new agent? Are we going to hire a higher, you know, a Ph.D. level researcher? That is an actual question that will be facing executives in the coming years.
Morning Brew Daily
US Markets vs the World & OpenAI's ‘PhD-Level’ AI Agent?
At least one AI executive said that this does not necessarily look good for the humans. Anthropic CEO Anthropic has this clod chatbot they've also rolled out. An AI agent predicts that by 2026, the tech industry will have developed AIs that can mimic what highly capable humans can do today and warns of severe human job losses as a result.
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US Markets vs the World & OpenAI's ‘PhD-Level’ AI Agent?
And there certainly was a trend of ditching vowels in your name. If you look at companies born in the midst of the 2000s, you had Grindr, which is the D-R at the end, Flickr, Tumblr, Twitter in its first iteration was just T-W-T-T-R. Now you have this 200-year-old investment firm that wants to, you know, play at the cool kids table. They ditched their vows.
Morning Brew Daily
US Markets vs the World & OpenAI's ‘PhD-Level’ AI Agent?
They got corporate bullied, which is probably true. And now they are going back. So, yes, it does show the perils of chasing certain trends in branding, especially when you're a financial institution that doesn't necessarily need to be cool. You want to maybe project stability and security and authority rather than, you know, these other companies which are more social media based.
Morning Brew Daily
US Markets vs the World & OpenAI's ‘PhD-Level’ AI Agent?
But here's a fun fact. Not all 50 U.S. states observe daylight saving time. There are two holdouts, Arizona and Hawaii, for whom Sunday was just a normal day. Toby, why don't they spring forward?
Morning Brew Daily
US Markets vs the World & OpenAI's ‘PhD-Level’ AI Agent?
But for every rebrand fail we talk about, there have been a rebrand success. PricewaterhouseCoopers, shortened its name, got rid of all the vowels for sure. They went to PWC. Accenture was known as Anderson Consulting at one point. They went through thousands and thousands of different names, landed on Accenture, and that has worked out. Even Meta's name change has...
Morning Brew Daily
US Markets vs the World & OpenAI's ‘PhD-Level’ AI Agent?
essentially worked because we call it Meta and not Facebook anymore. They are the poster child of chasing trends because Meta is certainly sidelined its push to work on the Metaverse, which is the whole point of the name change in the first place to work on AI. And yet we still call it Meta. Kraft Heinz created Mondelez International as an umbrella brand for its snack food.
Morning Brew Daily
US Markets vs the World & OpenAI's ‘PhD-Level’ AI Agent?
So I hear your point about there being a lot of fails, but there are also a lot of successes, or should I say you know, corporate rebands that we don't necessarily think of fail. So they are successes.
Morning Brew Daily
US Markets vs the World & OpenAI's ‘PhD-Level’ AI Agent?
Top scorers will receive a custom prize, a $200 Amex gift card, and a newsletter feature.
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US Markets vs the World & OpenAI's ‘PhD-Level’ AI Agent?
If you have the answer, go to www.morningbrew.com slash morning-market-trivia to test your stuff with the morning market trivia quiz. Who knows? You could end up on the leaderboard. Like I said, top scorers will receive prizes and a feature in the Morning Brew newsletter. I scored a 12 out of 15. I got 11 out of 15.
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US Markets vs the World & OpenAI's ‘PhD-Level’ AI Agent?
Head on over to www.morningbrew.com slash morning-market-trivia and see if you can beat our scorers and win some goodies.
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US Markets vs the World & OpenAI's ‘PhD-Level’ AI Agent?
Welcome to Winners of the Weekend, the segment where Toby and I pick two things that just punched their ticket to the NCAA tournament. I will go first because I won the pre-show dad joke contest. Speaking of, you want to hear a joke about pizza? Never mind, it's too cheesy. My winner is sports nerds.
Morning Brew Daily
US Markets vs the World & OpenAI's ‘PhD-Level’ AI Agent?
This weekend, thousands of them gathered in Boston for the 19th annual MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, the largest student-run conference in the world. Once dubbed Dorkapalooza by commentator Bill Simmons, the event draws heavy hitters from the world of sports, tech, and media to discuss how the analytics movement has revolutionized athletics and what comes next.
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Americans Have Bad Vibes on Economy & UK Demands Apple’s Encrypted Data
Fund your account in five minutes or less, and you could earn up to $10,000. Yes, 10K, when you transfer your old investment portfolio. Start at public.com slash morningbrew. That's public.com slash morningbrew. Paid for by Public Investing. Full disclosures in podcast description.
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Americans Have Bad Vibes on Economy & UK Demands Apple’s Encrypted Data
Factor offers chef-made gourmet meals that are never frozen and dietician approved. They're ready to eat in two minutes, and lately, my personal fave is blackened salmon with smoked gouda cauliflower grits and broccoli.
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Americans Have Bad Vibes on Economy & UK Demands Apple’s Encrypted Data
You can browse the 40 menu options, including different dietary preferences like keto and protein plus.
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Americans Have Bad Vibes on Economy & UK Demands Apple’s Encrypted Data
Totally. And the one I want to focus on is the Michelob commercial that included Catherine O'Hara and Willem Dafoe playing pickleball. That was, I would say, probably the most successful example of a brand utilizing older celebrities, because I think they also tapped into a bigger cultural moment that everyone's having with pickleball. But
Morning Brew Daily
Americans Have Bad Vibes on Economy & UK Demands Apple’s Encrypted Data
I don't know if it's good for pickleball to be associated with beer because if they want to take themselves seriously as a sport, you maybe want to be associated with hydration drinks, water, Gatorade instead of beer. So I don't know how the pickleball community is feeling about this. Yeah.
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Americans Have Bad Vibes on Economy & UK Demands Apple’s Encrypted Data
My body is on 6th Avenue.
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Americans Have Bad Vibes on Economy & UK Demands Apple’s Encrypted Data
It did. It had a very strong narrative arc, which I appreciated. It felt like it was telling a story. And I'm not sure if I'm sitting in working in an ad agency now. I'm not sure that I can, you know, do anything that much better than what these content creators, the people who won this cost contest can do. So this user generated is user generated ad. And how much did they get?
Morning Brew Daily
Americans Have Bad Vibes on Economy & UK Demands Apple’s Encrypted Data
They got paid like a million bucks a A million dollars, yeah. Yeah, okay. Well, that's probably what you're going to pay an ad agency. So maybe crowdsourcing is going to be more prevalent going forward because that was a great ad.
Morning Brew Daily
Americans Have Bad Vibes on Economy & UK Demands Apple’s Encrypted Data
Yeah, in 2021, Nike spent $3.1 billion on marketing. In 2024, they spent $4.3 billion on marketing. That also included a lot around the Olympics. And now they have the Super Bowl ad, their first since 1998. They're tapping into larger cultural conversations about the rise in in women's sports.
Morning Brew Daily
Americans Have Bad Vibes on Economy & UK Demands Apple’s Encrypted Data
So I think that was a very well-received ad and maybe Nike is getting its marketing mojo back a little bit.
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Americans Have Bad Vibes on Economy & UK Demands Apple’s Encrypted Data
That's not a baking phase, Toby. That's a, oh, shoot, called poison control phase.
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Americans Have Bad Vibes on Economy & UK Demands Apple’s Encrypted Data
All right, so overall, the commercials, at the top of the show, you said they were a down year, but... To be honest, I feel like every year we say this is a little disappointing. So every year we say that the commercials did not live up to the hype. And I think we just have to acknowledge that they're never going to and that 90 percent of them are going to be commercials.
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Americans Have Bad Vibes on Economy & UK Demands Apple’s Encrypted Data
And there's going to be so many celebrities doing things that aren't particularly interesting. There will be a few standouts. There'll be a few duds that everyone is talking about. So I think I think that's just we have to arrange our priors to be this is what the this is what the commercials are. They're commercials.
Morning Brew Daily
Americans Have Bad Vibes on Economy & UK Demands Apple’s Encrypted Data
It's Monday once again, and as per tradition, here are the big events you should know about this week. A massive AI conference begins today in Paris, where world leaders and top tech bosses will meet to hammer out the thorny geopolitics of this rapidly advancing technology. The Artificial Intelligence Action Summit is basically the Met Gala for tech, and the invite list proves it.
Morning Brew Daily
Americans Have Bad Vibes on Economy & UK Demands Apple’s Encrypted Data
OpenAI's Sam Altman, Google's Sundar Pichai, Microsoft President Brad Smith, and world leaders including Justin Trudeau of Canada, Narendra Modi of India, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, and US Vice President JD Vance. You can bet discussions will revolve around DeepSeek, China's surprisingly capable AI model, and the Trump administration's more lax approach to regulating AI.
Morning Brew Daily
Americans Have Bad Vibes on Economy & UK Demands Apple’s Encrypted Data
If you mess up cookies, they might taste bad. But if you mess up payments, suddenly your suppliers are blowing up your phone, asking why they got paid half of what they expected.
Morning Brew Daily
Americans Have Bad Vibes on Economy & UK Demands Apple’s Encrypted Data
Those seem to be the main themes here. Wall Street has no time to nurse a Super Bowl hangover with lots happening on the economic calendar. On Wednesday, we'll get the January inflation report, which will certainly be a big deal given tariffs and eggs and what it means for the Fed's interest rate plans, plus lots more
Morning Brew Daily
Americans Have Bad Vibes on Economy & UK Demands Apple’s Encrypted Data
Earnings are on the way, including McDonald's and Coca-Cola, which really should do their report together.
Morning Brew Daily
Americans Have Bad Vibes on Economy & UK Demands Apple’s Encrypted Data
All right. Friday is Valentine's Day. And if you're just learning this information, it might already be too late. But if you're locked out of a dinner reservation, at least there are ways to get back at your ex. Zoos around the country have rolled out fundraisers that let you take revenge on the one who got away.
Morning Brew Daily
Americans Have Bad Vibes on Economy & UK Demands Apple’s Encrypted Data
A $10 donation to the San Antonio Zoo will allow you to name a cockroach after your ex before it's served to one of the zoo's animals for lunch. At the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium in Ohio, they'll name a superworm after your ex that will be fed to its sloth bears. And if you get in before Wednesday, they'll even send you a clip of the bear devouring the worm. Toby, I love this tradition.
Morning Brew Daily
Americans Have Bad Vibes on Economy & UK Demands Apple’s Encrypted Data
You get it. But if you're extremely – yes, if you get the video and then you send it to your ex and say this is what I think of you, I think they are living rent-free in your head and maybe you should do a little self-evaluation there. But I think it's a great tradition that zoos do and they raise a lot of money for upkeep and things like that. Okay, let's wrap it up there.
Morning Brew Daily
Americans Have Bad Vibes on Economy & UK Demands Apple’s Encrypted Data
But with Wise Business, it doesn't have to be a disaster. They make sending money across borders as easy as, well, following a recipe.
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Americans Have Bad Vibes on Economy & UK Demands Apple’s Encrypted Data
Thanks so much for starting your morning with us and have a wonderful start to the week. For any questions, comments, or feedback, send an email to morningbrewdaily at morningbrew.com. And if you're enjoying the show, share it with a friend, family member, or coworker. Maybe it's an early Valentine. You know what? Don't spend any time thinking about it. Just listen to Toby and do what he instructs.
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Americans Have Bad Vibes on Economy & UK Demands Apple’s Encrypted Data
Let's roll the credits. Emily Milliron is our executive producer. Raymond Liu is our producer. Olivia Graham is our associate producer. Uchenua Ogu is our technical director. Scoop Stardaris is on audio. Just got an email from hair and makeup. Gonna be in at like 10 today. All right, can't blame you. Devin Emery is our chief content officer and our show is a production of Morning Brew.
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Americans Have Bad Vibes on Economy & UK Demands Apple’s Encrypted Data
If you're ready to simplify your international payments, check out wise.com slash business. That's wise.com slash business. Trade war 2.0 between the U.S. and China has officially kicked off. Starting today, Chinese tariffs on $14 billion worth of American exports go into effect, one of Beijing's responses to President Trump's announcement of 10% tariffs on Chinese goods last week.
Morning Brew Daily
Americans Have Bad Vibes on Economy & UK Demands Apple’s Encrypted Data
And then last night, in a surprise move, Trump also said he plans to impose 25% tariffs on imports of steel and aluminum across the board to every country. The flurry of tariff announcements in the past month, whether they've been delayed or not, like in the case of Canada and Mexico, is starting to have a significant impact on Americans' views on the economy.
Morning Brew Daily
Americans Have Bad Vibes on Economy & UK Demands Apple’s Encrypted Data
On Friday, reports showed that Americans across the political spectrum have become increasingly pessimistic over the economy and think higher inflation will rear its ugly head yet again. Here's the data. In a closely watched University of Michigan survey, consumer sentiment fell about 5% to its lowest reading since last July. So levels are lower now than they were before the election.
Morning Brew Daily
Americans Have Bad Vibes on Economy & UK Demands Apple’s Encrypted Data
At the same time, inflation expectations are surging, with Americans predicting 4.3% inflation in the year ahead, up from 3.3% the month before. That full percentage point jump in inflation expectations is almost unheard of. It's only the fifth time in 14 years we've seen such a big one-month rise. Now, it's not all bad.
Morning Brew Daily
Americans Have Bad Vibes on Economy & UK Demands Apple’s Encrypted Data
The jobs report released on Friday showed strong employment gains in January and an unemployment rate that ticked down to a very low level of 4%. But with all the uncertainty and confusion related to tariffs, Americans are turning increasingly negative on the economy.
Morning Brew Daily
Americans Have Bad Vibes on Economy & UK Demands Apple’s Encrypted Data
Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, consumer sentiment is way down. Inflation expectations are way up. Are Americans souring on the economy?
Morning Brew Daily
Americans Have Bad Vibes on Economy & UK Demands Apple’s Encrypted Data
And uncertainty is manifesting in other ways as well. I don't know if you've visited the Bank of England's gold vaults recently, tried to withdraw some gold there. Well, you can't because there is an eight week long line to move gold from the Bank of England to the United States. And that is because of this uncertainty around potential tariffs coming on to the EU, the UK and
Morning Brew Daily
Americans Have Bad Vibes on Economy & UK Demands Apple’s Encrypted Data
and it possibly could hit gold. So right now, there's a very interesting arbitrage situation in the gold market where prices in the United States are higher than they are in London. So there is very long, as they would say in England, queues to ship these very heavy gold bars from England to the United States.
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Americans Have Bad Vibes on Economy & UK Demands Apple’s Encrypted Data
And that is all tied into this general uncertainty that traders have over what's going to happen in the economy moving forward. And finally, you mentioned Friday's jobs report.
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Americans Have Bad Vibes on Economy & UK Demands Apple’s Encrypted Data
Totally. There is no known precedent in major democracies for a government to go knocking on a tech company's back door like this and saying, hey, we know you have encrypted data on users. Let us see them. And the big implication here is it's not just for English people or British people. It's for the Apple user who uses this feature, and we should say it's an opt-in feature.
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Americans Have Bad Vibes on Economy & UK Demands Apple’s Encrypted Data
Well, that was a spanking. The Eagles coasted by the Chiefs 40-22 to win the Super Bowl, avenge their loss to Kansas City two years ago, and prevent the Chiefs from winning a historic third straight championship. Just utter domination by the birds. But many of you won't be around to discuss the game and the commercials at the office today.
Morning Brew Daily
Americans Have Bad Vibes on Economy & UK Demands Apple’s Encrypted Data
You're not on this by default. If you want to encrypt your iCloud, you can, but you do have to go through some steps that Apple can take you through.
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Americans Have Bad Vibes on Economy & UK Demands Apple’s Encrypted Data
But the fact that it implies globally is absolutely sending a chill down tech companies' spines and privacy-focused groups as well who say that the government should not be doing this, not be asking tech companies to allow governments to snoop on their users.
Morning Brew Daily
Americans Have Bad Vibes on Economy & UK Demands Apple’s Encrypted Data
Now, what's interesting is law enforcement has had a very interesting relationship with encryption. So for the past few years or until recently, they were very anti-encryption because they want to see certain communications to prevent crimes. And so they were going to war with tech companies and saying, let us see this encrypted data. Users, we do not want you to encrypt things so we can
Morning Brew Daily
Americans Have Bad Vibes on Economy & UK Demands Apple’s Encrypted Data
we can see in an Apple had this big showdown with the FBI in 2016 over the San Bernardino shooters phone, where Apple actually won in a court case against the FBI. The FBI wanted them to unlock the shooter's phone and they said no. And then they, then Apple won.
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Americans Have Bad Vibes on Economy & UK Demands Apple’s Encrypted Data
So law enforcement was very anti-encryption until a few years ago when the threat of Chinese hacking operations became a little more prescient than, than this other consideration. So they said,
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Americans Have Bad Vibes on Economy & UK Demands Apple’s Encrypted Data
So now the FBI, a bunch of other Western countries, except the UK, said, OK, we actually think you should be using encryption because the threat of hacking from Chinese operations is more risky to us than what we need from you to prevent crime. So that is the way the world apparently has been shifting, is toward encryption. The UK has zagged where others have zigged.
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Americans Have Bad Vibes on Economy & UK Demands Apple’s Encrypted Data
And that's why privacy groups, tech companies say, UK, you're becoming a tech pariah rather than a tech leader. A financial earthquake is about to hit the world of medical research. Today, the National Institutes of Health will begin implementing sweeping cuts to overhead funding for research grants. The NIH says this will save taxpayers more than $4 billion when it announced the move on Friday.
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Americans Have Bad Vibes on Economy & UK Demands Apple’s Encrypted Data
But scientists have pushed back fiercely, saying that slashing the budget will halt progress on lifesaving medical innovations and threaten jobs, medical research institutions, and regional economies that depend on NIH funding. To understand the controversy, you first need to grasp how NIH funding works.
Morning Brew Daily
Americans Have Bad Vibes on Economy & UK Demands Apple’s Encrypted Data
22.6 million people across the country plan to miss work the day after the Super Bowl, according to the Harris poll, which is up 40% from a year ago. Now, whether these numbers are accurate or not, who knows? But here's my question to the NFL. Instead of making everyone have a brutal Monday, why not just move the Super Bowl to a Saturday?
Morning Brew Daily
Americans Have Bad Vibes on Economy & UK Demands Apple’s Encrypted Data
When the agency awards a grant to a scientist, an additional percentage of that award is provided to the scientist's institution to pay for infrastructure that supports the research. Think things like lab equipment, utilities, hazardous waste disposal, and more. It's a pretty sizable chunk that goes to overhead.
Morning Brew Daily
Americans Have Bad Vibes on Economy & UK Demands Apple’s Encrypted Data
Of the $35 billion awarded to grants in fiscal year 2023, $9 billion, or 26%, went to those so-called indirect costs. Sometimes the rate can be much higher, like in the 60s. So the NIH under Trump says that's wasteful and that rich universities should shoulder more of the burden. They're now capping indirect reimbursements at 15 percent.
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Americans Have Bad Vibes on Economy & UK Demands Apple’s Encrypted Data
Scientists say, OK, maybe Harvard can afford to make up the shortfall, but many, many other institutions can't. Critical research, jobs, economic growth will dry up if this funding is cut off. And this is because the NIH is truly an economic force. It is the leading funder of biomedical research in the world and supports 412,000 jobs across the country.
Morning Brew Daily
Americans Have Bad Vibes on Economy & UK Demands Apple’s Encrypted Data
And indirect costs have been criticized before. The Government Accountability Office in 2016 said that there were risks that they present waste and that this was an aspect of government spending that could be brought more into control in the government, the NIH, Trump administration itself.
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Americans Have Bad Vibes on Economy & UK Demands Apple’s Encrypted Data
in announcing this move said, well, private foundations don't do anywhere near these indirect cost reimbursements as the NIH. Many private foundations say the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, 12% goes to indirect costs. Gates Foundation, 10% for indirect costs.
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Americans Have Bad Vibes on Economy & UK Demands Apple’s Encrypted Data
So they're pointing to private donors here and saying, well, we're way out of whack with the private sector here, the private philanthropic sector. So that's why other reasons why we need to bring this down. So that's, that's their argument, but yes, cascading effects and a disproportionate effect on certain cities and regions that have become, so what they call meds and eds economic base.
Morning Brew Daily
Americans Have Bad Vibes on Economy & UK Demands Apple’s Encrypted Data
Pittsburgh, Nashville, Chapel Hill area, Research Triangle. These are the areas that will likely see a bigger impact. The University of Pittsburgh, for instance, is getting 25% of its NIH funding cut, which is $130 million. And I was also in Birmingham, Alabama a few years ago. That city runs on UAB. That is the largest employer in Alabama. The medical research center there is massive.
Morning Brew Daily
Americans Have Bad Vibes on Economy & UK Demands Apple’s Encrypted Data
You can't walk a single street without seeing another UAB building. So these are the areas that will be hurt. And we'll see what happens going forward. Like many other Trump administration executive orders and actions in the first few weeks, there have been legal challenges pushing back. They've been tied up in the courts.
Morning Brew Daily
Americans Have Bad Vibes on Economy & UK Demands Apple’s Encrypted Data
And you can bet university lawyers everywhere are pushing back on this because they don't want to see all this critical research dry up. Up next, we have our winners of the weekend. Attention investors, new and seasoned. If you're looking for an investing platform with a broad range of asset classes and tools, Public.com is ready when you are.
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Americans Have Bad Vibes on Economy & UK Demands Apple’s Encrypted Data
generate fixed income with a suite of yield accounts like Public's high-yield cash account set at an industry-leading 4.1% APY.
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Stock Market Loses $6 Trillion in Two Days & Minecraft Movie Scores Big
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Stock Market Loses $6 Trillion in Two Days & Minecraft Movie Scores Big
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Stock Market Loses $6 Trillion in Two Days & Minecraft Movie Scores Big
Download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning for free at netsuite.com slash brew. That's netsuite.com slash brew. netsuite.com slash brew.
Morning Brew Daily
Stock Market Loses $6 Trillion in Two Days & Minecraft Movie Scores Big
Welcome to the club, Toby. This wasn't just the best debut of the year at the box office. It was the best in the history of a video game adaptation. So this is becoming...
Morning Brew Daily
Stock Market Loses $6 Trillion in Two Days & Minecraft Movie Scores Big
maybe the marvel of the 2020s adapting video games it's been a recipe for success we had the super mario brothers movie which was the biggest movie of the year last year brought in 1.3 billion dollars five night at freddy's sonic the hedgehog has had three movies now tom holland in uncharted they all did really well at the box office and i think the minecraft success incredible over performance will only add fuel to adapting every video game that there is out there
Morning Brew Daily
Stock Market Loses $6 Trillion in Two Days & Minecraft Movie Scores Big
What video game do you want to see adapted into a movie?
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Stock Market Loses $6 Trillion in Two Days & Minecraft Movie Scores Big
Cool. All right. My winner is Mega Millions because it's about to get a little easier for you to be a winner. The lottery game is rolling out its biggest makeover in years with the goal of jacking up jackpots and improving players odds of winning at least a little something something. Of course, there is a catch.
Morning Brew Daily
Stock Market Loses $6 Trillion in Two Days & Minecraft Movie Scores Big
The price of a ticket is going up for only the second time in the lottery game's 23-year history. Tickets that were $2 will now be $5. But Mega Millions said the payoffs will be worth the steep price hike because its redesigned game will lead to higher starting jackpots and faster-growing prizes.
Morning Brew Daily
Stock Market Loses $6 Trillion in Two Days & Minecraft Movie Scores Big
For instance, it says the average jackpot in the new game will be more than $800 million compared to around $450 million in the past. And the odds of winning the jackpot are getting better from a one in 302 million chance to just one in 290 million. I mean, you're practically guaranteed to win at that point. Toby, the first drawing of the new game is 11 p.m. Eastern this Tuesday.
Morning Brew Daily
Stock Market Loses $6 Trillion in Two Days & Minecraft Movie Scores Big
Are you feeling lucky?
Morning Brew Daily
Stock Market Loses $6 Trillion in Two Days & Minecraft Movie Scores Big
OK, let's move on to the week ahead. The major events you need to know about. It sure is going to be another tumultuous week on Wall Street. On Wednesday, President Trump's reciprocal tariffs go into effect on virtually every region of the world, even those without any human inhabitants.
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Stock Market Loses $6 Trillion in Two Days & Minecraft Movie Scores Big
Thankfully, Tax Act has expert assist. It's like your own personal Alfred, except instead of admonishing Bruce Wayne in a British accent, they're helping you find every deduction and credit you deserve. Do they wear tuxedos? No idea, but they are 100% credentialed, 100% U.S.-based tax experts who know the ins and outs of business taxes.
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Stock Market Loses $6 Trillion in Two Days & Minecraft Movie Scores Big
On Thursday, the Consumer Price Index will show inflation rates for March, setting a baseline before whatever happens to prices with the trade war and And on Friday, big banks like JP Morgan kick off earnings season, which will be closely watched for what CEOs say about the tariff impacts on their businesses.
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Stock Market Loses $6 Trillion in Two Days & Minecraft Movie Scores Big
Yeah, and the key question is whether the Trump administration will take Bill Ackman's advice and say something in order to stem the bloodbath in the market. So we'll see whether that happens in the next few days before those go into effect on Wednesday.
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Stock Market Loses $6 Trillion in Two Days & Minecraft Movie Scores Big
For golf fans, this is without a doubt the best week of the year, practically a religious experience because the Masters tees off in Georgia on Thursday, the sport's first major of the year. Known as a tradition unlike any other, the Masters is certainly unlike any other sporting event in the cheapness of its concession menu.
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Stock Market Loses $6 Trillion in Two Days & Minecraft Movie Scores Big
For the 23rd consecutive year, the pimento cheese sandwich will cost you just $1.50. Compare that to like $23 for whatever drink you're going to get at the U.S. Open in tennis.
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Stock Market Loses $6 Trillion in Two Days & Minecraft Movie Scores Big
I'll mull them over a little bit. Also in sports, the men's college basketball championship is tonight between Houston and Florida. In the women's championship yesterday, UConn destroyed South Carolina for its 12th title and their first since 2016. On television, White Lotus may have wrapped up yesterday, but Sunday nights on HBO will remain great with the new season of The Last of Us.
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Stock Market Loses $6 Trillion in Two Days & Minecraft Movie Scores Big
The zombie apocalypse thriller was a major hit with its first season in 2023, racking up more than 30 million viewers. White Lotus, on the other hand, has about 80%. 18 million elsewhere. The Handmaid's Tale returns for its sixth and final season on Hulu and the new season of Black Mirror hits Netflix on Thursday.
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Stock Market Loses $6 Trillion in Two Days & Minecraft Movie Scores Big
Okay, let's wrap it up there. Thanks so much for starting your morning with us and have a great Monday, or at least as great as it could possibly be given the circumstances. For any questions, comments, or feedback, send an email to morningbrewdaily at morningbrew.com. And before we get into the credits, got to wish a happy birthday to my mom, a big MBD listener. Happy birthday, mom.
Morning Brew Daily
Stock Market Loses $6 Trillion in Two Days & Minecraft Movie Scores Big
Okay, now here is our wonderful team behind the scenes. Emily Milliron is our executive producer. Raymond Liu is our producer. Olivia Graham and Olivia Lake are our associate producers. Uchenna Waogu is our technical director. Garrett Peck is on audio. Hair and makeup is in a bear market. Devin Emery is our chief content officer and our show is a production of Borning Brew.
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Stock Market Loses $6 Trillion in Two Days & Minecraft Movie Scores Big
Yes, Tax Act makes filing simple.
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Stock Market Loses $6 Trillion in Two Days & Minecraft Movie Scores Big
Weekends are awesome because you don't have to work. You can eat cold pizza for breakfast and the stock market isn't open. And we're all grateful it wasn't because Thursday and Friday's wipeout will go down in the history books. The S&P 500's 10% plunge on Thursday and Friday after President Trump announced massive tariffs.
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Stock Market Loses $6 Trillion in Two Days & Minecraft Movie Scores Big
ranks among the steepest two-day declines in the last 70 years, on par with Black Monday in 1987, the post-Lehman Brothers route in 2008, and the COVID plunge in March 2020. More than $6 trillion was erased from stocks over two days, the Dow shed more than 3,000 points, and the Nasdaq entered a bear market down 20% from a previous high.
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Stock Market Loses $6 Trillion in Two Days & Minecraft Movie Scores Big
It was carnage on Wall Street and reflects the investor panic over President Trump's Liberation Day tariff announcement last when he raised tariff levels to their highest point in more than a century. Trump and his team believe these tariffs are necessary in order to restore America's manufacturing base and use them as a point for leverage with other countries.
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Stock Market Loses $6 Trillion in Two Days & Minecraft Movie Scores Big
While virtually all economists say they're a recipe for slower growth and higher inflation, especially at these astronomic levels. On Thursday, J.P. Morgan raised their recession forecast from 40 percent to 60 percent. Toby, trading starts at 9.30 a.m. this morning in what may be the least exciting opening bell ever. What is the word on the street?
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Stock Market Loses $6 Trillion in Two Days & Minecraft Movie Scores Big
Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, stock futures are way down again as the U.S. 's global tariffs spark a market meltdown.
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Stock Market Loses $6 Trillion in Two Days & Minecraft Movie Scores Big
Yeah, on Friday into this maelstrom walks Jerome Powell, who just so happened to have an event scheduled on Friday as the markets were melting down. So everyone was very curious to see what he was going to say about the impact of tariffs. And he kind of sounded a worrying note. He said the tariffs are much larger than expected.
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Stock Market Loses $6 Trillion in Two Days & Minecraft Movie Scores Big
They would lead to higher inflation than he was calculating and they would lead to lower growth than the Fed was was calculating. He still said that the Fed was going to be in that wait and see mode, see how it all plays out. But as you said, over the weekend, the calculus may have changed a little bit.
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Stock Market Loses $6 Trillion in Two Days & Minecraft Movie Scores Big
Some investors are betting there might be an even emergency rate cut in order to save the market because this three day collapse should, you know, whatever happens. happens today in the futures market bear out through 4 p.m. It would be, you know, another addition to the historic collapse that we've been seeing. So we'll see what the Fed does.
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Stock Market Loses $6 Trillion in Two Days & Minecraft Movie Scores Big
But Powell on Friday kind of said we're still seeing it playing out.
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Stock Market Loses $6 Trillion in Two Days & Minecraft Movie Scores Big
Well, we hope you had a relaxing weekend because it's looking like today will be worse than the Monday after the Super Bowl. And we didn't even get the Super Bowl yesterday. Asian and European stock markets plunged overnight over fears the trade war will crush the global economy. Toby, what's the latest?
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Stock Market Loses $6 Trillion in Two Days & Minecraft Movie Scores Big
You're right. I mean, they are hitting pause. And one interesting development that you might see more of in the coming days is companies declaring force majeure, which is a legal maneuver that says you can void certain contracts because of crazy situations that are unavoidable and unpredictable.
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Stock Market Loses $6 Trillion in Two Days & Minecraft Movie Scores Big
You saw this happen during COVID a lot where they're like, we can't do this contract because there's literally a global pandemic. That's what they're saying.
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Stock Market Loses $6 Trillion in Two Days & Minecraft Movie Scores Big
about the tariffs the first company that we know that did this is helmet aerospace which is based out of pittsburgh they supply airplane parts for airbus and boeing across the 150 billion dollar industry they reportedly according to reuters declared force majeure to void certain contracts with these companies so that could add another level of supply chain chaos on top of what we're already seeing
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Stock Market Loses $6 Trillion in Two Days & Minecraft Movie Scores Big
One corner of the market we haven't touched on yet is oil prices. And just like everything else, they are an absolute free fall. The price of U.S. crude oil plunged 14% over two days to below the key mark of $60 a barrel. They're at the lowest level since before the vaccines rolled out in COVID-19. The reason prices are cratering is a double whammy of lower demand and higher supply.
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Stock Market Loses $6 Trillion in Two Days & Minecraft Movie Scores Big
Tariffs, if they do send the global economy into a downturn as expected, will sap demand for fuel. People will travel less. Businesses will ramp down spending. The economy will just need less energy overall. And in some really unfortunate timing, just as tariffs spooked markets last week, OPEC plus a group of oil producing nations said they would raise output in a surprise move.
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Stock Market Loses $6 Trillion in Two Days & Minecraft Movie Scores Big
So lower demand and higher supply has tanked the oil market. And while that means lower gasoline prices, it's a bad sign overall. It would crush U.S. energy companies, and it's an omen the economy is headed toward the dumps. So filling up for cheap will not be something to celebrate because it means there are a lot bigger problems going on.
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Stock Market Loses $6 Trillion in Two Days & Minecraft Movie Scores Big
It just means everyone's poor if gas is super cheap because of a recession.
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Stock Market Loses $6 Trillion in Two Days & Minecraft Movie Scores Big
We are learning why he is the GOAT. And you said that he is greedy when others are fearful. He was also fearful when others were greedy. Last year, as the stock market soared to record highs, he cut his Apple stake by two-thirds. He dumped Bank of America and Citigroup. Both of those stocks are down 22%. Apple is down 28% this year and continuing to... today.
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Stock Market Loses $6 Trillion in Two Days & Minecraft Movie Scores Big
So he was cutting last week or last year and everyone was like, why are you dumping stocks? Aren't they doing well? And then, uh, you know, I don't think he foresaw this necessarily, but it's just shows goes to show why he's such an incredible investor.
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Stock Market Loses $6 Trillion in Two Days & Minecraft Movie Scores Big
The best B2B marketing sometimes ends up in front of the wrong people. It's like advertising fishing gear to a fish.
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Stock Market Loses $6 Trillion in Two Days & Minecraft Movie Scores Big
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Stock Market Loses $6 Trillion in Two Days & Minecraft Movie Scores Big
LinkedIn will even give you a $100 credit on your next campaign so you can try it yourself. Just go to LinkedIn.com slash MBD. That's LinkedIn.com slash MBD. Terms and conditions apply only on LinkedIn ads. What does the future hold for business? Ask nine experts and you'll get 10 answers. It's a bull market. It's a bear market. Rates will rise or fall. Inflation's up or down.
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ChatGPT’s Image Generator Goes Viral & Tesla Unfazed by Tariffs?
If you are someone who likes German premium cars driving around what is the ultimate driving machine, BMW, then the cars you like will probably face a price hike from these tariffs. You mentioned the BMW 3 Series, another one. something in the car in this general category is the Audi Q5 SUV. That's made at Audi is a VW brand that's made at their factory in Mexico. It's Audi's top selling U.S.
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ChatGPT’s Image Generator Goes Viral & Tesla Unfazed by Tariffs?
model. So that is just another another vehicle in this category of, you know, more premium European cars where they don't have a huge factory footprint in the United States. They make some cars in Europe. They make some cars in Mexico. They make a few cars in the United States as well. But
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ChatGPT’s Image Generator Goes Viral & Tesla Unfazed by Tariffs?
They're like, ah, shoot, just tack another $350,000 on there. It doesn't matter to me. For the second time in this podcast, I'm going back to University of Maryland. I'm remembering Econ 101, the concept of price elasticity, and the buyers of Ferrari will probably be able to weather that 10% hike.
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ChatGPT’s Image Generator Goes Viral & Tesla Unfazed by Tariffs?
No, that's the wrong take. Marilyn, my commencement speaker was Cal Ripken, who is a Baltimore legend, but he got up there and was just not exciting at all, and we were all...
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ChatGPT’s Image Generator Goes Viral & Tesla Unfazed by Tariffs?
They're making quantum breakthroughs. I'm not sure they know exactly what to do with it. I mean, here is the head of global technology applied research at J.P. Morgan. He told Bloomberg, it's a breakthrough result. The next step will be to understand where we can apply it. So they've done this cool thing by creating an actual random number generator, which is very important.
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ChatGPT’s Image Generator Goes Viral & Tesla Unfazed by Tariffs?
Now they need to figure out how to apply it to their business. They say they can do things like solve complex problems, portfolio optimization, derivative pricing, things like that that will obviously help them make more money. So there are certain applications, especially in the cybersecurity world. We'll see how JP Morgan tries to randomize this.
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ChatGPT’s Image Generator Goes Viral & Tesla Unfazed by Tariffs?
hungover and we were just like please end this this is not uh this is not fun we want a little spice a little pizzazz and kermit will bring that doesn't matter what he says but you just want something to perk you up a little bit i'm not really thinking about the parents i don't know why you are i'm thinking about those kids that are graduating and they want a final sendoff that is worthy i think kermit will deliver
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ChatGPT’s Image Generator Goes Viral & Tesla Unfazed by Tariffs?
deep into the world of random numbers because there's a long history of scientists and regular people trying to figure out how to generate random numbers because it is hard to do with a computer. So they've looked to external factors to try to translate the random things that happen in our world to actual randomness in computers that can be used in daily life.
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ChatGPT’s Image Generator Goes Viral & Tesla Unfazed by Tariffs?
So people over history have looked at things like raindrop falling on glasses or bubbles in a fish tank or the unpredictable behavior of a kitten to try to capture that randomness and translate it to ones and zeros and data. But there is a very rich history of the search for randomness and relying on external factors or things that happen in nature and using that in real life.
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ChatGPT’s Image Generator Goes Viral & Tesla Unfazed by Tariffs?
needed okay i don't want to move on from that story but we have to let's sprint to the finish this friday with some final headlines knock knock it's robin hood i've got your cash you ordered right here that situation could soon be a reality after robin hood announced it would start an online banking platform that will include perks like door dashing cash to your house when you request it
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ChatGPT’s Image Generator Goes Viral & Tesla Unfazed by Tariffs?
Called Robinhood Banking, the service is the next step in Robinhood's evolution from a disruptive trading platform to an all-in-one app for your financial life. If you pay for a gold subscription, $50 per year, you will have access to checking and saving accounts, same-day cash delivery, and even luxury perks like potential Masters and Met Gala tickets.
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ChatGPT’s Image Generator Goes Viral & Tesla Unfazed by Tariffs?
Not sure how that will work, but either way, it shows Robinhood is going after deep-pocketed consumers with a more exclusive-feeling banking experience.
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ChatGPT’s Image Generator Goes Viral & Tesla Unfazed by Tariffs?
Neil, what happens when one team has a weak spot? That's when the other team attacks every time. For instance, if I saw you in a rec basketball league, Toby, I would take it to the rack every time we matched up. First of all, I know you can't go left.
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ChatGPT’s Image Generator Goes Viral & Tesla Unfazed by Tariffs?
This feels like a stand-up comedian on stage who's kind of bombing and then they just go immediately to crowd work to try to save their set. I mean, GameStop is, you know, a declining actual business. So this reeks of desperation that it would start buying Bitcoin like MicroStrategy has successfully done.
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ChatGPT’s Image Generator Goes Viral & Tesla Unfazed by Tariffs?
The thing is, GameStop is doing a pretty good job of making its business more efficient and approaching profitability. It closed 1,000 stores last year, plans on closing a ton more this year. It only has a loss of less than $10 million over the past two years. So it's eking towards profitability, but it's doing stunts like this to stay relevant in the meme stock world.
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ChatGPT’s Image Generator Goes Viral & Tesla Unfazed by Tariffs?
And at least this one did not pay out for them.
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ChatGPT’s Image Generator Goes Viral & Tesla Unfazed by Tariffs?
It does, and the film community as well. This franchise has made over $3 billion at the box office. They already optioned this book for another movie coming out in 2026. So Suzanne Collins, I mean, what an absolute juggernaut.
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ChatGPT’s Image Generator Goes Viral & Tesla Unfazed by Tariffs?
I think so. Let's wrap it up there. Thanks for starting your morning with us, and have a wonderful Friday. For any questions, comments, or feedback, send an email to morningbrewdaily at morningbrew.com. Let's roll the credits. Emily Milliron is our executive producer. Raymond Lute is our producer. Olivia Graham and Olivia Lake are our associate producers. Uchenua Ogu is our technical director.
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ChatGPT’s Image Generator Goes Viral & Tesla Unfazed by Tariffs?
Scoop Stardaris is on audio. Hair and makeup volunteers as tribute. Devin Emery is our chief content officer, and our show is a production of Morning Brew.
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You get enterprise-grade tech powered by evolving AI, a global team of 500-plus threat analysts watching 24-7, and Sophos Central, where you manage it all, integrated with over 300 tools you're probably already using.
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And we'll live stream it for everyone. But not before you all head to Sophos.com. That's S-O-P-H-O-S dot com. Do you believe that AI demand will keep going up and to the right? Investors will stare that question right in the face today when CoreWeave goes public on the NASDAQ.
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ChatGPT’s Image Generator Goes Viral & Tesla Unfazed by Tariffs?
This IPO is the most anticipated in years because CoreWeave is the first pure play AI company to hit the stock market, and as such, it is considered a bellwether for the AI revolution more broadly. While no one had heard of this New Jersey company a few years ago, it's become a massive business by hoovering up NVIDIA GPUs and renting them out to AI companies to train and run their models.
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ChatGPT’s Image Generator Goes Viral & Tesla Unfazed by Tariffs?
So if you are confident that AI giants like Microsoft will keep spending tens of billions on cloud computing, then CoreWeave would be a great way to put your money where your mouth is. Others are far more skeptical about CoreWeave's growth prospects, saying that it's sitting on a ticking time bomb of mounting debt, stagnating demand for data centers and old hardware that is depreciating rapidly.
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ChatGPT’s Image Generator Goes Viral & Tesla Unfazed by Tariffs?
Those concerns may have factored into CoreWeave's pricing ahead of its IPO. It raised $1.5 billion, far below its initial target of $3 billion, at a valuation of $23 billion. At one point, it was aiming for a valuation of $35 billion. Toby Corby's IPO was supposed to be a landmark moment for AI, but the vibes are off.
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ChatGPT’s Image Generator Goes Viral & Tesla Unfazed by Tariffs?
Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, is the biggest AI IPO of all time going to be a flop?
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ChatGPT’s Image Generator Goes Viral & Tesla Unfazed by Tariffs?
And most of you probably have never heard of CoreWeave, and that's very understandable. It started in 2017 as an Ethereum cryptocurrency miner as a side project of CoreWeave. two traders and they were buying all this computing power. And then when crypto hit the skids in 2021 and 2022, they pivoted to AI and it's been extremely lucrative.
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ChatGPT’s Image Generator Goes Viral & Tesla Unfazed by Tariffs?
Revenue surged 700% last year alone to hit nearly $2 billion. And that doesn't include a deal they just signed with OpenAI with a contract value of $12 billion through October 2030. So they've been riding this AI wave really well to immense financial success. However, there does appear to be cracks forming.
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ChatGPT’s Image Generator Goes Viral & Tesla Unfazed by Tariffs?
One criticism of Corby's business model is that a lot of the NVIDIA GPUs that they have, which are 250,000 of these, are NVIDIA's H100 chip, which is dated to 2022. This This industry moves so fast. NVIDIA already has a new generation of chips called Blackwell, and they're rolling out another new family of chips next year. And prices on renting out the old one, H100, are depreciating rapidly.
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ChatGPT’s Image Generator Goes Viral & Tesla Unfazed by Tariffs?
Renting one for an hour used to cost anywhere from $4 to $8. Now it costs as little as $1.
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ChatGPT’s Image Generator Goes Viral & Tesla Unfazed by Tariffs?
It was a roller coaster day for my University of Maryland Terrapins. Yes, last night, the men's basketball team got thumped by Florida in the Sweet 16, ending our March Madness run. But earlier in the day, some better news. The school announced that world famous amphibian Kermit the Frog will deliver the commencement address to Maryland's graduates in May.
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ChatGPT’s Image Generator Goes Viral & Tesla Unfazed by Tariffs?
Let's talk about that disgust because the creator of Studio Ghibli, the mastermind behind it, Hayao Miyazaki, who created this animation style that is so beloved all over the world and was the subject of all of these memes, what does he think about AI? Well, in 2016, he was shown an AI animation demo and he said, quote, I am utterly disgusted.
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ChatGPT’s Image Generator Goes Viral & Tesla Unfazed by Tariffs?
If you really want to make creepy stuff, you can go ahead and do it. I would never wish to incorporate this technology into my work at all. And then he added, I strongly feel that this is an insult to life itself. And, you know, that is the pushback to what we've been seeing over the past few days to swarm everybody's social media feed.
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ChatGPT’s Image Generator Goes Viral & Tesla Unfazed by Tariffs?
There's a lot of questions about how this blurs the line between reality and make-made-up stuff. And also, it reminds you that what is created has been trained on millions, perhaps, of copyrighted works all over the Internet.
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ChatGPT’s Image Generator Goes Viral & Tesla Unfazed by Tariffs?
Right. And so open. OpenAI is now facing certain legal questions, which it has for years now over whether it was infringing on people's copyright. Right now, it does look like capturing a particular style or copying that style is in a legal gray area because its style is not explicitly protected by copyright. So OpenAI does not appear to be breaking the law.
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ChatGPT’s Image Generator Goes Viral & Tesla Unfazed by Tariffs?
But you have a bunch of other companies like The New York Times suing it and this year or This week on Thursday, a judge allowed that lawsuit to proceed. So open AI is the best of times. It was the worst of times. Welcome to Stock of the Week, Dog of the Week, the segment where Toby and I pick one stock that has all their weekend plans lined up and another that's going to text all their friends.
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ChatGPT’s Image Generator Goes Viral & Tesla Unfazed by Tariffs?
In many ways, this is a homecoming for Kermit because his creator, Jim Henson, is an alum of Maryland. And both Kermit and Henson have bronze statues right outside the Student Union on campus. Toby doesn't totally make up for the loss, but Kermit as a commencement speaker isn't a bad consolation prize.
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ChatGPT’s Image Generator Goes Viral & Tesla Unfazed by Tariffs?
So is anyone doing anything tonight? I won the pre-show game of tag, you're it, so I get to go first. And my stock is Tesla, which might sound a bit odd. After all, President Trump just slapped 25% tariffs on cars made outside the U.S., which sent most of the auto world plunging yesterday. But not Tesla.
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ChatGPT’s Image Generator Goes Viral & Tesla Unfazed by Tariffs?
Tesla is up more than 16% for the week after analysts pointed out it would emerge as a winner from the new tariffs, well, at least compared to its rivals who are getting walloped. As one Bernstein analyst put it, Tesla wins, Detroit bleeds. And that's because unlike Detroit automakers, Tesla makes all of its cars for the U.S. market in the U.S. at plants in California and Texas.
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ChatGPT’s Image Generator Goes Viral & Tesla Unfazed by Tariffs?
Detroit's big three have sprinkled factories in Canada and Mexico, and bringing those into the U.S. will now cost them. CEO Elon Musk was quick to point out that Tesla isn't completely insulated from the tariffs since they apply not just to finish cars, but car parts. And Tesla doesn't get all of its parts from the U.S.
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ChatGPT’s Image Generator Goes Viral & Tesla Unfazed by Tariffs?
Between 60 percent and 75 percent of the components Tesla uses are manufactured in America, depending on the model, which is why Elon wrote that the tariff impact on Tesla is still significant. As for Elon's relationship with Trump and how that may have impacted the car tariffs, the president said Elon did not advise on the plan due to conflicts of interest.
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ChatGPT’s Image Generator Goes Viral & Tesla Unfazed by Tariffs?
And one particular model to pay attention to when it comes to tariffs is the Tesla Model Y. It competes in the midsize crossover segment. That category will now see close to half of its vehicles hit with tariffs. Meanwhile, the Model Y probably won't have to raise prices, whereas its competitors do. So in that midsize crossover, that's just like one
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ChatGPT’s Image Generator Goes Viral & Tesla Unfazed by Tariffs?
where you see Tesla emerging as a clear winner because it builds everything here. And that was a long-term plan that Elon Musk executed, and it's paying off right now.
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ChatGPT’s Image Generator Goes Viral & Tesla Unfazed by Tariffs?
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ChatGPT’s Image Generator Goes Viral & Tesla Unfazed by Tariffs?
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BYD Zooms By Tesla & The Boston Celtics Sell for Over $6B
Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Kyle Hagee. Today, an NBA franchise set the record for the most expensive sale in pro sports history.
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BYD Zooms By Tesla & The Boston Celtics Sell for Over $6B
We're trying. It's getting a little out of our price range. Six point one billion dollars. And Axios also reported that six point one is not going to be the end price here. There's going to be another round of investment that eventually bumps the price up to seven point three billion dollars. And it shows shows the marquee nature of that Celtics return. brand.
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BYD Zooms By Tesla & The Boston Celtics Sell for Over $6B
They're coming off a national championship. They've won 18 titles, the most of any NBA team ever. But when you talk about Bill Chisholm, when this news dropped yesterday, people were like, who? This guy didn't even have a Wikipedia page before he led an investor group to buy the Boston Celtics. He's the co-founder of Symphony Technology Group, which is out of Menlo Park, Silicon Valley, California.
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BYD Zooms By Tesla & The Boston Celtics Sell for Over $6B
All right. Before we jump into the show, a quick word from our sponsor, Sophos. Kyle, I have a question for you. Do you ever feel stretched a little too thin?
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BYD Zooms By Tesla & The Boston Celtics Sell for Over $6B
He grew up on the North Shore of Massachusetts as he's Huge Celtics fan, went to Dartmouth, so he's a New England guy. He went to the West Coast to make his fortune and is coming back to buy the Celtics and is paying a lot to do so. But there's a lot to like about buying a sports franchise now because of what you said. Valuations are booming. There's huge TV rights deals coming.
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BYD Zooms By Tesla & The Boston Celtics Sell for Over $6B
And this also sets the stage for NBA expansion.
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BYD Zooms By Tesla & The Boston Celtics Sell for Over $6B
We'll see whether he's ready to foot the bill because this team is going to cost $400 million in payroll and taxes coming up. Yeah. Jason Tatum, Jalen Brown, they're probably staying, but who knows about the rest of this team?
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BYD Zooms By Tesla & The Boston Celtics Sell for Over $6B
I hear that. Well, whenever you need a little extra backup, Sophos is there. They make sure your cybersecurity is locked up tight.
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BYD Zooms By Tesla & The Boston Celtics Sell for Over $6B
We'll find out this weekend. I mean, Disney has done this series of live action remakes, Little Mermaid, Lion King, Mufasa, Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast. They have Lilo and Stitch and Moana coming up where they take their old animated movies. And in terms of and make them into live-action, very weird-looking remakes, but I guess people watch them.
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BYD Zooms By Tesla & The Boston Celtics Sell for Over $6B
But Snow White is very interesting IP because it came out in 1937, a long, long time ago, a lot longer than some of these other live-action remakes. So if you are trying to get kids excited about certain princesses and getting them to come to your theme parks and just be involved with this particular IP,
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BYD Zooms By Tesla & The Boston Celtics Sell for Over $6B
Exactly. With Sophos, no matter your business's size, you get enterprise-grade technology and real-world expertise always in sync, always in your corner, playing zone defense or full-court press.
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BYD Zooms By Tesla & The Boston Celtics Sell for Over $6B
Snow White might not be on their radar, so this is a big deal for Disney to get Snow White back on the forefront of people's minds so they can get that Disney flywheel going. You see the movie, then you go to the parks, then you buy the toys, etc., etc., then you watch the show on Disney+. So this is very important for Disney to get Snow White back on the forefront of kids' radars.
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BYD Zooms By Tesla & The Boston Celtics Sell for Over $6B
These live-action remakes do generally really well at the box office. Last year, Mufasa, the Lion King film, which you didn't even know existed, made over $713 million globally. Beauty and the Beast back in 2017 opened to $175 million domestically. So these are huge potentials. potentially huge movies. And, you know, we'll be back on Monday with an update on how this did at the box office.
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BYD Zooms By Tesla & The Boston Celtics Sell for Over $6B
Despite all of the controversies, reviewers said this was one of the better remakes of them all.
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BYD Zooms By Tesla & The Boston Celtics Sell for Over $6B
Finally, Happy Friday hits different today because the annual World Happiness Report ranking countries by how happy their citizens are just dropped. And I'm going to have to ask the creators of Nokia and an epic sauna culture to wipe that grin off your face.
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BYD Zooms By Tesla & The Boston Celtics Sell for Over $6B
For the eighth year in a row, Finland was found to be the happiest country in the world, followed by fellow Nordic nations Denmark, Iceland and Sweden, which was the same order as last year. Why are Finns so dang happy? Residents say there's a great deal of trust, connection, and knowing your fellow people have your back, especially when it's dripping with steam.
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BYD Zooms By Tesla & The Boston Celtics Sell for Over $6B
That is true. Don't sacrifice your peace of mind as you grow your business. Visit Sophos.com for more. That's S-O-P-H-O-S dot com.
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BYD Zooms By Tesla & The Boston Celtics Sell for Over $6B
Meanwhile, Americans continued their slide in happiness with the U.S. falling to its lowest ranking on the list ever, 24th. down one spot from last year and a plunge from a peak of 11th place in 2012.
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BYD Zooms By Tesla & The Boston Celtics Sell for Over $6B
The drop is being driven by people under 30 who, according to Gallup, feel, quote, less supported by friends and family, less free to make life choices and less optimistic about their living standards. This seems to be the case for all big high income nations, with none of the large industrial powers ranking in the top 20 for the first time in the history of the report.
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BYD Zooms By Tesla & The Boston Celtics Sell for Over $6B
Kyle, what was your takeaway from the happiness?
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BYD Zooms By Tesla & The Boston Celtics Sell for Over $6B
Well, I think this is a first, but because there's such big stories, we're kicking off our Friday show with Stock of the Week, Dog of the Week, the segment where Kyle and I pick one stock that's got McNeese state-level aura and another that got bounced in the first round. Today, we're doing a two-for-one special, kind of like pert shampoo and conditioner.
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BYD Zooms By Tesla & The Boston Celtics Sell for Over $6B
But let's talk about I'm not going to use your corporate jargon with double clicks. Well, let's go into that dining alone thing. You say it's not a predictor of happiness, but the experts at the World Happiness Report say it's an incredibly strong predictor of happiness.
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BYD Zooms By Tesla & The Boston Celtics Sell for Over $6B
They said meal sharing was a stronger predictor of well-being than income and unemployment combined, which is truly mind blowing. And they said that meal sharing or the lack of it was one of the main reasons that the U.S. has continued to drop down the rankings. It found that 26% of U.S. adults said they ate every meal alone the previous day, which is a 50% increase between 2003 and 2023. The U.S.
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BYD Zooms By Tesla & The Boston Celtics Sell for Over $6B
ranks 69th globally in meal sharing, which is not nice. Canada is ranked 53rd, which a little ahead, and the U.K. is 81st, so a little peer comparison there. But they do say that meal sharing is a big deal, a strong predictor of happiness.
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BYD Zooms By Tesla & The Boston Celtics Sell for Over $6B
In Toronto, the expected rate of a returned wallet was just 23%. The actual number of returned wallets was more than 80%. So I guess if we're going to leave you with anything this Friday, it's go share a meal with someone this weekend and trust that your fellow people are nicer than you think they are.
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BYD Zooms By Tesla & The Boston Celtics Sell for Over $6B
All right, let's wrap it up there. Kyle, appreciate you stopping by. And thank you for starting your morning with us. We've got an epic weekend on tap with the Women's College Basketball Tournament kicking off today. Another big slate of men's games and a lot of meals shared with other people. Maryland. Do not let me down.
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BYD Zooms By Tesla & The Boston Celtics Sell for Over $6B
For any questions, comments, or feedback, send an email to morningbrewdaily at morningbrew.com. Let's roll the credits. Emily Milliron is our executive producer. Raymond Liu is our producer. Olivia Graham and Olivia Lake are our associate producers. Eugenia Waogu is our technical director. Scoops Gardaris is on audio. Hair and Makeup finally found where True TV is.
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BYD Zooms By Tesla & The Boston Celtics Sell for Over $6B
Devin Emery is our chief content officer. And our show is a production of Morning Brew.
Morning Brew Daily
BYD Zooms By Tesla & The Boston Celtics Sell for Over $6B
Our Stock of the Week is Chinese electric vehicle giant BYD, and our dog is its U.S. rival, Tesla. BYD shares soared to a record high this week after making an astonishing claim. It said it had developed a new charging system that could add nearly 300 miles from five minutes of charging or about how long it takes to fill up a tank of gas.
Morning Brew Daily
BYD Zooms By Tesla & The Boston Celtics Sell for Over $6B
This ultra-fast charging innovation was called a game changer by experts and rocked the auto world. Solving the problem of range anxiety and long charging times could convince more shoppers to choose BYD over competitors in China, the world's biggest market for EVs. As for Tesla, the company may be in its most turbulent stretch in its history. It issued another Cybertruck recall, number eight.
Morning Brew Daily
BYD Zooms By Tesla & The Boston Celtics Sell for Over $6B
Sales are in reverse. Sometimes violent protests have erupted across showrooms and charging stations, and major investors and analysts are calling for drastic changes as CEO Elon Musk emerges as the public face of the Trump administration. Shares are down nearly 5% this week, and they've fallen nearly 40% this year, the worst performer in the S&P 500. But let's start with BYD.
Morning Brew Daily
BYD Zooms By Tesla & The Boston Celtics Sell for Over $6B
Kyle's here. Manu Ginobili, sixth man of the year, is back to fill in for Toby today. Kyle, how are you feeling this Friday?
Morning Brew Daily
BYD Zooms By Tesla & The Boston Celtics Sell for Over $6B
Kyle, this Chinese car company is taking over the world.
Morning Brew Daily
BYD Zooms By Tesla & The Boston Celtics Sell for Over $6B
Right. So last year, the Biden administration, when he was president, implemented 100 percent tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles to protect Americans. The Detroit automakers, Canada also has 100 percent tariffs. The EU has about 18, 19 percent tariffs on BYD and other Chinese electric vehicle makers to protect the domestic industries. But still, BYD is becoming an export powerhouse.
Morning Brew Daily
BYD Zooms By Tesla & The Boston Celtics Sell for Over $6B
It already has 15 percent market share in China, which is the world's largest market for EVs. but it has absolutely expanded its reach to developing markets, and it's going toe-to-toe with these other automakers in places like South Africa, Turkey, Chile, South America. In South Africa, China made vehicles accounted for nearly 10% of sales last year, which is five times the volume sold in 2019.
Morning Brew Daily
BYD Zooms By Tesla & The Boston Celtics Sell for Over $6B
So ever since buy now, pay later, giant Klarna filed for an IPO last week. It's been inking partnerships left and right. And its latest move yesterday raised a lot of eyebrows and led to a lot of jokes. It made a deal with DoorDash to put its payments tech into the delivery app.
Morning Brew Daily
BYD Zooms By Tesla & The Boston Celtics Sell for Over $6B
Go to Turkey, Chinese brands claimed an 8% share in the first six months of 2024. That's up from basically zero in 2022. So you're seeing a global turf war being fought between really cheap and high quality Chinese cars, which it was crazy because they could not they were not an export powerhouse at all. This is Germany and the United States domain and South Korea and Japan.
Morning Brew Daily
BYD Zooms By Tesla & The Boston Celtics Sell for Over $6B
But they are running that playbook and we'll see whether they come to the United States shores. But it is unlikely, given that there are 100 percent tariffs on BYD and other Chinese EVs to protect the local industry.
Morning Brew Daily
BYD Zooms By Tesla & The Boston Celtics Sell for Over $6B
Right, so in China where Tesla and BYD are going at it on the roads, Tesla charges you $8,800 to buy driver assistance features. BYD offers that for free. A number of other Chinese EV makers also offer driver assistance. for free.
Morning Brew Daily
BYD Zooms By Tesla & The Boston Celtics Sell for Over $6B
So Tesla will certainly be facing pressure to bring those costs down, because when you're looking at whether to buy a Tesla or a BYD, that $8,800, if more consumers do want those driver assistance features, when you're looking at not paying anything or $8,800, which is nearly the cost of the cheapest BYD model, that can certainly go into your decision making.
Morning Brew Daily
BYD Zooms By Tesla & The Boston Celtics Sell for Over $6B
Let's move on to Tesla, the dog of the week. This company is really going through it right now. There was a major note published by an analyst who was one of the biggest Tesla bulls on Wall Street that is making waves this week. Dan Ives, who's at Wedbush Securities, said, let's call it like it is. Tesla is going through a crisis and there is one person who can fix it.
Morning Brew Daily
BYD Zooms By Tesla & The Boston Celtics Sell for Over $6B
Musk, as someone who is a corbel and believer in the Tesla long-term growth story, I loudly urge Musk and the board to step up, stop being silent, and help resolve this crisis forming at Tesla. That's what I've said. And with the crisis he's referring to is all of this violence that has been waged against Tesla showrooms and vehicles.
Morning Brew Daily
BYD Zooms By Tesla & The Boston Celtics Sell for Over $6B
across the United States and across the world as well, sinking sales in Europe and in China and in the United States. They've gone into reverse and a plunging stock price, the worst on the S&P 500.
Morning Brew Daily
BYD Zooms By Tesla & The Boston Celtics Sell for Over $6B
So now you will be able to pay for your DoorDash burrito or Pad Thai in four equal interest-free installments or even defer payments until what Klarna calls a more convenient time. Kyle, are you on board with eat now, pay later?
Morning Brew Daily
BYD Zooms By Tesla & The Boston Celtics Sell for Over $6B
JP Morgan analyst Ryan Brickman wrote in a research note this week, we've struggled to think of anything analogous in the history of the automotive industry in which a brand has lost so much value so quickly, and perhaps that brand erosion fell even more this week when Tesla announced its eighth recall of the Cybertruck, about 46,000 of them.
Morning Brew Daily
BYD Zooms By Tesla & The Boston Celtics Sell for Over $6B
They need to fix an exterior panel that could detach while driving. That happened yesterday. So, yeah, you have investors and analysts calling on Elon Musk to make a public statement saying how he's going to balance his duties in Washington with Doge with also running Tesla and all of his other companies.
Morning Brew Daily
BYD Zooms By Tesla & The Boston Celtics Sell for Over $6B
Yesterday afternoon, President Trump signed an executive order directing Education Secretary Linda McMahon to dismantle her own department. Trump and many conservative critics have argued that the education department is wasteful financially and educational outcomes would be better if left to individual states to manage.
Morning Brew Daily
BYD Zooms By Tesla & The Boston Celtics Sell for Over $6B
Among its many programs, such as tracking student achievement and supporting students with disabilities, the education department is essentially a giant bank overseeing a massive portfolio of student loans, $1.6 trillion belonging to over 44 million American borrowers. In fact, it's the third largest source of household debt in the United States.
Morning Brew Daily
BYD Zooms By Tesla & The Boston Celtics Sell for Over $6B
The proposed wind down of the education department has raised a lot of uncertainty over how those loans would be administered going forward.
Morning Brew Daily
BYD Zooms By Tesla & The Boston Celtics Sell for Over $6B
The White House yesterday tried to calm those fears, saying that even as it's stripped for parts, the education department's critical functions would continue, such as the oversight of student loans and Pell Grants, which provides aids to students below a certain income threshold. Still, Trump's goal is to make the agency a shell of its former self and ultimately eliminate it.
Morning Brew Daily
BYD Zooms By Tesla & The Boston Celtics Sell for Over $6B
But expect court challenges because. It would take an act of Congress to fully abolish the department. Get ready for what the New York Times called a seismic legal battle over the federal government's role in the nation's schools.
Morning Brew Daily
BYD Zooms By Tesla & The Boston Celtics Sell for Over $6B
Conservatives have been criticizing the education department since 1980 and think that states and local governments should oversee education and student loans more broadly. But when we're talking student loans specifically, if you want to move the the portfolio of $1.6 trillion somewhere from the education department.
Morning Brew Daily
BYD Zooms By Tesla & The Boston Celtics Sell for Over $6B
The question is, which new department oversees it and what expertise or skills do they have as banking managers to disperse loans and collect that revenue and all that stuff? Well, Uh, one, uh, one place where they could go ultimately is the treasury department. Some advocates of this move say that the treasury department is, you know, has the banking expertise.
Morning Brew Daily
BYD Zooms By Tesla & The Boston Celtics Sell for Over $6B
It has the know how to be able to administer such a cumbersome and massive program. Trump has also floated the small business administration and some even on the more extreme level would say we should privatize everything about the student loan process. That would be a sea change. Ninety-two percent of student loans are from the public sphere currently.
Morning Brew Daily
BYD Zooms By Tesla & The Boston Celtics Sell for Over $6B
So the main thrust might be that it moves to the Treasury Department if the education department is totally wound down. Critics of moving into the Treasury Department say like this will be messy and we have a lot of things tied up in student loans right now. We should not be able to we should not be moving this huge chunk of loans from one department to the next.
Morning Brew Daily
BYD Zooms By Tesla & The Boston Celtics Sell for Over $6B
no that's not i don't think that's the wild here it's just to establish clarna as the go i mean yes this is the business strategy behind it to establish clarna as sort of the go-to payments portal that you go to whenever you buy anything doesn't matter the size but obviously the size of uh the order of what you typically do on doordash is not that big which led to you know a huge social media uh joke fest around this news yesterday
Morning Brew Daily
BYD Zooms By Tesla & The Boston Celtics Sell for Over $6B
We don't know what could get caught in the middle. They acknowledge that maybe this process, the student loan, the student loan apparatus as managed by the education department isn't the best. You know, they acknowledge there are certain mistakes, but moving it wholesale from one agency to the next would be a mistake.
Morning Brew Daily
BYD Zooms By Tesla & The Boston Celtics Sell for Over $6B
Expect major legal battles ahead over the fate of the education department. Up next, Snow White and the never-ending controversies. Have you taken our morning market trivia quiz yet? Top scorers will receive a custom prize, a $200 Amex gift card, and a newsletter feature.
Morning Brew Daily
BYD Zooms By Tesla & The Boston Celtics Sell for Over $6B
If you have the answer, go to www.morningbrew.com slash morning-market-trivia to test your stuff with the morning market trivia quiz. Who knows? You could end up on the leaderboard. Like I said, top scorers will receive prizes and a feature in the Morning Brew newsletter. I scored a 12 out of 15. I got 11 out of 15.
Morning Brew Daily
BYD Zooms By Tesla & The Boston Celtics Sell for Over $6B
Head on over to www.morningbrew.com slash morning-market-trivia and see if you can beat our scorers and win some goodies. Do you ever feel like you can feel yourself getting older? Literally all the time. Just ask my lower back. Yeah, my knee is saying the exact same thing.
Morning Brew Daily
BYD Zooms By Tesla & The Boston Celtics Sell for Over $6B
Well, no one's found a way to stop aging yet, but Timeline has created a supplement that can change the way aging feels, helping your body to bounce back faster by giving your cells a refresh.
Morning Brew Daily
BYD Zooms By Tesla & The Boston Celtics Sell for Over $6B
It just takes two soft gels a day to reboot your cells from the inside out.
Morning Brew Daily
Google Ruled a Monopoly… Again? & Netflix Takes Closer Step to $1T
in five minutes or less, and you could earn up to $10,000. Yes, 10K, when you transfer your old investment portfolio. Start at public.com slash morningbrew. That's public.com slash morningbrew. Paid for by Public Investing. Full disclosures in podcast description. Welcome to my favorite segment of the show, Stock of the Week, Dog of the Week, because it means it's Friday at long last.
Morning Brew Daily
Google Ruled a Monopoly… Again? & Netflix Takes Closer Step to $1T
Toby and I will pick one stock that soared to space like Katy Perry and another that tumbled back to earth, also like Katy Perry 11 minutes later. I won the pre-show who cried more after Rory McIlroy won the masters contest. So I get to go first. And my stock of the week is Hertz because bill Ackman just made a big bet on the yellow rental car company and investors are loving it.
Morning Brew Daily
Google Ruled a Monopoly… Again? & Netflix Takes Closer Step to $1T
The stock searched 56% on Wednesday after Ackman's Pershing square hedge fund took a $46 million stake equivalent to about 4% of Hertz's outstanding shares. Then yesterday, The stock added another 44%. Ackman is now the company's third largest shareholder. So what does he see in Hertz? The potential to upgrade from compact to full size, likely because of the auto tariffs.
Morning Brew Daily
Google Ruled a Monopoly… Again? & Netflix Takes Closer Step to $1T
Trump's 25% tariffs on foreign cars are expected to raise prices for not only new cars, but used cars as well, since the two typically rise in tandem. That would increase the value of Hertz's vast fleet of used vehicles. which it could sell at a higher price point than before to reap the rewards. Of course, that's the bull case.
Morning Brew Daily
Google Ruled a Monopoly… Again? & Netflix Takes Closer Step to $1T
There are plenty of haters of the stock, which is why nearly half of its float is sold short. Hertz has had a rough time finding stability after emerging from bankruptcy in 2021 when a huge investment in Tesla's flopped hard and a recession would probably kill demand for rentals. Toby, is Ackman a genius or out of his mind?
Morning Brew Daily
Google Ruled a Monopoly… Again? & Netflix Takes Closer Step to $1T
Right. A very curious outcome in the stock market, too. You might have checked your stocks yesterday or the major indexes and saw that the Dow was down over a percent, 1.3 percent, while the S&P 500 was up 0.1 percent. Usually those indexes go pretty much in lockstep with each other. So it's curious to see such a massive divergence. And that is, you know, specifically because of United Health.
Morning Brew Daily
Google Ruled a Monopoly… Again? & Netflix Takes Closer Step to $1T
United Health is the highest weighted index. stock in the Dow. And we talked about this a lot. The Dow is a index of 30 companies that is not representative of the stock market because it is weighted by share price, not by market value. United Health has a share price of more than $400 per share, which means it is weighted more in the Dow than much more valuable companies like Apple or Nvidia.
Morning Brew Daily
Google Ruled a Monopoly… Again? & Netflix Takes Closer Step to $1T
So whatever United Health does on any given day, that's typically what the Dow is going to do. So United Health dropping as much as 20%, dragged down the Dow 527 points, which was more than it dropped in 1987 on Black Monday. So that is sort of the divergence you saw between the Dow and S&P. Blame UnitedHealth for this truly shocking earnings report. Investors were absolutely floored.
Morning Brew Daily
Google Ruled a Monopoly… Again? & Netflix Takes Closer Step to $1T
The CEO said, I don't even know what's going on. We issue very conservative expectations and guidance going forward, and we completely whiffed on that, like a huge executional misstep. Finally, introducing a new segment to take you into the weekend we're calling Fast Food Fridays.
Morning Brew Daily
Google Ruled a Monopoly… Again? & Netflix Takes Closer Step to $1T
This week, a number of chains introduced or teased new menu items that you simply must know about if you are a patriotic American. So here we go. First up, Chili's, which cannot stop itself from trolling McDonald's. On Tuesday, the chain rolled out a new burger called the Big QP, which is essentially a blatant ripoff of McDonald's Quarter Pounder.
Morning Brew Daily
Google Ruled a Monopoly… Again? & Netflix Takes Closer Step to $1T
It has the exact same toppings, two slices of American cheese, pickles, ketchup, and diced onions, but says it has 85% more beef. Chili's is leaning into the comparison with its marketing campaign, noting in a press release that its 1099 burger deal is less expensive than the same one at McDonald's.
Morning Brew Daily
Google Ruled a Monopoly… Again? & Netflix Takes Closer Step to $1T
And in a new TV ad called the Quarter Pounder Tiny, bashing McDonald's while copying its menu items is a recipe that's been working really well for Chili's. In the most recent quarter, sales surged 31 percent, the third straight quarter of double digit growth.
Morning Brew Daily
Google Ruled a Monopoly… Again? & Netflix Takes Closer Step to $1T
Oh yeah, it doesn't matter if it's a rom-com or a courtroom drama. They walk on screen and boom, you're just locked in.
Morning Brew Daily
Google Ruled a Monopoly… Again? & Netflix Takes Closer Step to $1T
Even while getting stuffed into a marketing locker by Chili's, McDonald's is still going on offense. The fast food giant teased the long-awaited return of the Snack Wrap, a cult favorite menu item that hasn't been sold in the U.S. in nine years. On Tuesday, the official McDonald's X account posted, quote, Snack Wraps 0X.5.
Morning Brew Daily
Google Ruled a Monopoly… Again? & Netflix Takes Closer Step to $1T
14.2025, implying that the snack wraps would return on the 14th day of a month. That's still TBD. They sound like Gandalf, but it'll probably be before October, given the zero as the first digit of the month. This isn't a total surprise because execs had previously said that the snack wrap would be coming back this year, but it's getting realer than ever.
Morning Brew Daily
Google Ruled a Monopoly… Again? & Netflix Takes Closer Step to $1T
Planet Oat was born to be in the spotlight. Just its velvety texture alone shows it's a Lister material.
Morning Brew Daily
Google Ruled a Monopoly… Again? & Netflix Takes Closer Step to $1T
So we know it's before October.
Morning Brew Daily
Google Ruled a Monopoly… Again? & Netflix Takes Closer Step to $1T
I mean, you just mentioned that chicken was all the rage in fast food and Taco Bell is showing that here by bringing back the chicken nuggets for a longer period of time, perhaps making that permanent in 2026. They hope that chicken will be a $5 billion menu category by 2030. McDonald's has half of its sales as much as beef in chicken.
Morning Brew Daily
Google Ruled a Monopoly… Again? & Netflix Takes Closer Step to $1T
And it's dairy-free, gluten-free, soy-free, all the good stuff with none of the drama. If your morning routine needs a little star power, Planet O is sitting in hair and makeup waiting for its big screen moment.
Morning Brew Daily
Google Ruled a Monopoly… Again? & Netflix Takes Closer Step to $1T
So this is just everyone's everyone's love in Pollo these days. And Taco Bell is bringing it back. I think the X factor is also the sauces, the Hidden Valley Fire Ranch sauce. Fans went crazy over it. So the ability I think is just two trends here, which is chicken and the ability to customize and dip things in sauce are just things that Gen Z loves.
Morning Brew Daily
Google Ruled a Monopoly… Again? & Netflix Takes Closer Step to $1T
So fast food restaurants are absolutely just chasing after that.
Morning Brew Daily
Google Ruled a Monopoly… Again? & Netflix Takes Closer Step to $1T
Well, this got me thinking, how many burgers could I possibly eat in a month? I mean, $20 is a great deal. Obviously, we can't get it now because, you know, they broke the website and they're all sold out. But I was just going through my mind, like how many burgers could I possibly eat over a 30 day span? I think the answer is maybe 10. So you're still getting great value. Of course I am. Yeah.
Morning Brew Daily
Google Ruled a Monopoly… Again? & Netflix Takes Closer Step to $1T
Twenty dollars for a single meal is something you'll take now. But, you know, over the course of the month, it's just how many burgers can I possibly fit into my stomach? And I think I just have to go Sunday, Wednesday, Sunday, Wednesday, maybe one more thrown in. So I get to 10. Here's the X factor, though.
Morning Brew Daily
Google Ruled a Monopoly… Again? & Netflix Takes Closer Step to $1T
Okay, let's snack wrap it up there. Thanks so much for starting your morning with us. Have a wonderful Friday and an even better weekend. For any questions, comments, or feedback, send an email to morningbrewdaily at morningbrew.com. Let's roll the credits. Emily Milliron is our executive producer. Raymond Lute is our producer. Our associate producers are Olivia Graham and Olivia Lake.
Morning Brew Daily
Google Ruled a Monopoly… Again? & Netflix Takes Closer Step to $1T
Call me a monopoly once, shame on you. Call me a monopoly twice, well, that just makes me Google. For the second time in less than a year, Google has been deemed a monopoly in court after a district judge ruled that Google acquired and maintained an uncompetitive advantage in the market for ad technology.
Morning Brew Daily
Google Ruled a Monopoly… Again? & Netflix Takes Closer Step to $1T
Uchena Waogu is back taking a celeb shot as technical director. Garrett Peck is on audio. Hair and makeup knows what they're having for lunch. Devin Emery is our president, and our show is a production of Morning Brew. Great show today, Neil. I wish you all well.
Morning Brew Daily
Google Ruled a Monopoly… Again? & Netflix Takes Closer Step to $1T
It's another victory for the DOJ in its crusade against big tech's power and another stinging defeat for Google, which could see large aspects of its businesses hived off or impeded. Google was already found to monopolize the search market last year. The case decided yesterday concerned the largely invisible but incredibly important ad tech tools that power the Internet.
Morning Brew Daily
Google Ruled a Monopoly… Again? & Netflix Takes Closer Step to $1T
essentially the inner workings behind why you see an ad on a web page. The DOJ accused Google of monopolizing three separate markets within ad tech, which allowed it to collect monopoly profits from publishers and advertisers who had no alternative, while ultimately harming end consumers. The judge agreed on two out of the three markets.
Morning Brew Daily
Google Ruled a Monopoly… Again? & Netflix Takes Closer Step to $1T
Yes, monopoly on publisher ad servers, which is how publishers sell ad space on their sites. Yes, on the market for ad exchanges, which facilitate ad buyers and sellers, but no monopoly on the ad networks used by marketers. A little in the weeds for sure, but TLDR, Google is not feeling lucky.
Morning Brew Daily
Google Ruled a Monopoly… Again? & Netflix Takes Closer Step to $1T
initially speaking yeah i mean they said they are going to appeal the half of the or the third of the ruling that they lost google spokesperson said we disagree with the court's decision regarding our publisher tools publishers have many options and they choose google because our ad tech tools are simple affordable and effective just like their argument in the search case where you know the vast majority of people use google search their argument was sorry for being good
Morning Brew Daily
Google Ruled a Monopoly… Again? & Netflix Takes Closer Step to $1T
Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, President Trump said Jerome Powell's termination can't come soon enough. But can he fire the Fed chair?
Morning Brew Daily
Google Ruled a Monopoly… Again? & Netflix Takes Closer Step to $1T
And the other accusation of the DOJ here was that not only do they have these very powerful ad tech tools, but they warp them together into an ecosystem that entraps people and publishers and advertisers and doesn't allow them to leave the ecosystem. So it's this integration that regulators were also after.
Morning Brew Daily
Google Ruled a Monopoly… Again? & Netflix Takes Closer Step to $1T
Again, Google pushes back and says that all this integration leads to more affordability, more usability. Obviously, those arguments fell on deaf ears.
Morning Brew Daily
Google Ruled a Monopoly… Again? & Netflix Takes Closer Step to $1T
Economists across the board, both on the right and the left, warn that reducing the Fed independence could send markets tumbling down. even more volatile than they are now because the Fed is supposed to be independent, so it can think long-term. People in political office have these four-year terms. They think in a very short-term scenario.
Morning Brew Daily
Google Ruled a Monopoly… Again? & Netflix Takes Closer Step to $1T
So, yes, President Trump, like many other presidents, probably want lower rates because that causes the economy to go faster. But if you're Jerome Powell, you are looking over the long term. You are not elected by anyone. so you can keep rates higher because of the inflation threat of what happens when you lower interest rates, which is why Politico reported that.
Morning Brew Daily
Google Ruled a Monopoly… Again? & Netflix Takes Closer Step to $1T
Treasury Secretary Scott Besant, he said he's been working behind the scenes cautioning President Trump and White House officials to say, look, this is something you don't want to mess with. He has previously said publicly
Morning Brew Daily
Google Ruled a Monopoly… Again? & Netflix Takes Closer Step to $1T
Good Friday morning everyone, and I mean that literally because today is Good Friday. That means the markets are closed for the holiday and many of you are looking ahead to the Easter weekend. If there's one thing clouding Easter celebrations this year, it's the price of eggs, which are up about 60% compared to a year ago. Some companies are offering less budget busting alternatives.
Morning Brew Daily
Google Ruled a Monopoly… Again? & Netflix Takes Closer Step to $1T
uh the fed independence is the jewel box that has got to be preserved so he's pushing back on this within the administration saying this is just a line you can't cross or else investors will lose faith in the entire system right and this goes back to this 1970s actually because the fed has guarded its monetary policy since then because at the time president richard
Morning Brew Daily
Google Ruled a Monopoly… Again? & Netflix Takes Closer Step to $1T
Meanwhile, Powell is just in a pickle here. I mean, it's a really tough job he has here because he, you know, in that speech on Wednesday, he warned that the tariffs were much greater than the worst case scenario that anybody at the Fed projected. So tariffs, he expects, will lead to higher than expected inflation and lower growth. And like, as you mentioned, I mean, that is just...
Morning Brew Daily
Google Ruled a Monopoly… Again? & Netflix Takes Closer Step to $1T
those are clashing priorities because the feds has two mandates, which is to keep inflation low and employment high. Those are now clashing. He can't raise interest rates because that would send the economy into a recession. He can't lower them because he's also worried about the inflation. So there are these two competing priorities. He's not sure exactly which ones to prioritize.
Morning Brew Daily
Google Ruled a Monopoly… Again? & Netflix Takes Closer Step to $1T
So we're in this moment of stasis where the fed held interest rates, uh, at their current level for the first two meetings. And it looks like we're just in this wait and see approach because when you move one lever, it affects the other in a bad way. Same vice versa. So Powell's just in this state of paralysis. Powell's in a pickle. I like it.
Morning Brew Daily
Google Ruled a Monopoly… Again? & Netflix Takes Closer Step to $1T
Jet puffed marshmallows released a color dying kit as a festive mess free twist on egg decoration for two bucks. which includes six colors, decorating pens, and of course, a 24-ounce bag of marshmallows. Toby, what would you draw on a marshmallow?
Morning Brew Daily
Google Ruled a Monopoly… Again? & Netflix Takes Closer Step to $1T
Netflix is coming off a record year last year, and revenue growth was 16%. Operating margins were up 27%. They got more subscribers last year than during COVID, 41 million compared to 36.6 million in 2020. So yes, the streaming wars are effectively over. Netflix has won. It's just this next act. That is an open question. A lot of it involves this ad tier, right?
Morning Brew Daily
Google Ruled a Monopoly… Again? & Netflix Takes Closer Step to $1T
43% of all new Netflix subscribers in February signed up to this lower-priced ad tier, which is at $7.99 a month, and Netflix thinks that much of its subscriber growth and much of its revenue growth can come from advertising. You said it was recession-proof, but the ad market is not immune to a recession. Moffat Nathanson projected that if a U.S. advertising spending could drop 5.8% this year.
Morning Brew Daily
Google Ruled a Monopoly… Again? & Netflix Takes Closer Step to $1T
It had previously projected ad spending to grow 5.8%, so that's a huge shift from a big growth to a big loss. So we'll see if Netflix manages to weather the storm should it come.
Morning Brew Daily
Google Ruled a Monopoly… Again? & Netflix Takes Closer Step to $1T
The best B2B marketing sometimes ends up in front of the wrong people. It's like advertising fishing gear to a fish.
Morning Brew Daily
Google Ruled a Monopoly… Again? & Netflix Takes Closer Step to $1T
That's what LinkedIn ads is built for. LinkedIn has grown to a network of over 1 billion professionals. Of those, 130 million are decision makers. You can target your buyers by job, title, industry, company, role, seniority, revenue, so many options all in one place. Don't waste precious budget on the wrong audience. Tap into LinkedIn ads to find your people.
Morning Brew Daily
Google Ruled a Monopoly… Again? & Netflix Takes Closer Step to $1T
LinkedIn will even give you a $100 credit on your next campaign so you can try it yourself. Just go to LinkedIn.com slash MBD. That's LinkedIn.com slash MBD. Terms and conditions apply only on LinkedIn ads. Got five minutes to spare? Let's face it, if you're listening to a podcast, you have five minutes to spare. Then you have time to become a more serious investor with Public.com.
Morning Brew Daily
Google Ruled a Monopoly… Again? & Netflix Takes Closer Step to $1T
Plus, Public has Alpha, an AI-powered investment research assistant that can answer questions about any stock.
Morning Brew Daily
Trade War Spills Over Champagne & Meta Tries to Slow Tell-All Book
Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, France has got champagne problems after Trump floated a 200% tariff on European alcohol.
Morning Brew Daily
Trade War Spills Over Champagne & Meta Tries to Slow Tell-All Book
It's also the more affluent consumers. The CEO of Kohl's said that Those earning 50,000, less than $50,000 a year, but even those earning under $100,000 a year are cutting back with the potential for more pullback in the coming months. So these are some serious warning signs for consumer spending, which drives two thirds of the American economy.
Morning Brew Daily
Trade War Spills Over Champagne & Meta Tries to Slow Tell-All Book
Let's end on a high note, shall we? It is Friday after all. One thing that is working for Kohl's is this partnership with Sephora. Kohl's now has 1,000 Sephora shops inside its stores. Those took in $1.8 billion in revenue last year. Comparable beauty sales increased 13%. So this partnership is clicking and they want to invest in it further to drive revenue.
Morning Brew Daily
Trade War Spills Over Champagne & Meta Tries to Slow Tell-All Book
Well... This is a merger between the two biggest brands in the sport, and it's kind of exactly what F1 needed after that pandemic bump led to a couple years of stagnation. Ferrari has participated in every single Formula One season since the series began in 1950. Lewis Hamilton is a figure who is much larger than the sport, a global fashion icon. He's co-chairing the Met Gala this year.
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He has just transcended the sport. And so Ferrari is paying him $100 million per year to come over. That includes overall earnings, including sponsors, image rights, bonuses and salary. That is a ton of money. It's a huge gamble on this British guy to revitalize Italian racing.
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Well, it is not great. Too much thinking, not enough sleeping. What's keeping you up at night? I think information overload. I'm always reading about business news and the market, and it leaves me wondering if I'm investing in the right stuff.
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I think gauging the influence of something like drive to survive is worth talking about the all the copycats that have emerged from it. Tennis has break point. Golf has full swing. American football has quarterback and receiver. There's been so many of these, you know, drive to survive style docuseries. that have come out in the aftermath of the success of that show.
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I don't think any of them have achieved nearly the heights of drive to survive, and maybe that's because of the particular egos involved in F1 and the characters that this sport has, and they're involved in money and politics and business. So it's quite larger than life, just like Lewis Hamilton. But I think...
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In terms of the influence of Drive to Survive, I don't know about the viewership, the impact it has, but on the particular industry of docuseries, it's been a massive influence.
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It would. I mean, they the administration characterized these terminations as based on poor individual performance. But the problem is that these people who had been fired, these probationary workers who are very young into their career, that's why they were fired, because it's easier to fire them. actually received stellar performance reviews. So they did not square the circle with their firing.
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So the judge says you can't, you know, put it under the guise of bad performance when we have documentation here that says they had good performance. So a blow to Doge's efforts to trim the federal workforce. There have been lawsuits filed all over the country for any number of sort of cost-cutting measures that Doge has undertaken. We're seeing these play out in the courts.
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Markets may have 99 problems, but a government shutdown ain't one. The head of the Senate Democrats, Chuck Schumer, said he'd vote to advance a Republican measure to keep the government open later today, relieving concerns that Congress would pass a spending bill to prevent the government from shutting down, which it would do absent of a bill at 12.01 a.m. Saturday morning in less than 24 hours.
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A shutdown would be disruptive to the economy with hundreds of thousands of workers furloughed and many government services closed. Schumer, after a bitter debate among Democrats about how to confront Trump, decided this issue wasn't worth the fight.
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Finally, in space, the rich keep getting richer, at least when it comes to moons. Saturn, which already has the most moons of any planet in the solar system, was recently discovered to have over 100 more moons orbiting it than previously known. That brings its total up to 274 moons, way ahead of second place Jupiter with 95 known moons, and Earth has just a measly one.
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With Invesco QQQ, you can rethink what's possible before investing. Consider the fund's investment objectives, risks, charges, and expenses. Visit Invesco.com for a prospectus with this information. Read it carefully before investing. Full disclosure and podcast description. Toasts, not tariffs.
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These new moons around Saturn aren't big, and they certainly don't have cheese. Most are just small space rocks a few miles across. But if they have trackable orbits around their parent body, then yes, they are considered to be moons. Congrats, Saturn, on another five-star recruiting class.
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We just call it Moon.
Morning Brew Daily
Trade War Spills Over Champagne & Meta Tries to Slow Tell-All Book
Maybe that's because I asked this question on my trivia night on Wednesday, and you said Jupiter instead of Saturn. You won't make that mistake again. All right, let's wrap it up there. Thanks so much for starting your morning with us. Have a wonderful Friday and an even better weekend. For any questions, comments, or feedback, send an email to morningbrewdaily at morningbrew.com.
Morning Brew Daily
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We'd love to hear from you. And if you're enjoying the show, share it with a friend, family member, or coworker. Toby, who should everyone listening share it with today?
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Let's roll the credits. Emily Milliron is our executive producer. Raymond Liu is our producer. Olivia Graham and Olivia Lake are our associate producers. Uchenua Ogu is our technical director. Scoops Dardaris is on audio.
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audio hair and makeup says beware the Ides of March which is coming tomorrow Devin Emery is our chief content officer and our shows are production of Morning Brew great show today Neil I wish you all well
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Trade War Spills Over Champagne & Meta Tries to Slow Tell-All Book
That was the plea of the alcohol industry as they found themselves once again as the fall guy in the escalating trade war between the U.S. and Europe. President Trump took aim at the bubbly yesterday morning when he said he'd put a 200 percent tariff on wine, champagnes and other alcoholic products coming out of France and the EU.
Morning Brew Daily
Trade War Spills Over Champagne & Meta Tries to Slow Tell-All Book
The threat was a response to Europe announcing a 50% tariff on Kentucky bourbon and other American goods, which itself was a response to Trump putting a 25% tariff on aluminum and steel from all countries. It's a jab, left hook, then uppercut in the heavyweight economic boxing match of our age. No one on both sides of the Atlantic had particularly nice things to say about each other.
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Trade War Spills Over Champagne & Meta Tries to Slow Tell-All Book
Trump called the EU one of the most hostile and abusive taxing and tariffing authorities in the world, while France's foreign minister replied, We will not give in to threats and will always protect our industries. Caught in the crossfire are alcohol companies who have consistently been targeted in trade spats because they're so core to national identity.
Morning Brew Daily
Trade War Spills Over Champagne & Meta Tries to Slow Tell-All Book
Toby, a 200% tariff means European wines would become two to three times more expensive. Looks like it's California Cab instead of Beaujolais on the menu for the foreseeable future.
Morning Brew Daily
Trade War Spills Over Champagne & Meta Tries to Slow Tell-All Book
Good morning, happy Friday, and happy Pi Day 314, the day we celebrate the most elegant of all irrational numbers. Pi, defined as the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter, has been key to the development of math because it's used to understand anything that involves a circle, sphere, or curve.
Morning Brew Daily
Trade War Spills Over Champagne & Meta Tries to Slow Tell-All Book
Yeah, I mean, these tariffs would be quite high, and we should say they have not gone into effect. Yeah, there might be a negotiating period, and we all just drop them, but we'll see. In 2020, China imposed tariffs as high as 218% on Australian wine. That caused exports to plunge by 90%.
Morning Brew Daily
Trade War Spills Over Champagne & Meta Tries to Slow Tell-All Book
So that's what you're hearing from the wine importing industry, saying we import a lot of wine from France and Italy, the two biggest markets for import. And if 200% tariffs go into effect. We're just not going to import that. And we'll turn to the U.S. wine industry, but they just don't make enough to fill our shelves. So they are expecting a lot of pain.
Morning Brew Daily
Trade War Spills Over Champagne & Meta Tries to Slow Tell-All Book
Meanwhile, after a long period of silence, CEOs of major companies and banks in the United States are speaking up a little bit about what they think about tariffs. It's been a mixed bag. Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan, perhaps the most influential private sector CEO around. had previously said get over it when it came to tariffs. This was after Trump was elected.
Morning Brew Daily
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Now on Wednesday, he said at a conference, uncertainty is not a good thing. Meanwhile, his rival David Solomon at Goldman Sachs said that companies understood what Trump was trying to accomplish, but made a public appeal for more certainty.
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Trade War Spills Over Champagne & Meta Tries to Slow Tell-All Book
Certainty, uncertainty, that is the big word you're hearing out of the C-suite of corporate America about what they are, you know, they think that uncertainty will lead to lower investment. They're trying, you know, in public and in private to lower the temperature with this trade war.
Morning Brew Daily
Trade War Spills Over Champagne & Meta Tries to Slow Tell-All Book
And at 22 trillion known digits and counting, it's also been excellent material for memorization contests. The person who holds the unofficial world record for reciting the most digits of pi from memory is a Japanese guy named Akira Haraguchi who in 2006 counted more than 100,000 digits over 16 hours. That's a lot.
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Trade War Spills Over Champagne & Meta Tries to Slow Tell-All Book
But Streisand effect much? I mean, this book came out on Tuesday and it contains certainly explosive allegations, but we were not going to talk about it at all. Now, here we are on Friday talking about this book because of Meta's big, large scale pushback and its arbitration win here against the author. So you could you could question Meta's PR strategy, but there's no question they've been
Morning Brew Daily
Trade War Spills Over Champagne & Meta Tries to Slow Tell-All Book
On a full court press, they got former and current employees to speak highly of Sandberg, Zuckerberg and Kaplan. They published a blog post as well, pushing back against these allegations. Meta's PR team has been through this so many times before. There have been a number of crises that have engulfed this company over the past decade, from Cambridge Analytica to the election process.
Morning Brew Daily
Trade War Spills Over Champagne & Meta Tries to Slow Tell-All Book
two whistleblower complaints about how they hid harmful effects of Instagram. So Meta has been doing this a long time. You can question their strategy, but they certainly have a strategy.
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Trade War Spills Over Champagne & Meta Tries to Slow Tell-All Book
And if you're curious about the book, I mean, it's been well reviewed by a number of publications, not meta, but, you know, outside reviewers, careless people, the title refers specifically to actually the great Gatsby and the two main characters from that book, Tom and Daisy, who smashed up things and creatures and let other people clean up the mess they had made.
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And that refers to Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg. So there's a little taste of what you can expect if you pick up the book. Welcome to Stock of the Week, Dog of the Week, the segment where Toby and I pick one stock that hit the gym every single day and another that bailed because they were too tired. I won the pre-show pie baking contest, so I get to go first.
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And my winner is Intel because the struggling chipmaker hired a new CEO and investors loved the pick. Shares popped 15% yesterday after Intel selected LipBoot10 to lead it out of the darkness and into the light. Tan is a well-known figure inside the semiconductor industry, having previously been the CEO of Cadence Design Systems, a maker of software used by all the big chip designers.
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He's also a known figure inside Intel because he was on the board of the company until recently. But being the boss of Intel is like being the head coach of the Giants. There is just so much work to do before you can be taken seriously again. Intel whiffed on the AI boom, has spent tons of money building a questionable foundry business, and went through three CEOs in seven years.
Morning Brew Daily
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Once the king of the American chip makers, Intel is now valued at less than 1 30th the size of Nvidia. In a note to employees after his hiring, Tan wrote, there's nothing I dislike more than losing. Toby, can he turn Intel into a winner?
Morning Brew Daily
Trade War Spills Over Champagne & Meta Tries to Slow Tell-All Book
And if not, I mean, he could be the last CEO that Intel ever has because if this turnaround plan fails, then it is likely that Intel will be sold for parts to Vultures. So it could be the turnaround of a once-fallen American giant, similar to what we saw with General Electric, but it also could be the breakup of a once-iconic American giant. Up next, it is our Dog of the Week.
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Trade War Spills Over Champagne & Meta Tries to Slow Tell-All Book
The last two weeks have been pretty wild on the retail front. Every single company that reported earnings said that they saw a pullback in consumer spending because consumers are worried about tariffs. They're still not over inflation. And what has been interesting to hear, what you heard from Kohl's as well, is it's not just that really low-income consumer pulling back.
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And we'll see whether in those teenage years it rolls into events contracts, which is those prediction markets that have become so big recently with Polymarket and Kalshi. Robinhood did roll them out ahead of the presidential election. They tried to do it for the Super Bowl. but the regulators stepped in and said, no, please take that off.
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So they did, but a name like Robinhood getting into events contracts, which is those things where you can just bet on an event to happen outside of sports, like sports gambling, but for just things happening in the world, we'll see if they are able to take these prediction markets mainstream.
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Yeah, my knee is saying the exact same thing. Well, no one's found a way to stop aging yet, but Timeline has created a supplement that can change the way aging feels, helping your body to bounce back faster by giving your cells a refresh.
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And it's super easy to add to your routine. It just takes two soft gels a day to reboot your cells from the inside out.
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More and more, people are looking for ways to chill out without the need for a corkscrew.
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And Delta Beverages is leading the charge as the first THC-infused seltzer to go fully mainstream as an alcohol alternative.
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With over 7,000 positive reviews and counting from actual Delta drinkers, you can get 20% off your first order at drinkdelta.com. That's drinkdelta.com. Welcome to Stock of the Week, Dog of the Week, the segment where Toby and I pick one stock that won best in show and another that needs to work harder for its treat. I won the pre-show harmonizing contest.
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Toby, you were just a little flat on that high G, so I get to go first. And my Stock of the Week is DoorDash, and not just because it came up clutch during my Super Bowl party. The stock is up 5% this week after the delivery giant reported its first full year of profitability ever.
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Revenue grew 25% during DoorDash's fourth quarter, while it posted net income of $141 million, compared to a loss of $150 million a year ago. There was a time that DoorDash being profitable seemed as remote as Toby shooting under par.
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It racked up hundreds of millions of losses, spending gobs on marketing, discounts, operations, and there were plenty of haters saying the economics of food delivery, a savagely competitive sector, would never work out. But DoorDash has managed to build a healthy business and become the dominant player in the U.S.
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restaurant delivery space, commanding two-thirds of the market and distancing itself from Uber Eats and Grubhub. Oh, and the Super Bowl was pretty good for it, too. DoorDash said its delivery drivers earned more than $50 million during the game this year, up from $43 million last year from all you chicken wing ordering freaks.
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And I think with its first profitable year, it is a signal of the maturation of the gig economy, which I mentioned. Few thought that the economics would ultimately work out for these type of companies, but Lyft, also reported its first profitable year ever in 2024. Airbnb and Uber also reported their first profitable years in 2023.
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Next up is Instacart, which is reporting later in this month, and it could report its first profitable year ever. So these companies that rely on independent contractors that have been, you know, embroiled in labor negotiations and criticized for not paying drivers enough, but also just not being profitable enterprises are really turning a corner Here, you know, when were these companies started?
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15 years after they started.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Doubles Down on Tariffs & Robinhood Cashes In On Crypto
Yeah, Reddit relies on Google for so much of its traffic. Fifty five percent of all of its users are what they call logged out users, which are essentially people who come in from a Google search and they aren't logged in to the platform. Those are most of the people that, you know, travel that that scroll through Reddit every single day. At the same time, Google. needs Reddit as well.
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It's paying it $60 million for it to help train its AI large language models. So you have this very interesting relationship between Google and Reddit. At the same time, they are also competing against each other. Reddit is also... has released this AI search tool that, you know, ostensibly would be what Google is for.
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So it looks like Google's little algorithm, Reddit relies so much on Google that Google's tiny algorithm tweaks, which it does a couple times each year, you know, threw a hammer in its earnings and sent its stock tumbling.
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You're trying to find the exit, but just keep hitting dead ends. Then you run into a minotaur, aka hidden fees.
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I wonder what this letter said because previously the DOJ said they wouldn't prosecute TikTok Apple or Google for allowing TikTok on their stores. But they said, yeah, I don't think it's worth it because you have this law passed by Congress which said, don't do that or we will find you a bazillion dollars, $5,000 per user. And then you have the Trump administration that says, don't listen to them.
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So I don't know what this letter said, but apparently it was convincing TikTok is back on these app stores, which is huge for its continued relevance and growth in the United States.
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I just have to say there's only one athlete that has signed up so far for the Enhanced Games, and that's an Australian former Olympic team member, James Magnuson. There's no date. There's no location. I they seem to have enough capital. This is tens of millions of dollars.
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They're not even your spool of string. Wise just eliminates the maze altogether. You can pay in multiple currencies and get paid fast like a local business. No surprise fees, no confusing exchange rates, and no minotaurs. So if you want to avoid getting lost in international payment purgatory, visit wise.com slash business. That's wise.com slash business.
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And another investor is Peter Thiel, which shows you sort of the political person who is a longtime Trump supporter and shows you the political persuasion of the enhanced games. I'm just curious whether this thing is going to happen at all.
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And the International Olympic Committee, the Biden administration, some other organizations have come out and said, this is not a good idea. Not a good idea. Okay. If you get frustrated with your Gen Z employees, you can commiserate with Giancarlo Romano, the alleged mafia don of the Sicilian crime syndicate Casa Nostra, was heard on wiretaps complaining about the sorry state of new recruits.
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He grumbled that these days the caliber of the youngins was quote, miserable, and reminisced about Vito Corleone and the power he wielded in The Godfather, which was based on the Casa Nostra. Romano was heard saying, if you watch The Godfather, the connections he had, he was very influential because of the power that he built at a political level. But us, what can we do?
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Toby, these kids and their obsession with work-life balance.
Morning Brew Daily
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Okay, let's wrap it up there. Thanks so much for starting your morning with us and have a wonderful Friday. Quick programming note, since Monday is President's Day, we will be off the daily news grind, but we taped a special holiday episode and it's a fun one, so be sure to tune in. That is Monday morning.
Morning Brew Daily
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For any questions, comments, or feedback, send an email to morningbrewdaily at morningbrew.com. And if you're enjoying the show, share it with a friend, family member, or coworker. Toby, who should everyone listening share it with today?
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Let's roll the card. credits. Emily Milliron is our executive producer. Raymond Lute is our producer. Olivia Graham is our associate producer. Lonnie Fiscus is our technical director. Garrett Peck is on audio. Hera Makeup is down at the Eagles parade today. Keep it classy. Devin Emery is our chief content officer and our shows of production of Morning Brew.
Morning Brew Daily
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Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, Trump goes full Hammurabi's code, pledging an eye for an eye with reciprocal tariffs on the countries of the world. Then RFK Jr.
Morning Brew Daily
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And the big spreadsheet is coming. I mean, if you think you're good with Excel, the Trump administration probably wants to hire you because this is about to be the most gnarly spreadsheet ever. Imagine going to a tailor and getting a custom suit for every single country. That's exactly what is about to happen. And it's not just...
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tariffs, because say, Toby, I'm trading with you and you have 10% tariffs and I have 2% tariffs. So I say, OK, reciprocal, I will bump my tariffs up to 10%. No, there was a huge Clayton Kershaw level curveball here, which is that it applies to more tariffs. you know, trade barriers than just tariffs.
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They want to go after subsidies, regulations, value added taxes, exchange rates and other factors, all that amount to trade barriers on the United States. And that will go into their calculation that what is deemed reciprocal. So, yeah, this is not going to happen within weeks or months that so they're hidden.
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They're hidden the books and figuring out what a reciprocal relationship actually looks like.
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Yeah, and economists would push back on Trump's reciprocal pushes and say, look, the reason that tariff rates differ is because different companies Different countries are really good at making different things, and we trade with each other so that, you know, one plus one equals three, and a good example of this is coffee. Brazil is great at making coffee beans.
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They are the largest exporter in the world. The United States... not so good at making coffee beans. Our climate is just not acclimated to that. So Brazil has a tariff on green coffee beans of 9% because they have a big domestic industry there. They want to protect it. So they are putting tariffs on coffee beans coming into their country. The United States
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we don't make any coffee beans, so we have 0% tariffs, and that is to have cheaper coffee, because if we put tariffs on coffee, we import all of them, essentially, so it'll just raise prices for consumers. And then on the converse of that, let's look at an industry like pickup trucks. The United States is really good at making pickup trucks.
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If you haven't noticed, just go to your local mall and look at all the cars in the parking lot. Japan makes good cars, but they aren't good at making pickup trucks. So Japan has a 0% tariff on pickup trucks coming from the United States because they want their consumers to have as cheap pickup trucks as possible. The U.S.
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has a tariff of 25% on pickup trucks from Japan because we have a local big industry here that we want to protect. So that's sort of How it's shaken out over the past few decades, this is the reason why we have differing trade and tariff rates, and now it looks like that is going to be shaken up.
Morning Brew Daily
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Love is in the air this Valentine's Day, and whether you're headed on a third date or going strong 20 years with your partner, here's a little tip that could add a lot of intimacy to your relationship. Kiss for six seconds each day.
Morning Brew Daily
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And it could also be a negotiating tactic. The EU has already said that they would lower tariffs on U.S. exports in order to head off this trade war. They have 10% tariffs on U.S. cars right now. They said they would lower that to 2.5% to get ahead of this, and that may be what Trump is ultimately after anyway.
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The United States has a new top health official, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime environmental lawyer and former presidential candidate, was confirmed by the Senate yesterday to become the Secretary of Health and Human Services.
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His anti-establishment agenda to make America healthy again could shake up the $4 trillion healthcare industry and the food sector, areas that are now under his expansive purview. All Democrats voted no on Kennedy, while all Republicans voted yes, except for one, Senator Mitch McConnell.
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McConnell, who survived polio when he was a child, said he couldn't endorse Kennedy over his previous criticisms of vaccines. In my lifetime, McConnell said, I've watched vaccines save millions of lives from vaccines. devastating diseases across America and around the world.
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I will not condone the relitigation of proven cures and neither will millions of Americans who credit their survival and quality of life to scientific miracles. So now that RFK is in charge, despite McConnell's no vote of the nation's vast health and food apparatus, including the FDA and the CDC, what is he going to do? We don't know quite yet, but the business world is bracing for impact.
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In the past, he's railed against big pharma for over-medicating Americans, big food for creating an obesity crisis, and big ag for putting pesticides and seed oils in diets.
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Kissing for six seconds, a method pioneered by clinical psychologists John and Julie Gottman, is the threshold at which your body will release oxytocin, the hormone that calms the fear center of the brain, builds trust in a relationship, and is the same one believed to be responsible for a baby bonding with its mother.
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is now in charge. And the cost to public health. I mean, just as we're talking right now, there is a measles outbreak in West Texas. 24 people have been infected, some have been hospitalized, and all of them were not vaccinated with MMR, the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine.
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And then another interesting angle here for the pharmaceutical company, an agenda item of RFK that has won support across the political spectrum, which We should add many of his ideas have gained byproduct bars and support, you know, going after big food, saying that they put profits over the health of Americans. Bernie Sanders was like, yeah, dude, I 100 percent agree with you.
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One of them, interestingly, for the pharmaceutical industry, is that he wants to ban drugs. TV advertising for pharmaceutical companies. Elon Musk is on board with this. And this would shake up TV and pharma. The pharma industry, you know, anyone who's watched TV recently knows that they spend a ton of money on advertising.
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They are on track to spend over $5 billion alone on national television as advertisements this year. Of five popular nightly news shows on major networks last week, advertisements from the maker of prescription and over-the-counter drugs accounted for half of ad spending. So this is going to run up against a lot of opposition from industry, but it's just another big idea that RFK has.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Doubles Down on Tariffs & Robinhood Cashes In On Crypto
They developed this intentional intimacy concept after studying more than 3,000 couples over 30 years. Don't want to smooch each day? Maybe your lips are a little cracked? Another scientist found that a 20-second hug is pretty much the equivalent.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Doubles Down on Tariffs & Robinhood Cashes In On Crypto
Robinhood has certainly benefited from the hype around crypto when people are trading crypto, when people are trading stocks, when there's volatility. Robinhood and its peers will do well. And it hasn't just been Robinhood. Coinbase, which is the largest crypto trading platform, reported a 130% rise in revenue just yesterday. Fidelity, Schwab are all raking it in.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Doubles Down on Tariffs & Robinhood Cashes In On Crypto
So when Bitcoin goes over $100,000, these companies are going to benefit But you could say that Robinhood has made certain tactful changes that puts it in a really good position to benefit now to the point where its market cap is over $50 billion. It's been releasing a number of financial products, crypto and other, to, you know,
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Doubles Down on Tariffs & Robinhood Cashes In On Crypto
make its platform more sticky, get more people coming over from other platforms, get more money on Robinhood itself, rolled out a subscription offering called Gold, which it said has 2.6 million people right now signed up, paying every single month for advanced features. It also rolled out a credit card that has a very long wait list.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Doubles Down on Tariffs & Robinhood Cashes In On Crypto
So it's been pedal to the metal for Robinhood, and they're not even close to done.
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Can Cooling Inflation Withstand Tariffs? & Prada Buys Versace for $1.4B
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Can Cooling Inflation Withstand Tariffs? & Prada Buys Versace for $1.4B
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Can Cooling Inflation Withstand Tariffs? & Prada Buys Versace for $1.4B
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Can Cooling Inflation Withstand Tariffs? & Prada Buys Versace for $1.4B
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Can Cooling Inflation Withstand Tariffs? & Prada Buys Versace for $1.4B
My dog of the week is pharma stocks. Eli Lilly, Novartis, Merck, AstraZeneca, basically any company you associate with waiting in line at CVS, took a beating this week after President Trump pledged to slap heavy tariffs on imported drugs very shortly. The pharma industry has been a bit of an outsider watching this tariff chaos unfold.
Morning Brew Daily
Can Cooling Inflation Withstand Tariffs? & Prada Buys Versace for $1.4B
Pharmaceutical products were not included in the list of goods that would have been hit with those massive reciprocal tariffs that were later pulled back, which means their stocks weren't crushed alongside everyone else, but they also didn't rally on Wednesday like everyone else. Still, Judgment Day could be coming soon.
Morning Brew Daily
Can Cooling Inflation Withstand Tariffs? & Prada Buys Versace for $1.4B
This week, Trump vowed tariffs at a, quote, level that you haven't really seen before in order to compel companies to bring drug manufacturing back to the U.S., where it has been dwindling. That could do major damage to companies like Eli Lilly, who depend on foreign production for the active ingredients in their blockbuster drugs.
Morning Brew Daily
Can Cooling Inflation Withstand Tariffs? & Prada Buys Versace for $1.4B
The pharmaceutical supply chain is a hyper-complex interconnected web that crisscrosses the globe, one that cannot be easily untangled, and companies are warning that it won't be so easy to simply flip a switch and start making medicines entirely in the U.S. so they won't have higher drug prices for Americans and a hit to R&D budgets should these tariffs go into effect.
Morning Brew Daily
Can Cooling Inflation Withstand Tariffs? & Prada Buys Versace for $1.4B
you know are are worth listening to but do you have any that you would love to see on tour or no but um at tanglewood in western massachusetts near where i grew up john williams who did star wars et jurassic park does every single uh year he does a concert of his movie soundtracks and they play it on the screen not the entire movie but that was just like a core memory from childhood where we would go watch john williams it's just kind of a fantastic experience
Morning Brew Daily
Can Cooling Inflation Withstand Tariffs? & Prada Buys Versace for $1.4B
Ring Pop is blowing up. I mean, year over year, sales are up 7% at the end of last year. It's grown consistently over the last decade. This is the most important brand in the entire bazooka band's portfolio. It is the closest thing. This factory is the closest thing we have to Willy Wonka in real life.
Morning Brew Daily
Can Cooling Inflation Withstand Tariffs? & Prada Buys Versace for $1.4B
They're leaning into this concept of edible entertainment where there's play value, there's viral value. We know that younger kids are moving away from chocolate and more into sour gummies and chewable candies. So Ring Pop, it's been around for 48 years. It may never be as popular as it is right now.
Morning Brew Daily
Can Cooling Inflation Withstand Tariffs? & Prada Buys Versace for $1.4B
I mean, I am a single issue voter. I'm not going to lie. And my one issue that I vote on is shower pressure. It's that important. But yes, this does seem to have a lot of lot wrapped up in just the basic definition of what a showerhead is. Previously, it had been defined in regulations as any plumbing fitting designed to direct water onto a bather.
Morning Brew Daily
Can Cooling Inflation Withstand Tariffs? & Prada Buys Versace for $1.4B
Trump administration came in and then changed that, defined it as an accessory to a supply fitting for spraying water into a bather. You got the you got the difference there. And then Biden changed that and then Trump changed it back. So we have this definitions of water pressure. But honestly, at the end of the day, it probably doesn't make any difference.
Morning Brew Daily
Can Cooling Inflation Withstand Tariffs? & Prada Buys Versace for $1.4B
Appliances Standard Awareness Project says that if your water pressure is weak, it's just because of your home plumbing or there's been lime scale buildup in the showerhead. And also, thank you for showing me the Seinfeld episode about water pressure. Yeah, low flow. You cannot deal with low flow. A number of movies have been spun off from Saturday Night Live.
Morning Brew Daily
Can Cooling Inflation Withstand Tariffs? & Prada Buys Versace for $1.4B
Now, Saturday Night Live is getting its own spinoff in England. A British version of NBC's 50-year-old late-night juggernaut is coming to London, and it'll look a lot like the SNL of the USA, just five hours in the future. Lauren Michaels will be the executive producer, and the show will feature a British cast of comedians performing sketches, as well as rotating hosts and musical guests.
Morning Brew Daily
Can Cooling Inflation Withstand Tariffs? & Prada Buys Versace for $1.4B
It will premiere next year on Sky, the broadcaster owned by Comcast, which is also the parent of NBC. Toby, what do you think? Live from Piccadilly Circus, it's Saturday night.
Morning Brew Daily
Can Cooling Inflation Withstand Tariffs? & Prada Buys Versace for $1.4B
Oh, for sure. There would be a full body panic, an IV line filled with coffee, and a small voice in your head telling you to change your name and flee the country. Well, that's exactly how I feel about taxes right now. Then it's time to pull yourself together and log on to Tax Act. It's a cheat sheet for grown-up responsibilities. They walk you through the whole process step by step.
Morning Brew Daily
Can Cooling Inflation Withstand Tariffs? & Prada Buys Versace for $1.4B
Let's wrap it up there. Thanks so much for starting your morning with us. Have a wonderful Friday and an even better weekend. For any questions, comments, or feedback, send an email to morningbrewdaily at morningbrew.com. Let's roll the credits. Emily Milliron is our executive producer. Raymond Liu is our producer. Our associate producers are Olivia Graham and Olivia Lake.
Morning Brew Daily
Can Cooling Inflation Withstand Tariffs? & Prada Buys Versace for $1.4B
Garrett Peck is on audio. Hera Makeup wears Prada. Devin Emery is our president. And our show is a production of Morning Brew.
Morning Brew Daily
Can Cooling Inflation Withstand Tariffs? & Prada Buys Versace for $1.4B
That's why they've got expert assist. Real tax pros ready to jump in when you need backup. Think of them as the smart kid in class who is also really cool and handsome. Got it. Just like looking in the mirror. All right. Get over yourself and get over your aversion to taxes by heading to Tax Act and getting it done accurately, confidently, and without the stress.
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Can Cooling Inflation Withstand Tariffs? & Prada Buys Versace for $1.4B
Four days away. Well, it was fun while it lasted. After Wednesday's history-making market rally sparked by Trump's reversal on tariffs, stocks resumed tanking on Thursday. The S&P 500 lost 3.5%. The Nasdaq fell even more, 4.3%.
Morning Brew Daily
Can Cooling Inflation Withstand Tariffs? & Prada Buys Versace for $1.4B
and the dow dropped over 1 000 points some big tech names took a bruising tesla lost seven percent meta lost nearly seven percent and nvidia dropped six percent plus the dollar had its worst day since 2022 and those closely watched long-dated bond yields continued their worrying rise and that's because after the euphoria of the 90-day delay for most countries wore off investors realized
Morning Brew Daily
Can Cooling Inflation Withstand Tariffs? & Prada Buys Versace for $1.4B
We still have a monumental trade war on our hands between the world's two largest economies, the United States and China, who are locked in rapidly escalating economic warfare that will have ginormous ripple effects across the globe. President Trump said yesterday that he had raised tariffs on Chinese goods to 145% since taking office.
Morning Brew Daily
Can Cooling Inflation Withstand Tariffs? & Prada Buys Versace for $1.4B
which he blamed on China's unfair trade practices and its retaliation for his initial tariffs. China has retaliated in a big way, nearly matching the U.S. with 125% tariffs on American goods bound for its shores. Neither side is backing down. The rhetoric has only escalated and millions of consumers and businesses will likely confront higher prices and lower growth.
Morning Brew Daily
Can Cooling Inflation Withstand Tariffs? & Prada Buys Versace for $1.4B
Toby, with your permission, I'm going to go ahead and use the U word here, unprecedented. We are watching a nasty divorce unfold between the world's two major powers, whose deep trading relationship has defined the global economy in the 21st century. In this high stakes poker match, both have plenty of cards to play. And if one thing is clear, neither is planning on folding.
Morning Brew Daily
Can Cooling Inflation Withstand Tariffs? & Prada Buys Versace for $1.4B
You do not have my permission, by the way, so bring back that precedent, please.
Morning Brew Daily
Can Cooling Inflation Withstand Tariffs? & Prada Buys Versace for $1.4B
Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, the U.S. and China have begun divorce proceedings, and it's getting really gnarly.
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Can Cooling Inflation Withstand Tariffs? & Prada Buys Versace for $1.4B
Yeah, so let's go over the top line numbers. The US last year imported $438 billion worth of goods from China. We exported $144 billion to China. It's that big trade deficit of more than $200 billion. It's been this way since 2005. It's really irked a lot of U.S. administrations, not just Trump. Biden has also placed tariffs on China. But we haven't seen anything like this, 145 percent U.S.
Morning Brew Daily
Can Cooling Inflation Withstand Tariffs? & Prada Buys Versace for $1.4B
on China, 125 percent on China back to the U.S. That essentially freezes trade. You are not going to be competitive in the marketplace where you have to more than double your price to compete with competitors. And we're already seeing this freezing in action. Yesterday, it was reported by Bloomberg that five below
Morning Brew Daily
Can Cooling Inflation Withstand Tariffs? & Prada Buys Versace for $1.4B
Ask its vendors to just stop sending stuff from China, just saying don't even let it leave the port because we are not going to pay 145 percent on it. You might like five below as a discount retailer. Probably a large majority of what you go and see in their stores is made in China. The ripple effects of this are going to be huge across so many different industries.
Morning Brew Daily
Can Cooling Inflation Withstand Tariffs? & Prada Buys Versace for $1.4B
And we know that tariffs from the U.S. on China will likely raise prices for consumers across electronics, bikes, artificial Christmas trees, etc. But what about trade from the U.S. to China, right? It's not as, in terms of goods, it's not as big as what we import from China. But we did export $143 billion worth of goods, and those are American jobs here in the United States.
Morning Brew Daily
Can Cooling Inflation Withstand Tariffs? & Prada Buys Versace for $1.4B
More than 930,000 jobs were supported by U.S. exports to China in 2022. That's from the U.S.,
Morning Brew Daily
Can Cooling Inflation Withstand Tariffs? & Prada Buys Versace for $1.4B
china business council they they are our third largest export market so they do buy a ton of stuff from us those top exports are mostly soybeans other agricultural products aircraft parts and planes and also crude petroleum so those are the industries to watch that could be affected from those retaliatory tariffs back on the united states
Morning Brew Daily
Can Cooling Inflation Withstand Tariffs? & Prada Buys Versace for $1.4B
fans of twilight i have some cool news for you this week a national tour of the first ever twilight in concert was announced where the film will be shown alongside live musicians on stage who will perform the film score synchronized to the original movie if that's not romantic enough there will be 1 000 candles twinkling on the stage the tour will hit 60 cities and ticket sales begin today toby i know you are a huge twilight guy this feels like your eras tour
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Can Cooling Inflation Withstand Tariffs? & Prada Buys Versace for $1.4B
I will never get bored of you getting hype about inflation. But you're right. I mean, if only investors were as hype as you. I think absent of tariffs, if we saw this report come through, stocks would be through the roof. But as I mentioned, they were in the dumps yesterday. And that's because this tariff threat, this... huge trade war between the U.S.
Morning Brew Daily
Can Cooling Inflation Withstand Tariffs? & Prada Buys Versace for $1.4B
and China is just overshadowing everything else. And it does directly tie into this inflation report, too, because we saw cooling inflation for the first time in five years from this report. But it looks like going forward over the next few months, those price hikes from the trade war with China will be filtering through the economy and, you know,
Morning Brew Daily
Can Cooling Inflation Withstand Tariffs? & Prada Buys Versace for $1.4B
You have pretty much every economist saying that this is the calm before the inflation storm. We're going to get higher inflation out of these tariffs and prices will go back up. So this is essentially a baseline from which we can measure how much tariffs do impact inflation.
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Can Cooling Inflation Withstand Tariffs? & Prada Buys Versace for $1.4B
introduce into everything and i can't believe we've talked for five minutes about inflation without mentioning egg prices so we gotta go there they rose to a fresh record up 5.6 in march from february and that's despite wholesale prices plunging actually they went from eight dollars a dozen in february to three dollars a dozen in march but that just hasn't shown up in the retail aisle yet these supermarkets these grocery stores are just very wary of lowering like changing the sticker out
Morning Brew Daily
Can Cooling Inflation Withstand Tariffs? & Prada Buys Versace for $1.4B
I'm putting a lower sticker in because there's just been so much whiplash. They've been behind the eight ball for so long. So, yes, wholesale price, wholesale egg prices coming way down. Retail prices, not so much. There was a big merger yesterday among Italian fashion brands.
Morning Brew Daily
Can Cooling Inflation Withstand Tariffs? & Prada Buys Versace for $1.4B
You can't afford to buy Prada announced it was buying Versace for one point four billion dollars in the biggest luxury deal of the year. It's an agreement cloaked with symbolism because it shows that Prada is dead set on building a made-in-Italy luxury house that can compete with the French giants like LVMH and Kering.
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Can Cooling Inflation Withstand Tariffs? & Prada Buys Versace for $1.4B
In fact, that's exactly what the current owner of Versace, Capri, was trying to do but in America. The New York-based company bought Versace in 2018 for $2.1 billion in an attempt to create a global luxury fashion group alongside brands Michael Kors and Jimmy Choo. That purchase did not work out as intended.
Morning Brew Daily
Can Cooling Inflation Withstand Tariffs? & Prada Buys Versace for $1.4B
When touting the Versace deal back in 2018, Capri CEO John Idol said his goal was to double the brand's revenue. It's actually gone negative from $843 million in sales in fiscal year 2020 to $813 million last year. So he dumped it for a $700 million loss, and those dreams of rivaling LVMH have been significantly deferred. Could Prada have a better shot?
Morning Brew Daily
Can Cooling Inflation Withstand Tariffs? & Prada Buys Versace for $1.4B
Potentially, because it's kind of on a hot streak right now. The group grew revenue 17% last year, even as the luxury sector overall has hit a downturn. Toby, is it Italy's time to finally challenge France's luxury dominance?
Morning Brew Daily
Can Cooling Inflation Withstand Tariffs? & Prada Buys Versace for $1.4B
There might be a surge of fashion or luxury nationalism in Italy right now after this deal. So Italy accounts for 50% to 55% of global personal luxury goods production. They have all of these such iconic brands. But what happens to these brands like Versace is they get gobbled up by... US, France, Switzerland, these huge luxury companies, and they don't stay in Italy.
Morning Brew Daily
Can Cooling Inflation Withstand Tariffs? & Prada Buys Versace for $1.4B
So Italy does such a good job of having these like big family owned massive brands, but then they just go elsewhere to be scooped up by LVMH. And now Prada is saying, come back to Milan. We want you back to Milan. I mean, these two companies, Prada and Versace, are literally four kilometers apart in Milan.
Morning Brew Daily
Can Cooling Inflation Withstand Tariffs? & Prada Buys Versace for $1.4B
So maybe this homecoming from Italy will be good for Versace because Capri did not do a good job with it. John Idol absolutely tanked this brand. So I'll be watching, and I won't be wearing.
Morning Brew Daily
Can Cooling Inflation Withstand Tariffs? & Prada Buys Versace for $1.4B
I will be watching, but I am interested in this Miu Miu brand because that seems to be exploding. It's the new thing.
Morning Brew Daily
Can Cooling Inflation Withstand Tariffs? & Prada Buys Versace for $1.4B
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Can Cooling Inflation Withstand Tariffs? & Prada Buys Versace for $1.4B
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Canada Pulls US Liquor From Shelves & Can Fries Save Sweetgreen?
I mean, it's International Women's Day tomorrow, and I think this launch was timed. For that, because this is Sweetgreen's attempt to complete the girl dinner, which has gone viral on social media. It includes Caesar salad, fries, and a Diet Coke. It has a Caesar salad, it has the Coke, and it needed fries.
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Canada Pulls US Liquor From Shelves & Can Fries Save Sweetgreen?
It's just another instance of a company noticing a trend on social media and hopping on it with a product introduction.
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Canada Pulls US Liquor From Shelves & Can Fries Save Sweetgreen?
My dog of the week is management consulting firms, which are currently getting a taste of their own medicine by the federal government. Firms like Booz Allen Hamilton and EY that are hired to streamline operations are themselves at risk of being streamlined away as Doge reviews government contracts with consultants and aims to rip up the ones that aren't providing value.
Morning Brew Daily
Canada Pulls US Liquor From Shelves & Can Fries Save Sweetgreen?
It sent a chill through the sector on Wall Street. Shares of Booz Allen Hamilton, which relies on the public sector for 98% of its $11 billion in revenue, virtually all of its business, have plunged more than 40% since the election of Donald Trump in November. Accenture, which gets about 8% of its total sales from the U.S. government, is down about 14% over the past month.
Morning Brew Daily
Canada Pulls US Liquor From Shelves & Can Fries Save Sweetgreen?
Whether they can stop the bleeding may depend on high stakes reports due today. The General Services Administration, the group that oversees procurement for the U.S. government, asked all federal agencies to justify contracts from the 10 highest paid consulting firms with a deadline of Friday, March 7th. Dubbed Defend the Spend, they're being asked to identify which projects are mission critical
Morning Brew Daily
Canada Pulls US Liquor From Shelves & Can Fries Save Sweetgreen?
and others that could be canceled with minimal collateral damage. Toby, it is a bit ironic for consultants to be asked, what would you say you do here?
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Canada Pulls US Liquor From Shelves & Can Fries Save Sweetgreen?
There is perhaps a bull case to be made, though, because the federal government is trying to streamline systems, trying to update its technology. And as they cut workers, they might look for contractors to fill the void. So some of these consulting firms say, hey, this is literally our bread and butter. So they're weathering the damage right now.
Morning Brew Daily
Canada Pulls US Liquor From Shelves & Can Fries Save Sweetgreen?
And hopefully, not hopefully for them, they will come back stronger. Let's sprint to the finish with some final headlines. Walgreens, nearly 100-year run as a public company, is winding down. The pharmacy chain agreed to be taken private by Sycamore Partners in one of the biggest leveraged buyouts in recent memory, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Morning Brew Daily
Canada Pulls US Liquor From Shelves & Can Fries Save Sweetgreen?
The last decade has not been kind for the place you buy everything from cold medicine to candy. Valued at more than $100 billion in 2015, this deal gives Walgreens an equity value of around 10%. billion, which highlights the challenges the company has faced as it's been squeezed by Amazon on the retail side and pharmacy benefit managers on the pharmacy side.
Morning Brew Daily
Canada Pulls US Liquor From Shelves & Can Fries Save Sweetgreen?
The hope is that by staying out of the limelight of the public markets, Walgreens can better execute a much-needed turnaround.
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Canada Pulls US Liquor From Shelves & Can Fries Save Sweetgreen?
Hope you're not planning on taking a train today from Paris to London because all Eurostar services between the two cities and others across Europe have been canceled for the remainder of Friday. Why? Because overnight, workers discovered an unexploded bomb from World War II near a major station in Paris.
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Canada Pulls US Liquor From Shelves & Can Fries Save Sweetgreen?
According to the BBC, it's not a particularly shocking discovery since British and American bombers frequently targeted rail yards in Paris and other major cities to disrupt the Germans in the fight over France. But it is pure chaos out there on the French rail lines today until they dismantle it.
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Canada Pulls US Liquor From Shelves & Can Fries Save Sweetgreen?
Yeah, pretty remarkable turn of events for airlines. They lost a ton of business and corporate travelers who made up the vast majority of their profits pre-pandemic. They were like, what are we going to do now? And then all of a sudden, these rich Americans come along and saying, hey, those first class seats, I want those. Screw economy.
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Canada Pulls US Liquor From Shelves & Can Fries Save Sweetgreen?
And so they've found a really remarkable revenue and profit source in rich Americans.
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Canada Pulls US Liquor From Shelves & Can Fries Save Sweetgreen?
This is the most anti-Huga thing I could think of. I think it is not cozy to send mail electronically, but it's just the state of the world that we live in. Letter numbers in Denmark have fallen since 2000 from 1.4 billion to 110 million last year. And then they've declined at 30 percent since then. So people aren't sending mail.
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Canada Pulls US Liquor From Shelves & Can Fries Save Sweetgreen?
And you just have to wonder around the world when these state operated postal services are going to stop sending mail after Denmark.
Morning Brew Daily
Canada Pulls US Liquor From Shelves & Can Fries Save Sweetgreen?
It's finally here at long last, the next Game of Thrones book. No, just kidding. It's the monthly jobs report due out this morning at 8.30 a.m. Eastern, giving us a key snapshot of America's employment situation in February. And while all jobs reports are big deals, this This one feels like a big freaking deal for a few reasons.
Morning Brew Daily
Canada Pulls US Liquor From Shelves & Can Fries Save Sweetgreen?
Let's wrap it up there. Thanks so much for starting your morning with us and have a wonderful Friday. For any questions, comments, or feedback, send an email to morningbrewdaily at morningbrew.com. And if you're enjoying the show, share it with a friend, family member, or coworker. Toby, who should everyone listening share it with today?
Morning Brew Daily
Canada Pulls US Liquor From Shelves & Can Fries Save Sweetgreen?
Let's roll the credits. Emily Milliron is our executive producer. Raymond Liu is our producer. Olivia Graham is our associate producer. Uchenua Ogu is our technical director. Scoop Stardaris is on audio. Hair and Makeup is listening to the new Lady Gaga album on repeat. Devin Emery is our chief content officer. And our show is a production of Morning Brew.
Morning Brew Daily
Canada Pulls US Liquor From Shelves & Can Fries Save Sweetgreen?
First, it is the first jobs report since President Trump and Doge have taken a chainsaw to the federal workforce in a bid to slash the size of the federal government. Second, a slew of recent surveys have raised alarms over slowing economic growth, prompting investors and analysts to up their bets on an upcoming recession and sell off stocks.
Morning Brew Daily
Canada Pulls US Liquor From Shelves & Can Fries Save Sweetgreen?
The jobs report is one of the first pieces of hard data that could calm those fears or jack them up even more. The hints we've been getting have not been pretty. In February, U.S. job cuts hit their highest level in almost five years, according to an analysis released yesterday from Challenger, Gray & Christmas.
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Canada Pulls US Liquor From Shelves & Can Fries Save Sweetgreen?
Layoffs were up 245% from January and marked the highest total for the month of February since 2009. The firm said that more than one-third of the total layoffs were attributed to the headcount reduction efforts of Doge, totaling 62,000 job cuts across 17 agencies.
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Canada Pulls US Liquor From Shelves & Can Fries Save Sweetgreen?
But, Dobie, the government jobs report due out in a couple of hours is the gold standard for providing the most detailed picture of the labor market in America. What should we be expecting?
Morning Brew Daily
Canada Pulls US Liquor From Shelves & Can Fries Save Sweetgreen?
Good morning for your daily show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, the first jobs report is being released since Doge began its drive to slash the federal workforce.
Morning Brew Daily
Canada Pulls US Liquor From Shelves & Can Fries Save Sweetgreen?
But how big those ripple effects would be, will be is still an open question. Federal employment while it employs a lot of people, millions of people, it still accounts for less than 2% of us employment. So even when the job cuts from the federal government are factored in, in future jobs reports in March and April and all those months after that, uh,
Morning Brew Daily
Canada Pulls US Liquor From Shelves & Can Fries Save Sweetgreen?
It will be unclear just how big the size of the impact will be. If it's just limited to the federal workforce, then it probably won't be a huge impact on the jobs market. If it ripples beyond that into the private sector, say people aren't going into their jobs in D.C.
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Canada Pulls US Liquor From Shelves & Can Fries Save Sweetgreen?
anymore, so the people who, all the people who work servicing them from the lunch counters or transportation, things like that, we'll see how big those ripple effects will be going forward.
Morning Brew Daily
Canada Pulls US Liquor From Shelves & Can Fries Save Sweetgreen?
positions here. So jobs report due out 8.30 a.m. Eastern. We're expecting strong job gains, 160,000 low unemployment. So perhaps this will be sort of the baseline or snapshot of what the jobs picture looks like before sort of the shakeup that's been happening in Washington. And like I said, there's been other indicators indicating a economic slowdown.
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Canada Pulls US Liquor From Shelves & Can Fries Save Sweetgreen?
So the jobs report will be very closely watched at a time when the stock market is teetering.
Morning Brew Daily
Canada Pulls US Liquor From Shelves & Can Fries Save Sweetgreen?
It's going to be the last Friday you try to beat the darkness when leaving work because daylight saving time starts this weekend at 2 a.m. On Sunday, clocks will spring forward, which means you will lose an hour of sleep, but also gain an extra hour of daylight in the evenings. For instance, here in New York City, the sun will set tonight at 555 p.m., but on Sunday it'll set at 657 p.m.
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Canada Pulls US Liquor From Shelves & Can Fries Save Sweetgreen?
No, spirits and alcohol has long been a political football in trade wars, even if it doesn't account for a huge amount of sales. And, you know, Jack Daniels only does one percent of its total revenue in Canada.
Morning Brew Daily
Canada Pulls US Liquor From Shelves & Can Fries Save Sweetgreen?
It's not going to make a huge impact, but it is more symbolic and is one of the levers that governments can pull to show their displeasure with what's going on in terms of tariffs and trade wars, because
Morning Brew Daily
Canada Pulls US Liquor From Shelves & Can Fries Save Sweetgreen?
Canada government can't tip can't tell a random retailer to say take that product off your shelf But it does control the liquor stores And so it's using that particular tool that particular control that it does have it has leverage there And that's what it's using to kind of send a message Saying you should buy Canadian and don't buy anything from America because we have the power to take it off the shelves.
Morning Brew Daily
Canada Pulls US Liquor From Shelves & Can Fries Save Sweetgreen?
Meanwhile, we got some more updates on the trade war yesterday. President Trump delayed tariffs on Canada and Mexico for goods covered by USMCA, which is the free trade agreement he brokered in 2020 with those countries. So many goods are now being pushed back financially. till April, along with the automakers delay, which we got earlier this week.
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Canada Pulls US Liquor From Shelves & Can Fries Save Sweetgreen?
Still, a White House official said about 50 percent of U.S. imports from Mexico and 62 percent from Canada may still face tariffs under the new regime. And Justin Trudeau, prime minister of Canada, had a call with Trump and said that He can confirm after that what he called a colorful call. There will continue to be a trade war for the foreseeable future.
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Canada Pulls US Liquor From Shelves & Can Fries Save Sweetgreen?
So you saw stocks sell off in a big way yesterday. After these tariff moves, the Nasdaq closed at a correction, which is 10 percent down from its recent peak. Let's move on.
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Canada Pulls US Liquor From Shelves & Can Fries Save Sweetgreen?
This is absolutely huge for lazy people like me who held out strong on changing their microwave clock since daylight saving time ended in November. I've been living an hour ahead of you all for months, but soon we'll be synced up again.
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Canada Pulls US Liquor From Shelves & Can Fries Save Sweetgreen?
It's really hard to land on the moon. When you're trying to land back on Earth from going to space, Earth has an atmosphere which serves as a natural braking system. Apollo 11 re-entered Earth's atmosphere at almost 24,000 miles per hour. and splashed down at about 15 miles per hour. It was helped by parachutes and that drag of the atmosphere. That does not exist on the moon.
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Canada Pulls US Liquor From Shelves & Can Fries Save Sweetgreen?
So intuitive machines had to slow down this lunar lander from 25,000 miles per hour to 6 miles per hour using no humans and just jet engines. That is hard. Firefly pulled it off. It has not exactly pulled it off. It hasn't really stuck the landing like Simone Biles in space.
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Canada Pulls US Liquor From Shelves & Can Fries Save Sweetgreen?
two different attempts, but it just shows how hard it is to land on the moon with a robotic lunar lander in the absence of atmosphere. It's not like it's rocket science, Neil.
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Canada Pulls US Liquor From Shelves & Can Fries Save Sweetgreen?
So one day as I was scrolling the web, I got hit with an ad for patio furniture. Dude, I live in a small New York City apartment, not relevant. So if that's happening to me, imagine the incorrect spaces your B2B marketing could be ending up. If you want to reach the right professionals, start with LinkedIn ads.
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Canada Pulls US Liquor From Shelves & Can Fries Save Sweetgreen?
LinkedIn has grown to a network of over 1 billion professionals and 130 million decision makers. And in this vast pool of potential, you can target your buyers by job title, industry, company role, skills, seniority, and more if you can believe it. If you think you're wasting budget on the wrong audiences, stop that.
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Canada Pulls US Liquor From Shelves & Can Fries Save Sweetgreen?
First and foremost, and start targeting the right people with LinkedIn ads instead. LinkedIn will even give you a $100 credit on your next campaign so you can take LinkedIn ads for a spin. Just go to LinkedIn.com slash MBD. That's LinkedIn.com slash MBD. Terms and conditions apply only on LinkedIn ads.
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Canada Pulls US Liquor From Shelves & Can Fries Save Sweetgreen?
In my experience, a few things stand out like leading by example, taking risks, and being passionate.
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Canada Pulls US Liquor From Shelves & Can Fries Save Sweetgreen?
Explore the Range Rover Sport at rangerover.com slash US slash sport. That's rangerover.com slash US slash sport. It's Friday, and you know what that means. Pushing off emails and Stock of the Week, Dog of the Week, the segment where Toby and I pick one stock that landed on the moon and another that can't stay on its legs.
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Canada Pulls US Liquor From Shelves & Can Fries Save Sweetgreen?
Toby, you won the pre-show burping the ABC's competition, so you get to go first. Very gassy over here.
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Amazon Dethroning Walmart? & DOGE Hits Snag in Treasury Overhaul
It's certainly a pattern. Earlier this week, Salesforce also announced it was going to lay off 1,000 workers and hire a few in other positions, and that position is salespeople for AI. It's AI Dropbox did this last year as well. The CEO drew Houston said it was a really tough decision to let go of a lot of people and then make room for investments in AI.
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Amazon Dethroning Walmart? & DOGE Hits Snag in Treasury Overhaul
So it's all about making space for investments in AI. A lot of companies, we just talked about Amazon spending a hundred billion dollars. A lot of these companies don't have, uh, infinite resources like Amazon does to, you know, spend $100 billion. So they need to make cuts elsewhere. And those cuts are human workers.
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Amazon Dethroning Walmart? & DOGE Hits Snag in Treasury Overhaul
The fears that many had about AI replacing human work and leading to a lower reduction in the amount of humans that need to work at these tech companies appears to be coming true in 2025.
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Figures I get dog of the week because this one strikes at the heart of my identity. A millennial who grew up in the suburbs and wanted to dress like a skateboarder.
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Quicksilver, Billabong, and Volcom, popular outdoor clothing brands for skaters, surfers, and the wannabes, are closing virtually all of their stores across the country after their parent company, Liberated Brands, filed for bankruptcy. The silver lining, or I should say Quicksilver lining, you can still buy those clothes.
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Amazon Dethroning Walmart? & DOGE Hits Snag in Treasury Overhaul
The brands will continue to make them just under a license from a different company called But it won't be from their namestake stores. More than 120 of the locations will close in the coming weeks. What went wrong at Billabong?
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Amazon Dethroning Walmart? & DOGE Hits Snag in Treasury Overhaul
Liberated CEO blamed macro forces like a rise in interest rates, inflation and supply chain delays, while also criticizing the fast fashion industry for allowing shoppers to, quote, cheaply, quickly and easily order low quality clothing garments. Toby, a sad day. Quicksilver was always a must stop on the high school mall date.
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Amazon Dethroning Walmart? & DOGE Hits Snag in Treasury Overhaul
Okay, Super Bowl 59 between the Chiefs and the Eagles is two days away. Here is a preview of the biggest business storylines around the game as you apply layers one and two of the dip. Besides Patrick Mahomes and Saquon Barkley, the star of this year's Super Bowl will be the Caesars Superdome in New Orleans, which is celebrating its 50th year in existence as the home of the Saints.
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This is a remarkable building that pound for pound may have hosted more legendary sports moments than any other venue in the United States. Eight Super Bowls, counting this one, the most of any stadium. Final fours, college football championships, heavyweight boxing bouts. It's where college freshman Michael Jordan lifted North Carolina to a title over Georgetown.
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And Tom Brady became a household name with his first improbable Super Bowl win over the Rams. But time has run its course and New Orleans may be seating its crown as the top host for championships to Las Vegas, which hosted last year's Super Bowl and has emerged as the new epicenter for live sports events.
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Amazon Dethroning Walmart? & DOGE Hits Snag in Treasury Overhaul
I will absolutely try it this weekend.
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Amazon Dethroning Walmart? & DOGE Hits Snag in Treasury Overhaul
So in a way, the Super Bowl feels like both a celebration of the Superdome, an absolute space age icon, but also a retirement party from heavy hosting duties. It's the fifth oldest home field in the NFL and the last remaining of its kind.
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Yeah, after the last year's Super Bowl, Roger Goodell was like, you can bet we're coming back to Las Vegas. But the Superdome is a very important part of New Orleans and New Orleans history. It's called, quote, the city's living room because it doesn't just host Saints games, but it hosts conventions, weddings, proms, hundreds of other events. It had the RNC when Pope John Paul II came.
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He was at the Superdome. And then, of course, you can't talk about the Superdome without its role in politics. Hurricane Katrina after that hurricane wiped out parts of the city. It served as a refuge for thousands of people. And perhaps the most iconic moment in the Superdome history was the first Saints game after Katrina when there was a blocked punt and the Saints romped at home.
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Amazon Dethroning Walmart? & DOGE Hits Snag in Treasury Overhaul
And just this feeling of celebration and coming together for that city just still gives me goosebumps.
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Amazon Dethroning Walmart? & DOGE Hits Snag in Treasury Overhaul
Good God, how many pairs of pants did you go through?
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Amazon Dethroning Walmart? & DOGE Hits Snag in Treasury Overhaul
Yeah, the NFL certainly made a lot of headlines this week with the end zone change and also Roger Goodell's statements around DEI at a time when many Fortune 500 companies are backing away from DEI. It's very interesting that the NFL has changed. put its foot in the ground and said, no, this is very important to us.
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Goodell said, quote, we got into diversity efforts because we felt it was the right thing for the National Football League, and we're going to continue to do those efforts. That hasn't stopped criticism from being late on the NFL for its coaching decisions. This year, seven of the 32 NFL teams have a—
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And if you're a business owner going through change, instead of just wearing longer pants, you have to upgrade your software and build out new systems.
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Amazon Dethroning Walmart? & DOGE Hits Snag in Treasury Overhaul
have a head coach that are people of color, which critics say is not close to enough considering the amount of black and other people of color athletes who are participating in the NFL. And then in terms of the pipeline to head coaching positions, there were zero offensive coordinators, people of color in the NFL this year. The offensive coordinator is the stepping stone to becoming a head coach.
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Amazon Dethroning Walmart? & DOGE Hits Snag in Treasury Overhaul
So you can say NFL is talking the talk. They've had this Rooney role since 2003, but it's not necessarily walking the walk. Moving on, this year's Super Bowl is also a feast for people who dabble in conspiracies. A number of unexplained mysteries surround the game, making it fertile ground for unfounded but certainly fun speculation that the NFL follows a predetermined script.
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First, the Super Bowl logo. For the third time in four years, the colors on the Super Bowl logo strangely appear to predict the teams that will be playing in the game, despite the logo being released many months before. The 2025 Super Bowl logo, which was revealed last February, has red and green colors mirroring the Chiefs and the Eagles colors. This theory started back in 2022.
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Amazon Dethroning Walmart? & DOGE Hits Snag in Treasury Overhaul
when the logo included orange and yellow matching the Bengals and Rams who matched up in that Super Bowl. The next year, it was red and green for the Eagles and Chiefs, and now it is again for their rematch. The other conspiracy is a little more serious, and it suggests that the NFL and its refs are in the bag for the Chiefs, rigging the league so that they can win three championships in a row.
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Amazon Dethroning Walmart? & DOGE Hits Snag in Treasury Overhaul
That's why you need a business account that can grow alongside you. Wise helps you save money, time, and stress on making payments and getting paid internationally.
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Amazon Dethroning Walmart? & DOGE Hits Snag in Treasury Overhaul
And of course, there's some Taylor Swift voodoo thrown in since she's dating Chiefs tight end Travis Kelsey. People noted how she may have sprinkled fairy dust on the Superdome when she played Error's Tour shows there last year, manifesting her boyfriend to be competing in the game months later. Toby, you buying any of these?
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I'm going over because John Batiste is probably going to bring out his piano. And I watched the tape. He did the all-star game for the NBA in 2017. He had the piano. He does a little flourishing. That clocked in right at about 120 seconds. But this is a much bigger stage. And when you're on the big stage, you got to soak it up. And there has been a trend of longer national anthems.
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Seven of the last 11 performances have been 120 seconds or more. So I think it's not going to come in that much over 120.5 at the over under. But I'm still going over because John Batiste, he's going to he's going to tickle the keys. It's going to be great.
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I think blue is the way to go. Remember, this is the $375 million question because Tom Brady was signed to that massive deal. This is his coming out party as a broadcaster. He has a minority ownership in the Raiders, which he certainly doesn't want to draw attention to. So you can basically eliminate gray and silver. No tie, you know, no. This is the Super Bowl.
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Red is also eliminated with green as well because you don't want to see like you're a homer for the Chiefs or the Eagles. So I'm going blue. It's going to be either blue or black.
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Amazon Dethroning Walmart? & DOGE Hits Snag in Treasury Overhaul
I'm going chalk with Humble as well. I'm boring. Sorry. That's what I think is going to happen. I'm sorry. And then the last song I think certainly will be Not Like Us. Maybe the more interesting bet is how many Drake diss tracks will be on there. At least two is minus 420. So the betting Las Vegas definitely certainly thinks that there will be at least two Drake diss tracks.
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Amazon Dethroning Walmart? & DOGE Hits Snag in Treasury Overhaul
So pour one out for Drake. It's going to be hard for him.
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Amazon Dethroning Walmart? & DOGE Hits Snag in Treasury Overhaul
Yeah, it's very interesting. I did not know that purple was the last two. That's what the Chiefs also won the last two, so I guess they've opted for purple. What I'm going to go with is clear. So clear has good odds at plus 900, and it had probably the most epic run of any Gatorade flavor ever. 2005 to 2008, those four Super Bowls, it was clear or water, and I think we're in a nostalgic moment.
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Amazon Dethroning Walmart? & DOGE Hits Snag in Treasury Overhaul
We're going back to clear.
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Amazon Dethroning Walmart? & DOGE Hits Snag in Treasury Overhaul
It's a flavor. I don't know exactly what flavor, but you see Gatorade. There's a few flavors that are clear, and I think we're going with that.
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Amazon Dethroning Walmart? & DOGE Hits Snag in Treasury Overhaul
I think he's classier than to do an on-field proposal. Plus, they're going to lose. So, you know, it wouldn't be it wouldn't be the right moment for them. OK, let's wrap it up there. Thanks so much for starting your morning with us and have a wonderful Friday and an even better weekend. For any questions, comments or feedback, send an email to Morning Brew Daily at Morning Brew dot com.
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Amazon Dethroning Walmart? & DOGE Hits Snag in Treasury Overhaul
And if you're enjoying the show, share it with a friend, family member or co-worker. Don't worry if you're lacking ideas. Tobia has been brainstorming all morning and he's got instructions for you.
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All right, let's roll the credits. Emily Milliron is our executive producer. Raymond Liu is our producer. Olivia Graham is our associate producer. Uchenua Ogu is our technical director. Scoop Stardaris is on audio. Hair and Makeup is going on the record. Eagles 27, Chiefs 23. Devin Emery is our Chief Content Officer and our show is a production of Morning Brew.
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Amazon Dethroning Walmart? & DOGE Hits Snag in Treasury Overhaul
No, Amazon and Walmart. This is certainly one of the most interesting rivalries in business. If you look at Amazon's ace in the hole, as you said, it is Amazon Web Services. Walmart has nothing like it. This is a hundred billion dollar business for Amazon, and it's growing double digits every single quarter. Last quarter, it grew 19 percent. Amazon also has an
Morning Brew Daily
Amazon Dethroning Walmart? & DOGE Hits Snag in Treasury Overhaul
Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, from conspiracy theories to the color of the Gatorade shower, everything you need to know ahead of Super Bowl 59.
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Amazon Dethroning Walmart? & DOGE Hits Snag in Treasury Overhaul
advertising business that's growing 18%. So if you look at where the growth is for Amazon, it is in advertising and it is AWS and it is also in AI, something Walmart doesn't have. Amazon said it was going to spend $100 billion on AI, mostly on data centers and things like that over the next fiscal year. So very interesting rivalry. Amazon has a few more cards to play, especially in the tech
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Amazon Dethroning Walmart? & DOGE Hits Snag in Treasury Overhaul
And that's why its market cap is so much bigger than Walmart's. Walmart is mostly a pure play retailer still. And its market cap, despite a very good year last year on the stock market, is still around $800 billion. Amazon has zoomed past $2 trillion.
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Amazon Dethroning Walmart? & DOGE Hits Snag in Treasury Overhaul
Yeah, and that was the common theme across big tech earnings. Amazon was the last big tech company of the Magnificent Seven outside of NVIDIA to report earnings over the past two weeks. And they sounded a very similar tone. Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon and Meta, they all said we are going to spend not only the same on CapEx for AI, we're going to spend even more.
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Amazon Dethroning Walmart? & DOGE Hits Snag in Treasury Overhaul
Their combined capital expenditure forecast said are totaling $320 billion. That's up from $246 billion in 2024, and that's up from $150 billion in 2023. They all said the same thing. We're going to continue to spend, never mind DeepSeek. So that DeepSeek revelation has not changed plans whatsoever, and we have NVIDIA coming up in the next few weeks, and we'll see what they say.
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Amazon Dethroning Walmart? & DOGE Hits Snag in Treasury Overhaul
The blizzard of news keeps raging from Washington, D.C., and we're here to shovel it all up for you. First, that deadline for federal workers to take deferred resignations has been extended past yesterday's midnight cutoff by a federal judge who ordered a hearing on Monday to determine whether he'll block it indefinitely while litigation proceeds.
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Amazon Dethroning Walmart? & DOGE Hits Snag in Treasury Overhaul
That litigation came from the American Federation of Government Employees and Other Unions, who in lawsuits alleged that what the government was doing, offering employees the opportunity to resign while still being paid for eight months, was illegal. Bloomberg reported that about 50,000 people have so far taken the deal, which is about 2.5% of the federal workforce.
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Amazon Dethroning Walmart? & DOGE Hits Snag in Treasury Overhaul
The Trump administration was targeting 5% to 10% of workers to opt in. Toby, the fate of federal workers now shifts to the courts, but they remain in a state of limbo.
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Amazon Dethroning Walmart? & DOGE Hits Snag in Treasury Overhaul
Good morning and happy Friday. Look, if you're spending an entire paycheck on a carton of eggs these days, you might as well prepare them to perfection. And scientists now say they've discovered the recipe to cook the best possible boiled egg. It'll just take you 32 minutes.
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Amazon Dethroning Walmart? & DOGE Hits Snag in Treasury Overhaul
Right, but the thing is, they might not wait for these people to take resignations before issuing sweeping layoffs. Reports out yesterday indicated that the Trump administration was preparing an order that would cut thousands of health workers. USAID also is reportedly going to be essentially gutted from more than 10,000 employees worldwide to about 290.
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Amazon Dethroning Walmart? & DOGE Hits Snag in Treasury Overhaul
We already have reports of small businesses and contractors laying off workers across the economy. And of course, that is in focus because we have the jobs report coming out in two and a half hours at eight thirty a.m. Eastern.
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Amazon Dethroning Walmart? & DOGE Hits Snag in Treasury Overhaul
That won't show all of the chaos that's been enveloping Washington and federal workers and everyone, all the seven point five million employees across the country connected to the federal government. But it'll be you know, it'll be a very important jobs report. And then the next one for February will be even more important.
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Amazon Dethroning Walmart? & DOGE Hits Snag in Treasury Overhaul
Okay, let's move across town to the Treasury Department, where another court has curbed Elon Musk's access to the government payment system that distributes trillions of dollars each year.
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Amazon Dethroning Walmart? & DOGE Hits Snag in Treasury Overhaul
Following a legal challenge over Musk and Doge's reported entry into that system, a federal judge barred the US Treasury from handing over data from its payments portal to outsiders and limited access to two Doge staffers who can see Treasury Department data, quote, as needed and on a read-only basis. Then, mere hours after that court ruling,
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Amazon Dethroning Walmart? & DOGE Hits Snag in Treasury Overhaul
One of those two Doge staffers who was granted access to Treasury data, 25-year-old Marco Elez, resigned after The Wall Street Journal found links to a deleted social media account that supported racism and eugenics. In one post, the account wrote, just for the record, I was racist before it was cool. What does Scott Besant, the newly confirmed Treasury Secretary, think about all this?
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Amazon Dethroning Walmart? & DOGE Hits Snag in Treasury Overhaul
In an interview with Bloomberg, he defended Musk's work in his department and said he and Elon are, quote, completely aligned in terms of cutting waste and increasing accountability and transparency for the American people. He described Doge employees as highly trained professionals and not some roving band running around doing things.
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Amazon Dethroning Walmart? & DOGE Hits Snag in Treasury Overhaul
In a study published Thursday in the journal Communications Engineering, the scientists recommend putting eggs in a steamer basket, then transferring them between two bowls of water every two minutes. one boiling and the other set to 86 degrees Fahrenheit, lukewarm, until 32 minutes are up. That process, known as periodic cooking, yields a velvety yolk and a meaty but soft white.
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Amazon Dethroning Walmart? & DOGE Hits Snag in Treasury Overhaul
Yeah, and that's why I think U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Besant was saying, everything's kosher here. I'm overseeing everything. I'm in control in that interview with Bloomberg. But again, another push by the Trump administration and Doge that has been sued and blocked, at least temporarily, by the courts.
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Amazon Dethroning Walmart? & DOGE Hits Snag in Treasury Overhaul
There will be a more formal hearing in a few days to figure out what's going on over there. Finally, a spat is escalating over the Panama Canal, one of the world's key shipping routes, after Panama's president accused the U.S. of lying about a deal over American military ships. Here's what's going down. On Wednesday, the U.S. State Department posted on X that Panama agreed to allow U.S.
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Amazon Dethroning Walmart? & DOGE Hits Snag in Treasury Overhaul
government ships to access the waterway without paying a toll. Remember, Secretary of State Marco Rubio traveled to Panama over the weekend as part of the Trump administration's push to assert more control over the canal and get China to back off. But yesterday, Panamanian President Jose Raul Molino said, huh? We never said your ships could pass through for free.
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Or in his words, I am incredibly surprised by yesterday's statement. They're making an important institutional statement from the entity that governs U.S. foreign policy based on a falsity. And that's intolerable. After the blowback, Rubio said, OK, maybe you're right. At a press conference, he said that the U.S.
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Amazon Dethroning Walmart? & DOGE Hits Snag in Treasury Overhaul
expects Panama to remove the fees, but acknowledged that Panama has a process of laws and procedures that they need to follow.
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Amazon Dethroning Walmart? & DOGE Hits Snag in Treasury Overhaul
VioBank's money market savings account offers exactly that. Voted as the best money market account by GoBankingRates, its interest rate paid is 10 times the national average.
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Toby, my deviled eggs for the Super Bowl party are about to blow people's minds.
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Fund your account in five minutes or less, and you could earn up to $10,000. Yes, 10K, when you transfer your old investment portfolio. Start at public.com slash morningbrew. That's public.com slash morningbrew. Paid for by Public Investing. Full disclosures in podcast description.
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What Goods Will Be Impacted By Tariffs & Amazon Buying TikTok?
You said it wasn't tariff news, but in a way it is because everything ties back into tariffs now. Trump said that he would be willing to lower tariffs on China. Right now they're at 54% if Beijing would approve a deal and- it's a very interesting quirk of this acquisition or buying process because how do you buy a company that's not for sale? China does not want to sell this app.
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What Goods Will Be Impacted By Tariffs & Amazon Buying TikTok?
ByteDance does not want to sell this app. They're trying to force this to happen. Maybe they can use tariffs as a negotiating tool. And then you have the host of major investors in the United States like Blackstone, Andreessen, Horowitz, Silverlake, these big PE firms that appear to be able to step in to buy TikTok should there be a spin out. But just a quick recap of how we got here.
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What Goods Will Be Impacted By Tariffs & Amazon Buying TikTok?
I mean, this has been, years in the making, and it could be extended even further. But last year, a bipartisan group of lawmakers in Congress passed this ban or sell law for TikTok, where you either had to, you know, the bike dance either had to sell TikTok to a U.S. owner or it would go dark. In the United States, the deadline was January 20th, the day after Trump was inaugurated.
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What Goods Will Be Impacted By Tariffs & Amazon Buying TikTok?
Trump extended the deadline for 75 days as soon as he was in office. And so that's kind of where we're at. The 75 days is up. And J.D. Vance, who has been tasked by Trump, the vice president, with overseeing a potential TikTok deal, said it is highly unlikely that TikTok will go dark again. All signs point to a deal or another extension.
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What Goods Will Be Impacted By Tariffs & Amazon Buying TikTok?
is a big birthday in the corporate world, Microsoft turns 50. The American tech juggernaut best known for creating Clippy and, well, I guess ushering in the PC revolution also, has managed to reinvent itself from one technological disruption to the next, amassing a market value that now stands at nearly $3 trillion and making its co-founder, Bill Gates, one of the richest people in the world.
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What Goods Will Be Impacted By Tariffs & Amazon Buying TikTok?
He wasn't always that rich, of course. Back in the spring of 1975, Gates was a Harvard dropout, who on April 4th of that year launched a tiny software company with his childhood friend Paul Allen in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Their mission was as simple as it was ambitious, to put a computer on every desk in every home. But how they aimed to do that differentiated them from the pack,
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What Goods Will Be Impacted By Tariffs & Amazon Buying TikTok?
Whereas all the other companies in the very small tech sector at the time were focused on hardware, Gates and Allen decided to go all in on software. That decision and the execution of it in the subsequent decades has made Microsoft a nearly ubiquitous part of the world's computing infrastructure, from MS-DOS to Windows to the cloud and now AI.
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What Goods Will Be Impacted By Tariffs & Amazon Buying TikTok?
All the while, it's been a model of stability in its 50-year history since. Microsoft has had just three CEOs, Gates, Steve Ballmer, and the current one, Satya Nadella, who's occupied the corner office since 2014. Toby, it hasn't always been smooth sailing for Microsoft for the past half century, but it's been as proficient as my skills for Office Suite. Very proficient, Neil.
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What Goods Will Be Impacted By Tariffs & Amazon Buying TikTok?
It's just that big of a player. And what's remarkable is it kind of missed the internet and mobile. I mean, Steve Ballmer in 2007 has this very infamous quote where he says, there's no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. Microsoft Internet Explorer, their browser was completely eaten by Google Chrome, and yet they continued to persist their stock
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What Goods Will Be Impacted By Tariffs & Amazon Buying TikTok?
Took a beating for a while, but then Satya Nadella came in in 2014, wrote the stock price, got juiced by 10x over his first 10 years in the company, and now they made a $13 billion investment in OpenAI, and they are seen as one of the leaders in AI. Before we leave Microsoft, The Verge, a tech publication, ranked their top five things that Microsoft has ever created.
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What Goods Will Be Impacted By Tariffs & Amazon Buying TikTok?
I'm just going to run them down, and I want your take, Toby. Number five, Windows XP. Thought it'd be higher, honestly. Number four, Xbox 360. Oh, that's good. That's solid. Number three, the Surface Pro 3. The things that they look at on the sidelines of NFL games, that's number three. It's number three. Number two is Halo, which is perhaps the killer app for Xbox when it came out in 2001.
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What Goods Will Be Impacted By Tariffs & Amazon Buying TikTok?
And number one, Windows 95. That introduced sort of the modern desktop as we know it with File Explorer, the taskbar notification area, the start button, recycle bin. Now, I think one thing that's missing from this list is Bliss, the wallpaper from Windows XP.
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Minecraft owned by Microsoft, by the way, another sign of some of those savvy acquisitions made by the company we just talked about. What's interesting about Minecraft that differentiates it from the other video game adaptations that we've seen be successful in recent years is that it doesn't have a narrative structure. The game has become so successful because it's called a sandbox game.
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Go in and play, and it's a really choose-your-own-adventure. You can do whatever the heck you want. So every person's experience who plays Minecraft is completely different. So there's not a popular set of characters like Super Mario Bros. can rely on, or there's not a propelling narrative that these filmmakers can use.
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Oh, no. Did you put decaf in the coffee machine again?
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So they said, we're calling it a Minecraft movie because we're respecting the fact that there's no one story that drives the game. We're not the official story. We're not canonizing anything. We're just one of a zillion stories. So that's what makes this a little bit different. But this is a very interesting IP because it really hasn't been tested outside of the video game sphere now.
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What Goods Will Be Impacted By Tariffs & Amazon Buying TikTok?
But there's been a run of successes in video game to movie adaptations. And we'll see whether this run can continue.
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What Goods Will Be Impacted By Tariffs & Amazon Buying TikTok?
Toby, the deadline is April 15th. What are you waiting for?
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What Goods Will Be Impacted By Tariffs & Amazon Buying TikTok?
And apparently he went full method because the director handed out Minecraft to everyone on set for their trailers. And he just went full in. He logged more than 100 hours playing Minecraft and was just obsessed with the game. You can imagine that every kid out there this weekend is going to be tugging on their parents shoulder being like, we need to go see this movie.
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What Goods Will Be Impacted By Tariffs & Amazon Buying TikTok?
We need to go see this movie. So I am bullish on Minecraft movie. Let's wrap it up there. Thanks so much for starting your morning with us. Have a great Friday and an even better weekend. For any questions, comments, or feedback, send an email to Morning Brew Daily at morningbrew.com. We love hearing from you. Let's roll the credits. of Morning Brew.
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A sudden surge of tax knowledge? Or you could just use Tax Act. They make filing way easier whether you're doing your individual returns or bundling with your business taxes.
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After President Trump unleashed the biggest hike in American tariffs in more than a century, markets responded similarly to when I tried Vegemite for the first time. It was a historically gruesome day on Wall Street. The S&P 500 tumbled 4.8%, erasing $2.5 trillion in value, and the Nasdaq plunged nearly 6%.
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That was their biggest one-day losses since March 2020, when the world was shutting down due to COVID. Investors consider these tariffs a severe economic shock that threatens to crush corporate profits, raise prices for consumers, and slow growth in the U.S. and around the world. To recap, on Wednesday, aka Liberation Day, Trump upended decades of U.S.
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What Goods Will Be Impacted By Tariffs & Amazon Buying TikTok?
trade policy when he instituted a 10% tariff on virtually all American imports, With much higher duties on 60 countries, he considers the worst trade offenders against the United States. It is an earth rattling gambit by Trump to reshore manufacturing back to the U.S. and swallow short term pain for a longer term buildup of the industrial base.
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What Goods Will Be Impacted By Tariffs & Amazon Buying TikTok?
The president brushed off the market panic yesterday, saying his tariff plan is going very well and adding that I think our markets are going to boom. Got to give it a chance. Got to give it a little bit of time. But Toby, as it stands, it's the end of the economic order as we know it. And Trump feels fine. Investors, on the other hand, are panicking.
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What Goods Will Be Impacted By Tariffs & Amazon Buying TikTok?
Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, Liberation Day was more like Liquidation Day as stocks plunged to their worst trading session since 2020.
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What Goods Will Be Impacted By Tariffs & Amazon Buying TikTok?
Yeah, let's talk about Apple first, because they really were the poster child of this sell off, especially in tech. You know, Apple has manufactured its iPhones and everything we buy from it in China for a long time. It has these vast factories from its suppliers there.
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What Goods Will Be Impacted By Tariffs & Amazon Buying TikTok?
And in 2018, over the past five or so years or decade, it's been trying to diversify away from China because Trump threatened tariffs on China in his first term. So where did they go to Vietnam? So they set up all and India. So they set up these big factories to make iPhones and iPads, Macs and other accessories in India. Vietnam and India. And then what does Trump do?
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What Goods Will Be Impacted By Tariffs & Amazon Buying TikTok?
Yesterday is slaps a 46% tariff on Vietnam and a 26% tariff on India. So this diversification around Asia that Apple tried to do starting in 2017, 2018, just completely backfired and fell 9% yesterday because it is going to bear the brunt of tariffs. And overall, the hardware sector, everything we get from China was just absolutely crushed.
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What Goods Will Be Impacted By Tariffs & Amazon Buying TikTok?
And then another sector that was so... That was hit so badly was retail, as you mentioned, Five Below Gap, Urban Outfitters, Kohl's, Best Buy. They all posted losses of more than 15%. And if Apple was the poster child of the tech wipeout, then I think RH, formerly known as Restoration Hardware, will be the poster child of the retail wipeout. So they make high-end furniture in China.
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What Goods Will Be Impacted By Tariffs & Amazon Buying TikTok?
And on Wednesday, as Trump was announcing these tariffs, the CEO was on an earnings call giving a pretty downbeat statement. earnings call as it was. And what the transcript shows is that he looks at the screen and says, oh, believe as he's seeing these tariffs roll out.
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What Goods Will Be Impacted By Tariffs & Amazon Buying TikTok?
And later he's explaining to the analysts, anybody of scale in the home business has a high percentage of their content coming out of Asia. Among all furniture stocks that got wiped out, RH suffered a 40 percent drop.
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When all of you come to visit New York next, first of all, say hi to me and Toby. Second of all, you might notice something a little different on the walls of subway stations. The New York City subway got a new map this week, its first redesign in almost 50 years. In many ways, the new map is a throwback to the 1972 Unimark map,
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What Goods Will Be Impacted By Tariffs & Amazon Buying TikTok?
And one other one that you didn't mention is toys. The Toy Association, which is the toy industry lobby group, estimates that 77% of all toys in the U.S. are manufactured in China alone. The toy industry operates on very slim margins, so you can't expect them, like an apple, to absorb the hit that come from tariffs. So the Toy Association estimates that
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What Goods Will Be Impacted By Tariffs & Amazon Buying TikTok?
that it will cost consumers at least 30% more to buy toys purchased from China than they currently do. But yeah, it's a very interesting education in where things are made. I mean, 94% of shrimp comes from not the U.S. The shrimp lobby is very happy. The Manufacturing Association here, or the Shrimp Producer Association, said, We are grateful for the Trump administration's actions today.
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What Goods Will Be Impacted By Tariffs & Amazon Buying TikTok?
It will preserve American jobs, food security, and our commitment to ethical production. So you see here... Things that the United States does make, at least in small quantities, the job creators here, the companies here are very happy. But for other things that we just simply can't make bananas, vanilla all comes from Madagascar. Shrimp comes from India. Cocoa comes from everywhere else.
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What Goods Will Be Impacted By Tariffs & Amazon Buying TikTok?
Coffee beans, we import 99 percent. Those there's no American substitute for that. So if there are tariffs on these products, then their prices are likely to go up. So now that Trump launched the trade war, the big question is how will the world react and what does that mean for the economy?
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What Goods Will Be Impacted By Tariffs & Amazon Buying TikTok?
The overall sentiment abroad was outrage, threats of retaliation, and bafflement over how these tariff rates were chosen. In the EU, a major trade partner of the U.S. that was hit with 20% tariffs, President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen, said the global economy would, quote, massively suffer from the tariffs and urge negotiation.
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UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer promised to respond with cool and calm heads. In France, President Emmanuel Macron did not keep his cool, encouraging European companies to avoid investing in the United States because of the tariffs. Switzerland said it was confused why it was hit with a 32% tariff, higher than other U.S. trade partners with similar economies, when 99% of U.S.
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What Goods Will Be Impacted By Tariffs & Amazon Buying TikTok?
which has a modernist streamlined feel and features as many straight lines as possible. That was replaced in 1979 with Michael Hertz's so-called spaghetti diagram, which has remained in use until this week. Toby, on a scale of Jaguar to HBO Max, how would you rate this redesign?
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What Goods Will Be Impacted By Tariffs & Amazon Buying TikTok?
goods can be imported into Switzerland without a duty. The calculations of the U.S. government are not clear to the federal council, the Swiss federal council said. Meanwhile, in developing countries that were walloped with tariffs, leaders are spooked, fearing the decimation of key industries centered on sending products to the U.S. Clothing-focused Cambodia, which counts the U.S.
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What Goods Will Be Impacted By Tariffs & Amazon Buying TikTok?
as its top export market, was hit with a 49% tariff. As a small country, we just want to survive, said a spokesperson for Cambodia's ruling party. Toby, these tariffs reached every part of the globe.
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What Goods Will Be Impacted By Tariffs & Amazon Buying TikTok?
All right. So the investors won't have any time to take a deep breath today because the March jobs report is out at 830 a.m. And we'll see what picture of the labor market that paints. But it's just been a wild week on Wall Street. Trump yesterday said. that there would be room for negotiation. Remember, the tariffs are not going into effect until April 9th.
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What Goods Will Be Impacted By Tariffs & Amazon Buying TikTok?
Next week, his aides had been going out all over the media and saying, these are the final rates. We're not negotiating. They're not negotiable. And then Trump, to reporters yesterday, as he was boarding his helicopter, said, you know, I'm down to negotiate. If somebody offers something spectacular in return, then we can talk. So you can bet They will be fielding calls.
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What Goods Will Be Impacted By Tariffs & Amazon Buying TikTok?
They will be negotiating for the next couple of days until these tariffs go into effect. But clearly a shockwave across global markets. Up next, we got a deadline for TikTok coming up.
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What Goods Will Be Impacted By Tariffs & Amazon Buying TikTok?
That's right. Since it's both a private and a nonprofit corporation, Jobs Ohio is uniquely positioned to give companies very hands-on support with complete confidentiality.
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What Goods Will Be Impacted By Tariffs & Amazon Buying TikTok?
It helps that Ohio has the third largest manufacturing workforce in the U.S. and the cost of living is 5.8% lower than the national average.
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Wise Business can help. Your Wise account has everything you need to operate your global business. With Wise Business, you can process payments, get paid, and manage your money internationally.
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My dog of the week is McDonald's because when you're feeling a bit nauseous, the last thing you want to guzzle down is a double quarter pounder with cheese. McDonald's reported yesterday that economic uncertainty and a more cautious consumer caused same store sales to drop 3.6% in the United States last quarter. That's its steepest fall since the spring of 2020 when no one was leaving their house.
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Globally, same store sales fell for the second straight quarter and shares dropped nearly 2%. On the earnings call, execs said in most of our major markets, we're seeing a similar story in regards to the challenging industry environment and softening consumer sentiment. Let's deal with those one by one. A challenging industry environment.
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McDonald's is the face of the fast food industry that's seeing traffic dry up right now. Just this week, Domino's, Starbucks, Pizza Hut and KFC all warned that business was slowing down in the United States. Now softening consumer sentiment. McDonald's CEO blamed this one on geopolitical tensions, a.k.a.
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the trade war, that added to uncertainty and dampened consumer sentiment more than we expected. Toby, the drive-thru lane is not exactly a party right now, but McDonald's may have a few cards up its sleeve that it thinks will bring it back to growth.
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Well, at some point, they're just going to have Grimace throw out the first pitch at a Mets game, and everyone's going to go crazy, and we'll see same-store sales rise 10%. So if none of this chicken stuff works, they'll just toss them out at Citi Field. Okay, let's sprint to the finish with some final headlines and a crossover episode of Corporate America Meets Bravo.
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Kohl's has fired its CEO Ashley Buchanan after they found he directed the department store to strike a quote highly unusual multi-million dollar business deal involving a woman he was having a romantic relationship with. A board investigation found two instances in which Buchanan violated the company's code of conduct, though they did not name the individual he had a relationship with.
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The Wall Street Journal, citing internal sources, said the woman Buchanan was funneling business to was Chandra Holt, the former CEO of Bed Bath & Beyond, who met Buchanan while they were both working at Walmart.
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As if Kohl's didn't have enough problems while it tries to turn around a struggling business with a revolving door of CEOs, Buchanan was on the job for just about 100 days, and now they must look for their fifth chief executive in the last three years.
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It's not, and everyone's looking forward to, not looking forward to, maybe bracing for the holiday season because, you know, the Xbox and controllers and gaming...
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hardware is a very popular item to have we'll see how this competes with the price hikes against the new switch 2 that is coming out that is 450 nintendo opted to not raise the price there but you know i think this bodes a little ominously for how expensive it's going to be to buy gifts all the way in November.
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I mean, even earlier this week, President Trump kind of acknowledged that toy shortages and price hikes were going to be possible. He said, well, maybe the children will have $2 instead of $30, and maybe the $2 will cost a couple of bucks more.
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That's a comment that raised a little bit of eyebrows, but you're already seeing price hikes from Xbox, and it's probably not going to be the last toy or gaming company that's jacking up prices because of, quote unquote, market conditions, aka tariffs.
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If you told me two years ago that someone would be betting on box office results or Rotten Tomatoes scores, I would probably be like, I really don't think people care about that. They just kind of want to watch movies. But since we've seen these prediction markets come online, you have people betting on everything from. The CPI report to which country the Pope's going to be from.
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So I see a world in which somebody bets on Snow White to bomb at the box office or George Clooney's new movie to rake in $80 million or the upcoming F1 movie to go above or below $100 million opening. So I see what MoviePass is doing here, and you're right. It just won't go away.
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Oh man, I didn't know this was the direction we were going to go in. All right, hit it. You are the Neil to my... Toby.
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Well, if you need me on Saturday afternoon, I will be three mint juleps deep watching the Kentucky Derby, the start of horse racing's triple crown season. The run for the roses, as it's always been for the last 151 years, will be held at the storied Churchill Downs racetrack in Kentucky.
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A horse named Journalism, yes, Journalism, is the favorite, considered the best horse in the field in terms of pedigree, speed, and distance. But its investigative reporting could be squashed by the return of legendary trainer Bob Baffert, who has a horse in the race after being banned by Churchill Downs for three years over a doping scandal.
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Toby, what are you watching for this year at Churchill Downs?
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Come for the businesses, stay for the horse betting tips.
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Apple’s App Store Reign Ending? & Eyeball-Scanning Crypto's US Launch
I'm curious.
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Apple’s App Store Reign Ending? & Eyeball-Scanning Crypto's US Launch
Okay, let's wrap it up there. Toby is excited for the Kentucky Derby. I mean, it always is a great event. But thanks so much for starting your morning with us. Have a wonderful Friday and an even better weekend. For any questions, comments, or feedback on the show, send an email to morningbrewdaily at morningbrew.com. Let's roll the credits. Emily Milliron is our executive producer.
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Wow, Planet Oat really does pair well with everything.
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Raymond Liu is our producer. Our associate producers are Olivia Graham and Olivia Lake. Scoops Gardaris is on audio. Hair and Makeup is out getting their eyeballs scanned. Devin Emery is our president, and our show is a production of Morning Brew.
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The perfect way to start your day, no matter what you're pairing it with, like you being the Toby to my Neil.
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Did you hit an Apple store for a new iPhone before tariffs kicked in? That wasn't very original. Apple reported its highest revenue for a March quarter in over two years as Americans appeared to scoop up more of its products, fearing they'd get a price hike due to higher import costs. Overall, Apple sales rose 5% for the quarter, beating expectations.
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driven by higher iPhone revenue that analysts attributed not only to incoming tariffs, but the debut of its lower-priced phone, the 16E. It has been a crazy few months for Apple. Tim Cook can't have been getting much sleep. The face of the trade war, Apple's stock tumbled more than 20% in just four days. after President Trump announced 145% tariffs on China, where 80% of its iPhones are made.
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But then it had its best one-day gain since 1998, after Trump said that smartphones and other Apple products would be exempted from those super steep tariffs. Despite the big sales beat, it's still stormy steez out there for the world's most valuable company. Ominously, China revenue fell 2.3%, a bad sign in its second biggest market, where it's competing with fast-growing homegrown rivals.
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and its fast-growing service division think subscriptions like iCloud and Apple Music didn't grow as fast as expected last quarter. Toby, this Apple doesn't quite have that loud crunch when you bite into it. It's a bit more mealy.
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Apple’s App Store Reign Ending? & Eyeball-Scanning Crypto's US Launch
Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, Apple is facing some serious challenges. Unfortunately, Siri is too useless to help.
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Apple’s App Store Reign Ending? & Eyeball-Scanning Crypto's US Launch
And that's really hurting it in China, where consumers do expect AI integrations with their phones. Maybe here in America, we're fine just having a normal smartphone. But over there, they really do care about having the latest whiz-bang technology in their phones. And China is a super critical market for Apple.
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And that's why shares fell more than 2% after hours was because of this miss, this fall in growth in In China, it's lost ground to those local phone brands like Huawei and Xiaomi. It doesn't have, you know, it's not matching those companies when it comes to technology. And this is just such a critical market for Apple.
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Get rid, like, don't even think about the tariffs, but they make phones there, but they also sell phones there. 19% of their revenue comes from China. 43%, 57% of the revenue comes from outside China. the Americas. So it's these foreign markets that are faltering for Apple. It did well in North America, 8% sales growth.
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Apple’s App Store Reign Ending? & Eyeball-Scanning Crypto's US Launch
But outside of America is where these warning signs are really popping up, and it doesn't even have anything to do with tariffs.
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Apple’s App Store Reign Ending? & Eyeball-Scanning Crypto's US Launch
Judge ruling. I mean, this was more cringy to watch than the roast of Tom Brady. I mean, she laid into Apple executives saying they lied under oaths. She referred them to be investigated for criminal contempt so things could get serious. I was looking at Apple stock price after this ruling came out. It didn't budge so much. So investors maybe aren't so worried about.
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about the hit to the App Store. But there could be consequences because Apple gets tens of billions of dollars in revenue from its App Store from that 30 percent commission that it charges developers. So we'll see whether this is the ruling that finally cracks open that closed garden of the App Store that that developers like Epic Games have been trying to claw back for so long.
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You've all been in this situation. You get invited to a party, maybe a roof hang, which means you have to stop at the store on your way to pick up a six pack of something. What do you choose? White Claw, High Noon? Well, this year, the beverage industry thinks more people will buy canned vodka lemonade, which has already been dubbed the drink of the summer. Yes, vodka spiked lemonade.
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I mean, this company has kind of trotted all around the world for the past couple of years, trying to scan people's eyeballs in various countries. They say they've got 12 million people signed up across 100 countries, but pretty much everywhere they've went, they've received pushback. Brazil and Hong Kong have banned WorldCoin. Kenya, Portugal, and Spain all instituted temporary restrictions.
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Apple’s App Store Reign Ending? & Eyeball-Scanning Crypto's US Launch
after world hopped into town. And that's because they are worried about this one particular company collecting reams of biometric data and all of the security and privacy concerns that come with it. So we'll see what happens.
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Apple’s App Store Reign Ending? & Eyeball-Scanning Crypto's US Launch
Certainly, the regulatory environment has changed in the United States from the Biden's more crackdown on crypto to the Trump administration's more laissez-faire approach to crypto. So they decided now is time to come to the United States and see how many eyeballs they can scan. But
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Truly this, you know, when you take a step back and think about the implications of why this company exists is to verify humans versus bots. And that's because Sam Altman, you know, has been labeled as the person who popularized AI. And there's going to be so much spam and bots out there that eventually we won't be able to distinguish between humans and bots. So we need our irises scanned.
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I mean, it's all a little crazy to think about.
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This company is huge. This is one of the biggest crypto projects anywhere in the world. They've raised $240 million from Andreessen Horowitz. And you know who else thought it was a good idea? Sam Baikman Freed. He was an investor before he went to jail.
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The brand Surfside popularized this drink back in 2022. and it's exploded in growth since. Now everyone from Anheuser-Busch to Boston Beer Company to Dave Portnoy has hopped on the trend, releasing vodka, lemonades, and teas of their own in just the past few weeks. Toby, are you in or out on lemonade?
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Yeah, I mean, we talked about Apple being uniquely exposed to tariffs, but Amazon is probably, if Apple's 1A, Amazon is 1B. It imports roughly a quarter of items it sells from China. Those third-party vendors from China are so critical to populating its marketplace, and it also has a fast-growing ad business, which is number three after Meta and Google, and that
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is also exposed to potentially drawbacks in ad spending from Chinese e-commerce companies that are looking at these tariffs and say, I don't want to really spend money advertising to American consumers anymore because it's going to be so expensive. So maybe, you know, Amazon is facing these particular challenges, but you're right.
Morning Brew Daily
Apple’s App Store Reign Ending? & Eyeball-Scanning Crypto's US Launch
It has an insane scale and logistics operation and diversification of suppliers that might help it weather the storm. And what you're seeing with these tariffs is the biggest companies like Apple and Amazon are sounding pretty confident saying that they can weather them. Meanwhile, it's the small businesses that don't have the scale that will have to raise prices that are getting whacked.
Morning Brew Daily
Apple’s App Store Reign Ending? & Eyeball-Scanning Crypto's US Launch
ServiceNow puts AI agents to work for people. That's why this was written and read by a real person and not AI. Creative work like writing and performing, that's the good stuff. You know, the work people actually want to do. You know what people don't want to do? Boring, repetitive, busy work. That's where AI agents come in.