All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
Sat, 26 Apr 2025
(0:00) The Besties intro Andrew Ross Sorkin (2:04) Market bump: Trump rally or a Bessent put? (18:04) Are tariffs damaging the American "brand"? Apple's investment in India (38:18) Balance of power politics, Ukraine/Russia ceasefire negotiation halted over Crimea (50:00) Alphabet earnings: Massive resiliency, Google's Gemini Problem (1:05:40) Tesla jumps on Elon's return, pulling back from DOGE (1:18:35) Science Corner: China's Thorium Breakthrough Follow Andrew: https://x.com/andrewrsorkin Follow the besties: https://x.com/chamath https://x.com/Jason https://x.com/DavidSacks https://x.com/friedberg Follow on X: https://x.com/theallinpod Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theallinpod Follow on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@theallinpod Follow on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/allinpod Intro Music Credit: https://rb.gy/tppkzl https://x.com/yung_spielburg Intro Video Credit: https://x.com/TheZachEffect Referenced in the show: https://www.google.com/finance/quote/.DJI:INDEXDJX?comparison=INDEXSP%3A.INX%2CINDEXNASDAQ%3A.IXIC&window=5D https://x.com/nic__carter/status/1909066161464959070 https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/16/business/china-rare-earths-us.html https://x.com/TheTranscript_/status/1915116330534998440 https://www.ft.com/content/c2be45b8-cfad-4cbb-9a1a-bfd0626be372 https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/22/world/europe/ukraine-cease-fire-talks.html https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2015/03/20/one-year-after-russia-annexed-crimea-locals-prefer-moscow-to-kiev https://x.com/EconomyApp/status/1915501252420784499 https://www.artificialintelligence-news.com/news/chinese-firms-cloud-loophole-access-us-ai-tech https://polymarket.com/event/how-much-spending-will-elon-and-doge-cut-in-2025 https://doge.gov/savings https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3300360/chinas-thorium-survey-finds-endless-energy-source-right-under-our-feet https://www.spglobal.com/commodityinsights/es/market-insights/latest-news/energy-transition/020123-china-to-maintain-renewables-growth-pace-in-2023-despite-uncertainty https://www.reuters.com/world/china/images-show-china-building-huge-fusion-research-facility-analysts-say-2025-01-28
Chapter 1: Is the current market rally driven by a Trump rally or a Bessent put?
So typically what's happened is you can cry to the White House and they'll call the Federal Reserve and they will buy it. That's the Fed put. And in some very rare cases, when things get really calamitous, like in 2008, Treasury will set up a program and start to buy things. That's what was called TARP back in the GFC. So the question is, is there a put here? I mean, my honest answer is no.
And the simple reason is, if you look at where we are, the stock market's back to where we were in like May or August of last year. And if you had said that we would have upended 50 years of economic policy and the markets would only be off 500 or 600 basis points, I would have been shocked. So there's no reason for a put. Maybe the more interesting question is who's asking for the put?
The ones that have suffered from the volatility. And a lot of those are the active market traders. So if you trace the feedback, who has been the most negative? Hackman's been negative. Ken Griffin recently turned negative.
And that probably comes from the fact that they're not monetizing the vol the way that they used to monetize the vol more than the market has speared down to such a degree that the world is coming to an end because it isn't.
Okay, Zacks. Can I build on that? Please. There was a tweet two weeks ago when all this started by Nick Carter that I retweeted because I thought it was really interesting, which was, if you think a market sell-off delegitimizes Trump's presidency, you're going to give him unconditional credit when it rallies, right? Because those are the rules now.
And that's exactly what's happened is that the market has rallied. Like you said, it's up 7% this week. But the media doesn't want to give Trump any credit for it. So it's kind of created this narrative of a Besson put. In other words, Besson is entirely responsible for it. Look, Scott is a very smart man. He understands markets. He understands the bond markets. And he is a reassuring voice.
to those markets. And I think he's doing a great job. But I think part of what's going on with this best input narrative is that no one ever wants to give Trump or his administration as a whole credit.
So what they do on any particular week is valorize a particular member of the administration that they can then say, well, this is the person who's really responsible for this, not Trump, because I don't want to give Trump that credit.
Next week, they'll be tearing Scott down and there'll be some other member of the administration they'll be trying to valorize to basically prevent the administration as a whole from getting credit for doing something good. So again, I think Scott's doing a great job. I think he's doing a great job making these deals. And he's saying a lot of correct and reassuring things to the markets.
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Chapter 2: What are the implications of US-China trade tensions and tariffs on the economy?
If you wanna go do business in China today, you have to set up a 51% JV where some local company owns 51% of your equity and your IP. The stories around the world
I think start to paint the picture of why American businesses find it so hard to develop international markets and sell into those countries, when in the US we make it so easy for companies based in foreign countries to come and sell in America. And that's a big part of where the trade imbalances arise from.
It's not just because Vietnamese people can't afford expensive American goods, it's because it's so much more regulatorily difficult to do work in these countries. They can come in and take your IP,
And so I think that this is like a really important part of the trade discussions and negotiations that a lot of people miss, that American businesses will see massive revenue growth and massive market adoption if we can get regulatory parity in some of these key trade deals.
Okay, let me ask you a different question. Chamath raised the issue of Ken Griffin, who made some comments this week about the brand that is America and effectively said there was sort of a sell America situation going on. And my question about...
the brand that is America is whether you think after these tariff, whatever deals get done, that you can put the toothpaste back in the tube, that you can get the trust back, that there's not gonna still be some kind of toothpaste on the rim of the tube that you can't stick back. It gets all nasty and crusty, right?
that to me is a fundamental question i want to read to you what ken had to say i think ken was probably a bit of a reluctant uh trump or the second term but nonetheless he's been outspoken on a couple things he says if you think of your behavior as a consumer how many times do you buy a product with a brand on it because you trust that brand in the financial markets
No brand compares to the brand of U.S. treasuries, the strength of the U.S. dollar, the strength, the creditworthiness of U.S. treasuries. No brand comes close. We put that brand at risk. What say you?
Well, look, I think there's a fundamental question here about whether you think there's a problem with the status quo or not. Ken Griffin is one of the biggest winners in our economy under the current status quo, and I don't think he sees a big problem that needs to get fixed. But I think like we just talked about, I think there are some big problems.
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Chapter 3: How are tariffs and trade policies affecting the American brand and Apple's investment in India?
There was a deal to end this war in the first month, the Istanbul deal, and it required Ukraine to basically sever its security relationship with the West and to recognize that it would not become part of NATO. And they had to give up Crimea, basically. That was the deal back then. What Russia has said is that's still the deal plus realities on the ground.
So in other words, the Russians have lost, I don't know, 100,000 plus, hundreds of thousands of soldiers now taking this territory in the east. And obviously, they're not going to give it up. So I think that the Ukrainians could have had a better deal in the first month of the war. The Biden administration rejected that. Now there's a different deal. It's Istanbul plus.
And I think that the American proposal is pretty close to that. So I think this administration recognizes...
wisdom and just reality of that deal but the ukrainians aren't so look my view is simple if the ukrainians are unwilling to take the deal that's on the table and they want to find new backers with the europeans let them but why should we continue to support this okay let's pivot let's talk markets and let's specifically start a couple stocks because you disagree because i want to hear you disagree no i i i could but we're gonna we i think we're gonna run out of time okay
I wanna talk Alphabet. So everybody thought the blue link economy was dead. Open AI, perplexity, all of it was gonna take the search market. They come out with earnings. Sundar does way better than everybody expected. Revenue up $90.2 billion is up 12%. Net income was up, up almost 50% year over year. You got the cloud still ripping. You got a big buyback program.
He starts talking about Waymo on the call for the first time in a long time, if ever. Stock's up about 5% on the news. What do we think? What an incredible business.
My gosh. There's a lot of resiliency in Alphabet that I don't think people have given the company credit for. First of all, I'll just highlight with the dividends they're paying plus the share buyback, you're basically getting a 4% or 5% yield on the stock. So the dividends are like $10 billion a year and they're announcing $70 billion back on $2 trillion in market caps.
You're making 4% a year just by owning the stock and the dividends and the buybacks. Then if you look at the revenues, 90 billion, 77 in services, 12 in cloud. So the 90 billion, about half of it was ads on search. And a lot of people have been talking about the decline in search due to AI. That's the end of Alphabet. Here you can kind of see the breakdown.
What this shows is that there's such significant growth, 9 billion in YouTube, seven and a half billion in non-Google ads, 10 billion in subscriptions with 270 million subscribers across subscription businesses, 12 billion in cloud revenue, which is growing 30% year over year. There's a lot of resiliency, even if you take out search. And so the question is, what's the downside? What's the upside?
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Chapter 4: What is the balance of power dynamic in global politics, especially regarding Ukraine-Russia ceasefire talks?
Chapter 5: How resilient is Alphabet and what challenges does Google's Gemini face?
Chapter 6: What is the impact of Elon Musk's return to Tesla and its strategic moves away from Dogecoin?
Chapter 7: What is the significance of China's thorium discovery for energy science?
Okay, welcome back to the All In podcast. J-Cal is not here this week. He is off in Detroit at the Knicks game. Congrats to the Knicks. Here's a photo of our boy J-Cal hanging out with, who's that, Ben Stiller?
Man, what happened to Ben Stiller? That looks like Chalamet right next to him.
Timothée Chalamet. Is that Chalamet? I think so. Chalamet. Chalamet.
You know, Ben Stiller was once referred to as the Jewish Tom Cruise, but he has not held up like Tom Cruise. I got to say that. He should have joined the Church of Scientology. Come on, man. Keep it up. You got to represent for us a little better.
sitting in this week is our boy andrew ross sorkin journalist author extraordinaire andrew welcome to the show long time listener first time caller thank you for having me
Andrew, I'm going to do just a couple of quick plugs, and I'm going to give it over to the pro to do his work, take us through the docket today. I think this is going to be really fun. The world's greatest moderator. The world's greatest moderator is here today.
That's fighting words. Shots fired. We'll see. Hold your tongue. You can tell me when it's over.
Before we kick it off, I just want to give a quick plug. The All In Summit, if you haven't seen the video, check it out on YouTube and Twitter. Going into our fourth year... The 2024 recap will kind of give you a set of highlights from last year. It's September 7th through 9th in LA, trying to have the world's most important conversations.
Andrew, I know it probably competes with one or two of your conferences, but let me just tell you, this one's way better. We're going to be blowing it out this year with parties, allin.com slash summit to apply to join us at the summit this year. Awesome. Andrew, thanks for being here. We're excited to have you.
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