Morning Brew Daily
Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze
Thu, 17 Apr 2025
Episode 563: Neal and Toby talk about how Nvidia became the latest victim in the US-China trade war, which could hurt its chip sales. Then, Harvard has stood up against the Trump administration and hopes other elite schools will join their fight. Also, Chinese influencers are flooding TikTok claiming popular name brands and luxury brands can be bought for cheap by going directly to the factories they’re made. Meanwhile, Neal shares his favorite numbers on family business, nepo homeowners, and flying iPhones. Subscribe to Morning Brew Daily for more of the news you need to start your day. Share the show with a friend, and leave us a review on your favorite podcast app. Visit https://planetoat.com/ to learn more! Listen to Morning Brew Daily Here: https://link.chtbl.com/MBD Watch Morning Brew Daily Here: https://www.youtube.com/@MorningBrewDailyShow 00:00 - Spotify Outage 03:10 - Nvidia In US-China Crossfire 07:40 - Harvard vs Trump Admin 11:20 - Chinese Wholesalers Head to TikTok 18:20 - Neal’s Numbers 25:00 - Headlines All investing involves the risk of loss, including loss of principal. Brokerage services for US-listed, registered securities, options and bonds in a self-directed account are offered by Public Investing, Inc., member FINRA & SIPC. Public Investing offers a High-Yield Cash Account where funds from this account are automatically deposited into partner banks where they earn interest and are eligible for FDIC insurance; Public Investing is not a bank. Cryptocurrency trading services are offered by Bakkt Crypto Solutions (NMLS ID 1890144), which is licensed to engage in virtual currency business activity by the NYSDFS. Cryptocurrency is highly speculative and involves a high degree of risk. Cryptocurrency holdings are not protected by the FDIC or SIPC. APY as of 3/18/25, subject to change. *Terms and Conditions apply. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: What caused the recent Spotify outage and how did listeners react?
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.
It was very funny to see all the Spotify listeners come over to YouTube. It was like two different MBD tribes making contact for the first time. And it was mostly peaceful. Some said, hey, it's kind of nice over here. I think I'll stay. So that was a nice byproduct of the outage. It's also two different commenting cultures I've noticed. There's this core group of YouTube listeners who...
Just want to be the first one to post a comment in the morning. So it's always just first, second, third. Ah, nice try. And then over on Spotify, there's this core group of listeners who just comment on audio quality a lot, which makes sense because it's an audio platform. Apple Podcasts, no idea what's going on over there because there's no comment section at all. But we love you all equally.
Thank you for listening no matter what platform you do it on. Sorry again for the outage. And now a word from our sponsor, Planet Oat. Neil, I was playing kickball over the weekend, classic rec league tilt, and it hit me just how important it is to have that one player who can do it all.
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Chapter 2: How is Nvidia affected by the US-China trade war and new chip restrictions?
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.
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.
Yeah, that's 200% last year that it soared, but it looks like half a trillion dollars only goes so far these days because an escalating trade war isn't just a great backdrop for any of a high-tech good to go towards China. NVIDIA did design this chip specifically for this purpose, and it's not like this is a top-of-the-line chip. I mean, Morgan Stanley analysts say that H20's performance is about
75% below Nvidia's H100 family. And even since that note came out, they've released a Blackwell chip that even exceeds the performance of the H100. So this is not a top-of-the-line chip by any stretch of the imagination. So this inability to sell even low-performing chips into the Chinese market is just a bit of a business scrambler if you are Nvidia at this point.
And Nvidia is definitely going to be peeved too. I mean, they've done everything right there. A spokesperson said that, hey, look at the taxes we pay. We have a US-based workforce. We are a technology leader. Heck, our exports actually help the US fix its trade deficit with China, which is the whole point of the tariffs is to bring that deficit downward.
So they're just sitting here saying, I thought we checked every single box, crossed our T's, dot our I's, and yet here they still are.
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.
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
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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Chapter 3: Why is Harvard University in conflict with the Trump administration over funding?
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Chapter 4: What are the economic implications of Harvard’s $2.2 billion fund freeze?
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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.
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.
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.
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.
Yeah, it's definitely a reversal from just recent decades because you're right, there was this stigma around joining the family biz because it just seemed like the easy path and our generation of entrepreneurial or just wanted to set off on their own. They didn't want to join the boring old business that mom or dad ran.
But now they're staring down just an economic reality that makes that job seem a lot more appealing because COVID upended the beginning parts of most young people's careers. Then there's been this huge AI boom. That's a massive disruptor. So maybe working in a steel fabrication plant seems a little more AI-proof than working a cushy marketing job somewhere in New York City.
And then you just toss in the trade war as well. And so all of a sudden, of course, you're going to phone up mom and dad. And mom and dad are probably happy, too, because they're looking to pass down these businesses, too. They don't want to work forever. They want to ensure it's in good hands. And so if your kid comes calling, then of course it becomes this appealing avenue for them as well.
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Chapter 5: How are Chinese influencers using TikTok to promote factory-direct luxury goods?
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.
Yeah, the giant African harvester ant is a highly sought after species. They are prized by collectors because one, they're very big, like the queens can reach almost an inch long. So these are, I know that we're talking about smaller animals are becoming more popular, but in terms of the ant kingdom, these things are sizable. And a lot of it is because it's very hard to find this specific species.
If you're an ant collector on any websites, I mean, two of the biggest are Ants HQ and Ants R-U-S. It sounds like, oh, Ants R Us. Sorry, geez Louise. It's like Toys R Us, but Ants R Us. And they barely have any of these species listed on their sites. And if they did, they're sold out right now. They sell them for $131 and $226.
So you can see why this specific species was targeted by these Belgian teens because, yeah, they had some serious street value. If you thought Fyre Fest was bad, wait till you hear about this experience that Mr. Beast cooked up.
Diehard Mr. Beast fans who paid $1,000 for a Vegas experience that was supposed to be unforgettable were left trying to forget and get a refund after the event titled The Mr. Beast Experience was an abject disaster.
Resorts World Las Vegas advertised the experience as something that included a three-night stay at the hotel, a mystery bag full of exclusive merch, meet and greets, photo ops, mini games, and even a $10,000 voucher for a lucky fan. Unfortunately, we didn't get any of that, said one fan who flew from Arizona to attend.
Instead, guests posted pictures of the exclusive package that they were supposed to be receiving that ended up containing some chocolate bars and about $9 worth of merch that you can get in the clearance section of Mr. B's website. The YouTuber tried to make things right by personally inviting everyone affected by the experience to his actual studio, but still, Neil, a very tough look for him.
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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Chapter 6: Are the luxury goods sold on DHgate through TikTok videos authentic?
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.
I love that this one fan clearly is an experienced person because who's going to the Tom Brady experience, the Mr. Beast experience? They just love the experiences hosted by anyone and everyone. Finally, for our last headline, scientists announced they discovered alien life yesterday. And that's all the time we have. Great show, Neil. Oh, kidding.
No, but seriously, a team of researchers announced they found the strongest indication of extraterrestrial life yet on a massive planet 120 light years away from Earth, known as K2-18b.
Thanks to these super strong observational abilities of the James Webb Telescope, analysis of the exoplanet's atmosphere showed that there's a high concentration of a particular molecule also found on Earth that has only one source, living organisms. It's called dimethyl sulfide, it's made of sulfur, carbon, and hydrogen, and is a common byproduct of marine algae.
Last year, after the first reading came in from the telescope, the team of astronomers conducting the study spent an enormous amount of time trying to get rid of the signal, but a second, even stronger reading led them to conclude that K2-18b may in fact harbor about 1,000 times as much dimethyl sulfide as URCH, which suggests it sees, could be teeming with life.
I'm not screaming aliens, said Nicole Lewis, an exoplanetary scientist at Cornell University, but I always reserve my right to scream aliens. Neil, I am not an exoplanet scientist at Cornell University, so I'll just scream it. Aliens.
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Chapter 7: What is the difference between dupes and counterfeits in the Chinese dupe market?
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.
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.
Yeah, it's probably not going to be like welcome to earth people. It's going to be like amoebas or something like that. But still, this is a lot of dimethyl sulfide, so I'm bullish.
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.
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.
Great show today, Neil.
Let's run it back tomorrow.
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