Dell Donates $6 Billion to Kids & Costco Sues Trump Over Tariffs

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0:32Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, Michael Dell's record-breaking donation to America's kids. Then Costco is suing the Trump administration because it wants its tariff money back. It's Wednesday, December 3rd. Let's ride.

0:52The era of the slop bowl may have run its course. A bad year for bullslingers Chipotle, Sweetgreen, and Cava has gotten even worse this fall, with the three companies cutting financial targets and losing$48 billion in market value combined, a drop of roughly 50%. Even slop bowl pioneers are seeking something more substantial. Steve Ells, the founder of Chipotle, has a new restaurant concept that literally is a sign of a lunch bowl with a slash running through it, indicating that textureless slop is not allowed on the premises. So, Toby, if yuppies are shifting away from the sad desk salad, what are they eating for lunch?

1:29Are you ready for this, Neil? sandwiches. According to this Bloomberg article, things with textures and various mouthfeel are in like sandwiches and tacos. And it shows up in the data too. Shake Shack serves burgers and chicken sandwiches. Sales growth was up 5 % last quarter. Potbelly, delicious sandwich chain, grew sales by nearly 7 % in September. It got me thinking, if I just invested in every place I ate lunch every day, would I be up or down? And Neil, the Toby's Lunch Index is hurting right now because unfortunately I do love slop bowls. Maybe I need to up my sandwich game though because right now, too much bowl slop.

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2:44Spend$250 on your first campaign on LinkedIn ads and get a free$250 credit for the next one. Just go to linkedin.com slash mbd. That's linkedin.com slash MBD. Terms and conditions may apply. All the kids listening to this, I need you to pause Minecraft and lock in. Michael Dell is giving you collectively over$6 billion in one of the biggest single charitable donations in American history. Dell, the billionaire CEO and co-founder of the computer company, announced that he and his wife Susan will pledge$6.25 billion to 25 million American children age 10 and under, amounting to$250 per child. The unprecedented gift is modeled on and expands upon the so-called Trump accounts that were established by the one big, beautiful bill earlier this year.

3:31Under that measure, the Treasury will deposit$1 ,000 into tax-advantaged investment accounts for children born between January 1st, 2025 through the end of 2028. The Dells are aiming to reach kids born before that cutoff, handing out$250 to children up to age 10 in zip codes with a median income of$150 ,000 or less. The donation is not only unusual for its size, over$6 billion in one fell swoop, but for its structure. The Dells are writing checks directly to people, which contrasts with the typical model of giving money to an institution like a university or a nonprofit. Dell thinks his system is better, telling the New York Times, there's been lots of studies that show that even relatively modest sums with accounts like this, children are more likely to graduate from high school and college, they're more likely to buy a home to start a business.

4:19He's hoping to inspire others to copy his direct giving strategy. Let's dive into the idea behind an account like a Trump account. When children in a wealthy household leave the nest, they usually have a little nest egg provided by their parents. But what if all children could get the same financial boost? That is the idea behind funding a Trump account. If you give$1 ,000 to every newborn, so long as your parents open the account, by the time they reach 18, if you max out your contribution limits, they could have the same sort of advantage that a wealthier family have. So that's the general idea behind the program in general.

4:57The Dell component is fascinating as well. One, because you are right, it is just another instance of a private donation kind of skirting by congressional deadlocks and just directly injecting money into a program that is supported by the current administration. And then it's also very symbolic for Michael Dell himself. He said that he started Dell computers in his dorm room in college with a initial investment of just a thousand dollars just for inflation. It's actually closer to thirty five hundred dollars today. But he kind of made a big spiel about how if every child had that same advantage, what could they create?

5:32So that is why there is some symbolism behind this specific donation. And Trump actually credits Dell with bringing the idea of the Trump accounts to him. Back in 2021, Dell was at this meeting with the hedge fund manager, Brad Gerstner, who founded this nonprofit called Invest America, which advocated for these accounts, these investment accounts for America's youth. And then Dell heard that idea and had a pipeline into the president, so brought that idea to him. So Trump says, Dell was the reason that I created Trump accounts in the first place. So this didn't really come out of nowhere. Dell had been a supporter of this concept of investment accounts for kids for a long time.

6:09And then he's putting his money where his mouth is with this huge donation. What can you do to actually take the money out of the account? What can you use it for? You have penalty fee withdrawals before you're age 60, actually 59 and a half. If you want to use it for higher education, if you want to use it for buying a home, but there's not broad discretionary use. So that is why some, you know, HR professionals are comparing and contrasting a Trump account versus something like a 529 plan. They are saying that this has a little bit of a narrower use case. So there is going to be some shakeout now.

6:44Are employers going to start contributing and matching funds to accounts like this? Or is it going to not necessarily become a staple of what parents are contributing towards? So it is just an interesting new tax-free vehicle for people to grow their money in. And so how it shakes out in terms of where people are allocating your money, that remains to be seen. And we'll see how it how it shakes up the unequal playing field of people investing in the stock market. So 58 percent of U.S. households held stocks or bonds back in 2022. That's the most recent data we have available. But when you dive a little deeper, the wealthiest one percent own almost half the value of stocks in that year.

7:23The bottom 50 percent own about one percent of stocks. It's unclear whether Trump accounts, or now we can call them the Dell accounts, are going to move the needle in that regard. But it seems like most Americans are invested in the stock market. But the top 10 % hold the vast majority of all the value of the stocks. The bottom 50 % hold a very narrow slice. And we'll see how this works. So yeah, it closes the gap. Yeah. And we'll see whether Dell and Trump's accounts can close the gap. You can find pretty much anything at Costco these days, including a lawsuit against Trump's tariffs. Costco has filed a lawsuit seeking to recover tariffs.

7:59It has already paid on goods it's imported should the Supreme Court ultimately decide the tariffs are illegal. Remember, the case before the court right now revolves around whether President Trump has the power to impose tariffs under a specific emergency powers law. But as the court deliberates before issuing a ruling in the spring, businesses aren't just sitting idly by. If the justices do find Trump lacks the authority to impose the tariffs, the question then turns to refunds, namely who gets them and how much. Customs only finalizes the total amount of tariffs a company owes 314 days after the goods enter the country.

8:35But once those tariffs are finalized in a process referred to as liquidation, it becomes a lot tougher to get your money back. So Costco is getting its rotisserie chickens in a row and filing this lawsuit to preserve their place in line for a potential refund. Neil, other retailers have been quietly doing this in the background, including the cosmetics group Revlon and motorcycle maker Kawasaki. But Costco is Costco. It's the biggest company yet to cook up a lawsuit like this. And the first company who sells$1.50 hot dogs to file a lawsuit like this. Let's go back to the oral arguments of this case at the Supreme Court.

9:11The justices broadly, both conservative and liberal, were very skeptical that Trump has the power to levy these tariffs, which amount to almost$90 billion. They've collected almost$90 billion in tariff revenues through this particular Emergency Powers Act that is in question at the Supreme Court. So they were skeptical of this, and it seemed poised to perhaps strike it down. The problem is they even acknowledge that it would be so chaotic to get these refunds back to the companies that paid the tariffs. Justice Amy Coney Barrett even called it, quote, a mess. And so all these companies are looking at the Supreme Court casing.

9:48OK, well, it looks like maybe they'll rule against the tariffs, but I have no idea whether I'm going to get these refunds because I'm seeing these justices say they don't want to shake up the system. The Trump administration has also said that the economy would collapse should they need to refund tens of billions of dollars to these companies. So Costco is, like you said, trying to reserve its place at the front of the line to ensure that it gets these refunds. They didn't say how much they paid in tariffs in any of these court filings, but it should, you know, based on other companies that have expressed how much they have paid in tariffs, it could be hundreds of millions of dollars even into the billions.

10:20And Costco is uniquely exposed to terrorists because this is kind of a move that you wouldn't necessarily expect them to make because it ruffles the feathers in the administration and big box retailers do not want to do that. But one third of its U.S. sales come from imported goods. Nearly half of those imports come from China, Mexico and Canada. And given the fact that Costco's margins are so slim, I mean, it's the reason we all love Costco. It's because they only mark products up usually around 13 percent. So they're playing with a lot less margin than maybe an other retailer would. So they're saying we have to do something about these tariffs.

10:55And if the chance comes to get our money back, we want to jump on that. But it really all comes down to this idea of liquidation. When those tariffs become final, it becomes a lot harder to claw that money back. And so Costco wants the CPB to halt liquidation of finalizing our tariff bills until this whole thing can shake out, as well as hopefully the Supreme Court ruling the tariffs are illegal. That's what this whole thing hinges on. They do need the court to rule in their favor. Are you hesitant to use AI at work? Maybe a big, fat bonus will help. Companies large and small have rolled out juicy perks, including cash bonuses, merch and redeemable points to incentivize employees to use artificial intelligence in their workflows.

11:39Bloomberg reports, for instance, the UK based law firm Shoesmith. Side note, if I should if I just said Shoesmith, you could probably figure out what it is, has created a one point three million dollar bonus pool contingent on one million uses of Microsoft Copilot this fiscal year. The company estimates that if each employee fired up Copilot four times a day on average, then they'd hit the goal, initiating a$1 ,000 payout to each worker. The fintech giant Brex is also handing out cash in the form of spot bonuses to employees who develop innovative AI projects ranging from$150 to thousands of dollars.

12:14Companies across industries have been investing in generative AI these past few years, betting that increased automation will boost worker productivity and boost their bottom lines. But an enterprise co-pilot or Anthropic subscription doesn't come cheap, and they're feeling some heat to show a return on their AI investments. And while some employees are embracing the technology, many others aren't, whether they fear it could eventually take their jobs or they just don't see the use of it. So they're dangling a bunch of carrots to get these reluctant workers to come around. So you're a company.

12:43You just spend a ton of money on, you know, enterprise AI, bringing it into. you're going to revolutionize your company that everyone is supposed to be doing right now. And then all your employees go, I don't really know about this, whether it's because of what you mentioned. Hey, I don't want to get good at this thing that could potentially take my job. Or there's another aspect to this. If you find a great way to use AI, you kind of hoard that technique. If you found something that just magically makes your job better, you don't necessarily want to go to your boss and say, hey, I'm only working a fifth as much as Jerry over there.

13:15It just doesn't necessarily, the incentives don't align there. So companies are saying, how do we dangle these carrots? We don't necessarily want to use a stick. We want to dangle carrots in front of people. How do we accelerate this adoption curve? Hence all these very creative solutions. The other solution that another Bloomberg article highlighted was the fact that it's much easier to get people to listen to their coworkers rather than any top-down training. So they're trying to incentivize these employee training programs where if Neil finds a way that he's been using AI to dramatically increase his productivity.

13:47Have Neil teach the rest of people because people are more open to listening to Neil at our company versus a boss man. So it's just interesting to find that you've invested all this money, but how do you get over that final mile of actually getting people to adopt this technology? Yeah. Big companies like Morgan Stanley ServiceNow, HubSpot, Yelp, they're all cultivating AI influencers to tell their peers how they're using AI and also offering incentives in that regard. So you see companies trying to dangle these carrots instead of sticks because there are sticks out there. Just look at Shopify.

14:22Earlier this year, Shopify CEO Toby Lukey wrote this memo that was circulated all around Silicon Valley. And he said, using AI effectively is now a fundamental expectation of everyone at Shopify. I don't think it's feasible to opt out of learning the skill. You're welcome to try, but I cannot see this working out today and definitely not tomorrow. There's all these AI trainings that maybe you at your employer have gone through and just it's been torture. Moderna, PwC, S &P Global, Dell. These are huge companies that have rolled out AI trainings from the top down. You see a different tack from these other companies saying, well, maybe actually if Neil, I learned from Toby about how he's using AI and it's making his life easier because you are an AI influencer here at Morning Brew, then maybe I will be more amenable to use AI at work.

15:08I just called you the AI influencer. Are we influencing each other right now? Someone has to be. You've influenced me when it comes to AI for sure. It definitely comes down to just behavioral economics in general. This happens in other aspects of an employer's, you know, incentivize program wellness programs. You pay workers to walk to be a little healthier. There's, you know, credit card reward ecosystems where you pay consumers to keep using it in a certain retailer. So this is not necessarily a new concept whatsoever. How can you just apply it to this new technology of AI? All right, we're going to take a quick break and start wrapping up the year.

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17:39In the past, it's been things like the COVID-19 pandemic or ChatGPT. But for 2025, the Wikipedia page for Charlie Kirk was the most read article on its site. Over 45 million people read the page after a surge of traffic following his assassination on September 10th. Interestingly enough, 40 % of those views came from users outside the U.S., according to the Wikimedia Foundation. Joining Kirk in the top 10 were Donald Trump and Zoran Mamdani, racking up 25 and 20 million views respectively. Pope Leo also features on the list, as does Ed Gein, a serial killer active in the 1950s who drew more views than Trump and Mamdani.

18:18How is that possible? Gein was featured in a Netflix series this year called Monsters. Neil, any surprises on 2025's edition? Not a ton of surprises. I mean, you skipped over number two, which is deaths in 2025. And this deaths in X year is pretty much the most reliable Wikipedia page to exist. It has never, since they started doing these roundup of the top viewed articles a couple decades ago. There has never been a time where Destin X year has been below number three, because this is constantly updated. People are dying all over the world. Notable people are dying all over the world every day.

18:55So this page is being updated. So you constantly go, I mean, I haven't been to this page, but some people who are very interested in this kind of thing do go to that page every single day. So it racks up a ton of views. Let's talk about the pop culture entrance here. We had Severance coming in as the top TV series and number 12 Sinners at number eight, which was a movie, Weapons, another movie, Thunderbolts, Superman, Adolescence, which is another Netflix series. And when I'm thinking about the particular types of movies and TV shows that people are going to Wikipedia for, Wikipedia calls it the second screen effect.

19:28So you're watching something and you're like, what the heck is going on? I think I need a plot summary. I think that is certain. And then you open up Wikipedia while you're watching that particular show. And I think that's certainly the case with Severance, which you do need perhaps some summaries to tell you what the heck is going on. I think that's why that particular show may punch above its weight because not that many people have Apple TV or are watching Severance. It's a relatively small show in the grand scheme of things, but in terms of complexity and figuring out what's going on, it certainly lends itself to a very highly viewed Wikipedia article.

19:57We were saying where the heck is K-pop Demon Hunters, which was the biggest story, biggest entertainment product of the year, but not that hard to understand necessarily, so you don't necessarily have to go to Wikipedia like that. So yeah, Severance absolutely punching above its weight. Just in some other people news, Elon Musk jumped five spots to number six. Mr. Beast entered the list for the first time ever at number 18, hopefully because parents are Googling what the heck is my kid watching. And then Taylor Swift actually dropped out of the top 20, which is interesting because she got engaged.

20:32She released another album, but maybe it was just a little too late in the year for her to rack up the Wikipedia views. Morning Brew Daily did not make the list again, which come on, people. We're on the cusp. We're on the cusp. Joining everyone in the wrapped game was YouTube, who introduced a version of Spotify Wrapped for the videos you watch. And a new experience that lets you dive into your viewing habits over the last year, you'll get to tap through 12 cards that highlighted the top channels you liked, what your interests were, and how your taste in videos has changed over time, according to The Verge.

21:04Recap launched yesterday for US users, and you can find it on mobile and desktop by heading to the dedicated button on the YouTube page. Notably, for any YouTube music users out there, this is different. You'll still get a separate recap experience for your listening habits. And yes, this is definitely a knockoff of Spotify Wraps, but I don't care because I have to see how many golf swing tip videos and Catan highlights I watched over the past year. Okay, so tell us your recap because I went to my recap this morning. It's not there yet, so people are going to their YouTube and they don't see it.

21:34I am with you, so I don't know what kind of videos I watched this year. I assume most were recipes, but Toby, what was your top viewed videos? Yeah, so I did look through my top viewed videos, and I wrote this before I actually saw my recap. It quite literally, number one was golf swing videos. Number two was weirdly basketball strategy videos, which I can't even remember. First of all, I've never heard it framed as basketball strategy, but that's how YouTube framed it. And the number three was, in fact, Catan Tips and Catan Viewing. My top channel was a Catan YouTuber who goes by the name of Dandy Drew.

22:09So I kind of had a good sense because unlike music where things are just kind of shuffling in, you're usually being pretty intentional about what you choose to watch on YouTube. So I don't think this recap is going to be as widely shared as Spotify because Spotify, you just listen to so many songs. You know what you're watching on YouTube. I can remember most of the videos I watch. So maybe it's not going to be quite as viral, but it was interesting to peek into the mind of myself and realize, yeah, I do know myself pretty dang well. Also, for any Apple music lovers out there, your replay is now available.

22:41Apple got ahead of Spotify Rap this year to launch its yearly recap. On a macro front, Apple announced the top song of 2025 was Rosé and Bruno Mars' Apete, or APT. Kendrick Lamar and SZA followed in second place with Luther. Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars rounded out the top three with Die With A Smile. If you're looking for the first song with only one artist to make the list, that would be Kendrick Lamar's Not Like Us, followed by Billie Eilish in fifth place with Birds of a Feather. Neil, any of those make your listening list? Well, if you're looking for any song that was released in 2025 in the top five, you won't find it.

23:17All of the top Apple Music songs from 2025 were actually released in 2024, four, which kind of tells you a lot about the year in music we had. We did have a lot of good music getting killed geese shout out. Uh, but that is not going to make the top list here. And it was just kind of striking that all of the top music of this year was actually released last year. The top artists. I don't know if you've ever heard of this guy on Apple music was, it was Drake actually. Can you believe that? What an upset. All right. So we're looking, so we got Apple music, got YouTube and they're trying to front run Spotify wrapped, which should come out any day, perhaps today, perhaps tomorrow.