Federal Funding Bill's Market Impact & Goodbye to the Penny?

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0:28Good Morning Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, the House passed a sweeping tax bill. We'll tell you what it means for the economy and for your wallet. Then RIP to the penny. The U.S. Treasury will stop minting one set coins in a matter of weeks. It's Friday, May 23rd. Let's ride.

0:52If you're listening to today's episode on the Friday before Memorial Day weekend, well, you're committed to being informed. So why don't you prove it by coming to Morning Brew Daily's In Real Life Trivia Night on June 3rd, where you can create a team and compete against other listeners in what will be a really amazing night. Toby and I are hosting, of course, and we are hard at work writing questions that will entertain and delight. Plus, we can't wait to meet you all in person. Here are the details. It's going to be in New York City, June 3rd. That's a Tuesday at 6 p.m. at a very trendy bar in the East Village.

1:26We can't tell you the exact location on air that comes when you sign up for the event, which you can do by following the link in the show description. I am so excited for this, Neil, because it means we get to hang out with you all in person and be wildly impressed with how smart and plugged into the news cycle you guys are. So once more, June 3rd, 6 p.m. in the East Village Trivia Night with Neil and I, there will be prizes. So sign up at the link in the show description. And now a word from our sponsor, Iterable. Neil, you're a group chat guy. I see you discussing show topics with your college friends, but everyone's on different time zones, right?

2:02Oh yeah. I'll drop a banger of a trivia question at 7am after we wrap up the show and eight hours later, someone chimes in with the answer. But they always get it right because your friends are smart. But that's what marketing feels like when you're locked into fixed campaigns. You might send a message when you're ready because your campaign calendar says so, but it might not be when your customer is ready. Iterable flips that. It listens to the customer, not the calendar. So the message hits when they open the app, browse a product, really whenever the opportune moment is. It's getting the whole group chat on the same time zone, real-time personalized engagement powered by AI and fueled by customer data across every channel.

2:39So stop marketing like it's 4 a.m. in the wrong time zone. Go to endthecampaign.com. Eczema isn't always obvious, but it's real. and so is the relief from EBCLIS. After an initial dosing phase, about four in 10 people taking EBCLIS achieved itch relief and clear or almost clear skin at 16 weeks. And most of those people maintain skin that's still more clear at one year with monthly dosing. EBCLIS, LibriKizumab, LBKZ, a 250 milligram per two milliliter injection is a prescription medicine used to treat adults and children 12 years of age and older who weigh at least 88 pounds or 40 kilograms with moderate to severe eczema.

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3:46You may not have been productive at work counting down the hours till MDW, but the House of Representatives was. Republicans in the chamber passed a sweeping tax and spending package they've dubbed the one big beautiful bill that will have major implications for the U.S. economy and your personal finances. The bill is indeed big, containing a smorgasbord of GOP priorities. It extends President Trump's tax cuts for all income groups from 2017, which were set to expire at the end of this year and heaps on even more tax relief on top of that, including a bigger child tax credit, a higher standard deduction, and the elimination of taxes on tips, overtime pay, and social security benefits.

4:27It also ramps up spending on certain things like border security, national defense, and support for farmers. It decreases spending on certain things too, like Medicare, food aid, and tax credits for clean energy products. But that's not enough in savings to account for the lost revenue from the tax cuts. Independent analysts estimate that the bill will increase budget deficits by about$2.7 trillion over a decade, which has spooked the bond market in recent days by worsening the U.S.'s already concerning fiscal situation. Democrats don't find this bill beautiful at all, calling it a reverse Robin Hood situation in which the government is taking from the social safety net to fund tax cuts for the wealthy, but they're not in the majority.

5:08So even though no Dems voted for it, it may become the law. And I say may, because as you know from Schoolhouse Rock, the bill will now head to the Senate, which must also pass it before President Trump makes it official through his signature. So Toby, a long way to go, but this sweeping tax bill is one step closer to reality. So let's start with how this might affect your tax bill, though. More than eight in 10 households would get a tax cut in 2026 under this bill's current form. The average household is looking at a 2026 tax cut of around$2 ,900 compared to what it would pay if those 2017 cuts actually went and expired.

5:44So pretty solid there, but also 60 % of those tax cuts would go to the top 20 % of households with more than one third going to those making over$460 ,000 or more. If you're a family, you're also going to stand to benefit from this. There's a temporary$500 increase in the child tax credit, plus all newborns are going to be given$1 ,000 in this kind of unique concept called a Trump account. It's fueled by a one-time deposit by the federal government. So if that bill passes, parents can contribute to that account. It would just go towards a broad-based market tracking the U.S. stock index. So that is kind of the play-by-play of who specifically is going to affect, which is a wide and broad swath of people.

6:27It will also disproportionately help higher income earners in New York, New Jersey, California, these high-income states because there's this SALT tax deduction, which was probably the biggest sticking point of the bill, the state and local tax deduction, which was capped at$10 ,000 in 2017. That is now expanding to$40 ,000 up until incomes of$500 ,000. That's a big win if you're a property owner in the northern New Jersey suburbs listening to this or New York or any other higher-tax jurisdiction because you're going to be able to deduct a lot more of your taxes now under the new cap for the next few years.

7:06And then I also want to talk about what this bill did to clean energy in order to get it across the finish line. Congress basically completely cut clean energy credits, which is a big blowback to renewable energy companies, specifically rooftop solar companies who stood to benefit from a lot of these clean energy kind of rebates under the Inflation Reduction Act. Those credits are now set to go away in 2028. And you saw that reflected in the market. Sunrun, the biggest rooftop solar company in the country, fell 37 percent yesterday. So this was kind of like Armageddon for a lot of those clean energy solar companies as well as wind companies.

7:42Anyone really who is standing to benefit from those IRA tax credits. So looking ahead, the Senate still has to pass this bill before it heads to President Trump's desk for his signature. There could be a lot of wrangling, and it might be in response to what's happening in the bond market. Yesterday, we saw 20-year bonds and 30-year bonds go above 5%. Remember, they've been tracking up for the past few months. They hit 5 % yesterday, which is a very spooky level. It means that borrowing costs are going up across the economy. If you're going to finance a car, if you're going to mortgage your house, we have mortgage rates at over 7 % now.

8:20So that is raising borrowing costs across the economy. And the reason for that is bond investors are very concerned about the America, about the United States fiscal situation. We just had this Moody's credit rating cut on Friday. And the general feeling right now with this bill adding two point seven trillion dollars to deficits is that the United States is getting into is digging itself into a deeper and deeper hole. And when bond yields go up, that means that's basically a proxy for how much it costs the government to borrow. So we're already paying$1.1 trillion in interest payments per year last year.

8:56And now we're going to have even, you know, when you borrow money, it's going to the interest payments are going to continue go up. So the bond market is throwing a bit of a tantrum. We'll see whether lawmakers respond by paring back some of the deepest cuts of this bill. Moving on, the penny has entered a heads-eye-win, tails-you-lose scenario with the U.S. Treasury. One-cent coins are being officially phased out. According to the Wall Street Journal, the Treasury Department will stop putting new pennies into circulation by early next year, instructing businesses to get ready to round prices up or down.

9:29You don't need to pay a penny for the government's thoughts to figure out why they pulled the plug. There has been a long bipartisan effort to ditch the lowest unit of American currency, spanning from Obama to Trump, primarily due to costs. The Mint expects to save about$56 million a year through reduced material costs after putting an end to the most confounding of currency calculus. Each penny is worth only one cent, but costs nearly four cents to make. Add it all up, and the U.S. lost more than$85 million last year on the coin. As for what is going to happen to prices, non-cash transactions will still be priced in exact increments, but businesses will have to round prices to the nearest five cents for cash transactions.

10:12Neil, it was probably time. 60 % of actively circulating coins sit in coin jars, according to the Federal Reserve. But still, the penny is so much a part of American culture. Penny stocks, a penny saved, it's a penny earned. Offering your two cents, it's hard to imagine life without it. And it will still stick around. And that's because we're not eliminating the concept of the penny. We're just eliminating the actual coin itself. That's exactly what our friends to the north did, Canada, in 2013. They eliminated the penny, but prices online specifically will probably stay in the cent range. You'll probably buy something for$2.11 or$2.16 because when you pay with a credit card, you don't need to pay with an actual penny itself.

10:59So it'll be very interesting to see how retailers play this to say whether you go into a store and you see a cash version, a cash price for a particular good that's rounded up to five cents, or you see a credit card price that is the exact change that you would pay typically in cash, but you're with a penny, but you wouldn't any more. So we'll see how retailers play. This is going to be very interesting. It hasn't really shaken up things in Canada. They've been in this new regime for 12 years. They have the concept of the penny, but they don't have a one cent coin itself. It's worked out just fine.

11:32Yeah, and no need to go and throw your pennies away right now if you even have any because they will remain legal tender. You can pay with them. And then also fewer than one in five payments are actually made in cash according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. So it's not going to rock a lot of boats. A lot of people are already tapping their Apple Pay. They're paying with credit cards. And yeah, Americans throw away up to$68 million in coins a year. So it's not like people are really using these things a lot. But one thing that is a second-order effect of this is that if pennies go out of circulation, what's going to become more in demand?

12:08And that are nickels. And the nickel is a disaster when it comes to its production costs. Obviously, a nickel is worth$0.05. It costs about$0.14 to produce in the last fiscal year. So that's up 20 % from the year before. So you're saying like, hey, we're trying to save money here by phasing out the penny. The nickel might be even more costly. barbenheimer it ain't but this weekend's box office matchup of mission impossible versus the live action lilo and stitch is certainly popcorn worthy just to set the stage mission impossible the final reckoning is set to hit theaters as the last installment in what's become hollywood's greatest action franchise tom cruise has left it all on the court playing ethan hunt a field agent whose death-defying stunts include a halo jump driving a motorcycle off a cliff and in final reckoning hanging off the side of a biplane zooming at 170 miles per hour.

12:59And then there's Lilo and Stitch, Disney's live action remake of the 2002 cult classic featuring a little blue alien who causes chaos on Earth after crash landing into Hawaii. While flying under the radar for more than a decade, Stitch has turned into IP gold for Disney, attracting legions of fans who were born years after the original came out. On Disney +, for example, Lilo and Stitch content is viewed about as much as The Little Mermaid. So listeners, which movie do you think is projected to earn more at theaters this weekend? The answer is Lilo and Stitch, which is expected to gross more than$165 million domestically, which would be as monstrous as its title character.

13:38Mission Impossible is also supposed to perform well, but not as well with projections of around$80 million. Toby, in the double feature, which are you seeing first? Well, first of all, I'm trying to come up with the Barbenheimer version of this. And all I got is Miss Stitch Impossililo or Mission Stitch Possible. They're all bad. So don't even try to stitch them together, I guess, pun intended there. But yeah, Lilo and Stitch is just this movie that has gained so much groundswell. It was originally supposed to just be a direct to streaming sort of thing. But then over the last five years, Stitch has just exploded in terms of its popularity.

14:14You just look at the merch sales. Just five years ago, they were pulling in$200 million from this franchise, which isn't bad. But then that has swelled to$2.6 billion in Disney's last 2024 fiscal year. So there has just been this groundswell of support. A lot of it from young women who grew up watching the original film and have kind of aged into their lives and still just have very good nostalgic memories of it. But it's also brought in a lot of new fans as well. And Disney is on it with the merch. They're putting it on everything from dog collars to pineapple-shaped goblets. They are going hard in the paint on this because they remember when they released 2013's Frozen, no one could get Elsa dresses anywhere, and it was just this huge crunch from parents.

14:57They know the merch aspect of this calculus is very important, so they are just printing like you wouldn't believe the amount of merch. So will this be a record-setting weekend? It could possibly because the record for Memorial Day box office grosses was in 2013 when we had Fast and Furious 6, which is maybe the only analog that you have for the longevity of Mission Impossible, was paired with the Hangover Part 3. So that's what Lilo & Stitch and the final Mission Impossible are going after. The expectations for Lilo & Stitch has just gradually got higher and higher and higher over the past few weeks.

15:34Just four days ago, it was 120, just three weeks ago, it was 120 million. Now it's 165 million. And so there's been an amazing groundswell of support for Lilo and Stitch. This thing is going to be a behemoth at the box office. Up next, let's talk about our Stock of the Week and Dog of the Week. Does it ever feel like you're a marketing professional just speaking into the void? But with LinkedIn ads, you can know you're reaching the right decision makers, a network of 130 million of them, in fact. You can even target buyers by job title, industry, company, seniority, skills, and did I say job title?

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16:50It's time for Stock of the Week, Dog of the Week, the segment where Toby and I pick one stock that's already at their lake house and another that's sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic. I won the pre-show javelin toss, so I get to go first. And my Stock of the Week is Bitcoin, which celebrated Bitcoin Pizza Day this week by reaching an all-time high at over$111 ,000 per token. That is a 45 % increase from its 2025 low on April 8th and can be chalked up to a variety of factors. One, investors everywhere have piled into riskier assets as Trump walked back his many tariffs. Two, Trump's pro-crypto agenda is advancing with a bill regulating stablecoins passing a key Senate hurdle.

17:32And three, Bitcoin is seeing a lot more institutional money. The number of Bitcoin held by public companies has jumped 31 % to about$350 billion since the beginning of the year, accounting for 15 % of the total Bitcoin supply. Even Bitcoin hater Jamie Diamond, who leads JP Morgan, said, I defend your right to buy Bitcoin and said the bank would let clients invest in it. It's another I told you so moment for crypto's biggest advocates, including Michael Saylor of MicroStrategy, a company that pioneered the concept of stashing its cash in Bitcoin. On Wednesday, he wrote on X, if you're not buying Bitcoin at the all-time high, you're leaving money on the table.

18:10So Toby, here's Bitcoin once again flexing of 18 % for the year compared to the flat year-to-date performance of the S &P 500. Who would have thought Michael Saylor would say such a thing as that? But yeah, it was a big day for Bitcoin, not just because it It reached an all-time high, but also there was this big gala that Trump hosted last night where he brought in hundreds of the top investors in his meme coin, aka Trump coin, for this intimate private dinner where he just spoke about his vision for crypto in the economy ahead. The price of admission ranged anywhere from$55 ,000 all the way up to$37.7 million.

18:45They hosted this big competition. Whoever was holding the most coins over a certain period got to have dinner with Trump. And there was a lot of protesters outside saying like, hey, this is exactly what we don't want. You do not necessarily want a means of exchanging access to the president by buying his coin, especially if it comes to foreign investors as well. So two kind of things were happening in parallel here that Bitcoin hitting an all time high in this big dinner with access to the president, which just shows the place crypto occupies in our country right now. My dog of the week is Nike because it just did the business equivalent of crawling back to your ex five years later saying, you were right, I needed to work on myself, but please take me back.

19:24Yep, Nike is back selling on Amazon after a self-imposed breakup in 2019 to focus on their own DTC sales and crack down on counterfeits and low-quality items. The deal is a win for Amazon, who's been trying to attract more high-end brands back to its platform. But for Nike, it represents the unwinding of a strategy that led to a 35 % drawdown in its share price over the last five years, where it shunned wholesale partners to focus on its own website sales. However, that strategy pivot was kind of overshadowed by a bigger announcement too yesterday. Price hikes are coming. Starting June 1st, some Nike gear will cost up to$10 more.

20:03You can expect to pay$5 more for sneakers under$150 and$10 more for any above that range. New CEO Elliot Hill is trying to reverse a revenue slump that's lost longer than a pair of beat up Air Force Ones. But when that turnaround plan involves higher prices and a return to Amazon, you get the muted response from the market we saw this week, Neil. The company's sales dropped 9 % last quarter, 17 % drop in China, and its digital sales are also going down the toilet in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. E-commerce sales were down 25%, Greater China 20%. percent. Their current strategy, especially online, is not working, which is probably why you see them going back to Amazon.

20:45They thought they could just be the storefront themselves and really tighten the distribution path for people buying Nikes. And now the fact that they're going, crawling back to their ex, going back to Amazon shows that whatever strategy they were pursuing, which was really tighten that window, it was not working at all. Elliot Hill came in last year with a mission to turn around the company. It has proven very difficult to do. He's been there for many months and you don't see any movement in improvements. Yeah. One of the big strategy mistakes that they're trying to recover from is they leaned way too heavily on their workhorses, their classic sneakers, like Air Force Ones, the Jordan line, their Pegasuses to kind of juice demand online, but they kind of overproduced a lot of those skews.

21:28And now they're trying to push people back to more of their full price sneakers, stuff like Air Max shoes with a focus on running as well. So it's just fascinating to see like the renaissance of Nike is passing through Amazon, which is not necessarily something that you would equate with returning the luster to the brand. So I don't know. Elliott Hill still has only been there for a little bit. But yeah, this turnaround is looking harder than initially expected. Let's bring to the finish ahead of the long weekend with some final headlines. President Trump turned his war against Harvard up to volume 11.

22:01His administration blocked the university from enrolling international students and forcing the existing ones to transfer or else lose their legal status by revoking Harvard's student and exchange visitor program certification. In a statement, the Department of Homeland Security cited Harvard's unsafe campus environment that permits, quote, anti-American pro-terrorist agitators to harass and physically assault individuals, including many Jewish students, and otherwise obstruct its once venerable learning environment. Harvard responded that the move was unlawful and will support its international students, who currently make up 27 % of its student body, up from 20 % in 2011.

22:38Critics said the move amounted to America shooting itself in the foot by turning away the best and brightest from coming to study here, and it would certainly leave Harvard in a gaping financial hole? Yeah. Harvard says it's got nearly 10 ,000 people in its international academic population. And also those people are paying more to attend the institution. When room and board are included, the total cost usually adds up to around$87 ,000. So that is going to be a massive financial hit. And it just adds to the financial pressure that Harvard's already facing. Remember, the Trump administration has already frozen more than$2.6 billion dollars of Harvard's funding.

23:15They've cut off future grants. They've also called for it to lose its tax exempt status. So this is just the latest in a series of financial blows. Which means you'll probably see a legal challenge that blocks us from going into effect, which it would in the next few days. They could seek an emergency injunction. Something's happening later today that hasn't occurred in over 10 years. All six of Oscar Mayer's Wienermobiles will be in the same place. But this meetup won't be friendly. The Wienermobiles will race against each other at Indianapolis Motor Speedway in the inaugural Weenie 500, a promotional event ahead of the Indianapolis 500 on Sunday.

23:52And the stakes couldn't be higher with regional hot dog supremacy on the line. Each Wienermobile will represent a different regional hot dog. The New York dog, the Southeast Slaw dog, Chili dog in the South, Shy dog in the Midwest, Seattle dog from the Northwest, and Sonoran dog from the Southwest in the ultimate test of toppings. Who you got? I'm going New York, baby. Hometown favorite here. But the Weenie 500 might be the greatest idea in human history. The issue is that these things are not great cars, however. Their long wheelbase makes their turning radius about the same as a battleship, so don't expect the Wieners to pick up any lap time through the corners.

24:34But on the straights, also don't expect them to pick up much time either because these Wiener Robles ride on an Isuzu NPR truck chassis powered by a gas-fed 330 horsepower, 6-liter General Motors V8 engine, which means they can go 0-60 and wait for it, 24 seconds. So, yes, Neil, these things are not built for speed, but they are built for spectacle. Finally, Dr. Beach is back doing the thing he does best, ranking beaches on the internet. Stefan Leatherman, a coastal scientist at Florida International University who goes by Dr. Beach, has updated his annual beach rankings. And we have a new number one.