Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again

0:00Does 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? See how you can avoid the void and reach the right buyers with LinkedIn ads. Spend$250 on your first campaign and get a free$250 credit for the next one. Get started at linkedin.com slash campaign. Terms and conditions apply. Good Morning Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell.

0:35Today, Yale is doing something even more unthinkable than when they rejected me. 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.

0:55Good Thursday morning. We missed a big birthday yesterday. YouTube turned 20 years old. Time sure does fly when you go down the Denver Airborne conspiracy rabbit hole. On April 23rd, 2005, the first video was uploaded to YouTube, grainy 19-second footage of a visit to the elephant enclosure at the San Diego Zoo. The 20 years since has seen a lot of videos and a lot of growth, from Lonely Island to the Evolution of Dance to Kony 2012 to Gangnam Style to Mr. Beast. Now, YouTube is estimated to be worth about$550 billion as a standalone business, more than Netflix. Toby, I know it's hard to choose, but I have to ask, what's your favorite YouTube video ever?

1:39Well, 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? 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.

2:18This is a inside look into what is considered the hardest ultra marathon 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? I mean, recently it's been Rory McIlroy, every shot final round at the Masters. I've been watching that one on repeat. Recency bias, but I think that would be as well. Totally recency bias. And now a word from our sponsor, Planet Out. Neil, you ever upgrade your phone and immediately start to wonder how you were ever rocking the old one?

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3:24Get your hands on the oat milk that has it all. Visit planetoat.com for more. This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Checking off the boxes on your to-do list is a great feeling. And when it comes to checking off coverage, a State Farm agent can help you choose an option that's right for you. Whether you prefer talking in person, on the phone, or using the award-winning app. It's nice knowing you have help finding coverage that best fits your needs. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. 2.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.

4:04And yesterday, they got a few of those tasty morsels, which pushed indexes into green territory once 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. 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.

4:41The 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. 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.

5:17Yeah, the trade war is going to the stock market and they're like, why are you so obsessed with me? Because the market is hanging on every single word coming out of the White House from either President Trump or Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. It surged more than 2 % after Trump said we would probably see a come down in the tariffs, But then it went a little bit down after after percent said, well, this wouldn't be unilateral. We need to actually get a deal with China. And they're down again this morning in futures trading S &P 500 is down about point five percent because China just came out and said, well, we haven't heard from the White House.

5:54No one's called us. And here's the thing about negotiating with China. They do not call you first. There's only one time in recent memory when a Chinese leader initiated contact with an American leader, and that was after September 11, 2001, when they sent a telegram of condolence to George W. Bush. But still, George Bush still had to make the first call. So if the Americans are intent on negotiating with China, they cannot rely on Xi Jinping to make the call because they just don't do that. 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.

6:27But 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. 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 CEO has kind of sounded the alarm here and said, we're talking about 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.

7:02Right 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. And if we keep declining, then that's when we start entering, you know, historically low territory. Yeah. You're hearing from pretty much everyone in the freight industry trying to shout from the rooftops, like you guys don't know what's going on here, especially in Southern California, where 500 ,000 people work in logistics and where, you know, most trade from China comes through the ports.

7:45We do$600 billion worth of trade with China. Most of that, 95 % of that comes via ocean shipping to the port of Long Beach and Los Angeles. So Craig Fuller, who founded the trade publication Freight Waves, warned of about the trucking industry where, you know, these ships come in with their containers and then to get to their warehouses in, you know, inland California, they have to be trucked in. He said that year over year trucking activity out of Los Angeles is down 23 percent. It will likely drop to 50 percent in the coming weeks if there isn't a trade war resolution. He said massive layoffs are coming to the West Coast trucking sector, where logistics is the second largest employment sector in the entire region.

8:26So you have Ryan Peterson of Flexport, who is one of the biggest logistics firms out there. This guy, you know, inside in the trucking industry, warning of a major slowdown, major layoffs, businesses getting her unless there isn't a come down in tariffs. So it seems like President Trump is, you know, he did talk to Walmart, Target and Home Depot CEO, warning of empty shelves, mass layoffs. So we'll see what happens. I mean, China said that there's no negotiations going on, but markets are very much, you know, hanging on every word of this because of the huge economic impact it has. The nation's top universities are stockpiling cash at levels not seen since COVID or the great financial crisis to prepare for a financial standoff with the federal government.

9:09The Trump administration has so far pulled, suspended, or put under review more than$10 billion in funding to schools. It says don't do enough to combat antisemitism. The colleges dispute those claims, but they're still breaking into the piggy bank to weather the upcoming storm. Harvard raised$750 million in a bond deal, Northwestern,$500 million, and Princeton University,$320 million. But Yale is going even further. The Bulldogs are reportedly aiming to sell up to$6 billion of their private equity holdings, equivalent to nearly 15 % of its gargantuan$41 billion endowment. That Yale would consider shaving off private equity holdings is raising a whole lot of eyebrows because a few decades ago, Yale pioneered an endowment strategy literally called the Yale endowment model that emphasized illiquid investments like private equity over the traditional mix of stocks and bonds.

10:06This approach changed institutional investing forever, and some argue that Yale's retreat from private equity may be a worrying signal for the sector more broadly. But however they're doing it through bond sales or by selling private equity, it's clear that top colleges are building a financial fortress because economic winter may be coming. 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.

10:37So build up your finances separate of what the government gives you. 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. So a.k.a. 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 you know the head of the general assembly so this is all this to say this is not necessarily a new thing that we are seeing maybe the ways that the uh the colleges are kind of building up their financial fortress as you described it are new though 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.

11:37Yeah. So David Swenson, a few decades ago, he was this guy that came in to lead the Yale Endowment. He looked at what colleges were doing and he said, OK, you got 64 percent in stocks and 40 percent in bonds. These are very liquid investments, meaning you can sell them very quickly and convert them into cash. And he thinks he said, oh, why aren't we doing more illiquid investments? Why aren't we doing venture capital? Why aren't we doing real estate? Why aren't we doing private equity? Those could probably generate better returns. And, you know, we probably don't need this cash right away. So we changed up Yale's investment model.

12:08Pretty much every single college, you know, followed this path. And the fact that they're selling or they're planning to sell$6 billion worth of private equity is certainly a warning signal to this sector. There's been a boom in private equity, certainly over the last decade. But in recent years, it's been very hard to find exits for companies. The way private equity works is you typically buy a company, you make it more efficient, you pump up the value, and then you sell it off after 10 years that you own it. The problem is in this market environment over the past few years, it's been very hard to sell that off.

12:42And maybe Yale is a canary in the coal mine for a broader reckoning in private equity. 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 kip yegan is a kenyan track star who is widely acknowledged to be the greatest female middle distance runner of all time and 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 kip yegan versus 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 On and Hoka.

13:21It'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 that attack the margins in order to make them incrementally faster. Precise pacing formations, carefully calibrated nutrition, and ideal conditions 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.

13:58My first question when I saw this was, well, can she do it? Is that even possible? Well, there were scientists that did a study. They posted it in the Journal of the Royal Society Open Science. They said, yes, she could do it under very specific conditions. She could run 359.37 with drafting provided by one pacer in front and one in back. And then you change out with two other pacers at 800 meters. They said if these conditions are fulfilled, then she could possibly do it. And I'm sure Nike is really hoping she does. But maybe it doesn't even matter because they're in this for the publicity anyway and to promote themselves as the purveyors of a super shoe and athletics that they've kind of missed the boat on over the past few years.

14:43Yeah, 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 Kip-Yagan is truly just like the GOAT middle distance runner for women. And unfortunately, she's not necessarily super close. I mean, 4.07, it seems like it's close. I mean, seven seconds, but that is a gargantuan model. Right now, her 1 ,500 world record is 3.49, and that converts roughly to a 406.5 second mile. So there's still that pretty big gap there. So 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.

15:23So there are levers and if anyone can do it, it is her, but I don't know. I don't want to put - Here's the thing, it doesn't matter though. It doesn't matter, yeah. Because we're talking about elite runners and Nike in the same sentence And that's all they want because during the previous thing that they did with Ellie Kipchoge, they released the Vaporfly, which was their super shoe that changed running forever. So maybe they've got another super shoe in store that they're going to roll out with this particular event. But it's going to be cool, and we will definitely watch. And I also have to bring up, Toby, you've got a big race coming up on Sunday.

15:56Toby 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 Kipyagin shape, so we're just going to leave the bib number a mystery and then report back if it goes well. Speaking of numbers, Neil's got some coming up next. 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.

16:33And most of those people maintain skin that's still more clear at one year with monthly dosing.

17:03Tell your doctor if you have new or worsening eye problems. You should not receive a live vaccine when treated with EpGliss. Before starting EpGliss, tell your doctor if you have a parasitic infection. Searching for real relief? Ask your doctor about EpGliss and visit epgliss.lily.com or call 1-800-LILY-RX or 1-800-545-5979. Tuesday on NBC, Jimmy Fallon and Bozema St. John host the highly anticipated new competition show. I hired 10 creatives from all walks of life. They will be battling it out to see who can impress the world's biggest brands. This is a huge opportunity. This is the battle for the next big idea.

17:38This is not Play Play. We're spending millions of dollars. I'm so excited to embark on this adventure with all of you. Make the best idea win! On Brand with Jimmy Fallon. Series premiere Tuesday on NBC. Welcome to Neil's Numbers, the segment where I share three stats from the week's news that will have your brain purring like a V10 engine on a Porsche Carrera GT. My first number is$1 trillion, which is how much wealth was created for the 19 richest American households last year. Yes, just 19 households, think Elon Musk, Zuckerberg, Bezos, Gates, and Buffett, increased their wealth by$1 trillion in a single year.

18:15That is more than the value of Switzerland's entire economy, according to the Wall Street Journal. And if you stacked$1 trillion in dollar bills on top of each other, it would reach more than a quarter of the way to the moon. It means that the super billionaire class now controls a record share of the United States' total wealth. Back in 1982, the 0.0001%, the richest of the rich in America, accounted for 0.1 % of America's total wealth. That was 11 households back then. Now, the 19 richest households control 1.8 % of America's total wealth, following the biggest one-year increase on record last year.

18:52Toby, thanks to the U.S. economy's growth over the past few decades, every group has seen their net worth go up. But even as the overall pie has expanded, the top, top echelon accounts for a bigger slice. 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. Most of their wealth is tied up in the stock market and 2024 was a very good year.

19:29Together, 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. For my next number, meat is having a renaissance. Sales of poultry, beef, pork, lamb, and other meat in the United States reached a record$105 billion last year, according to the New York Times. Americans ate nearly 7 % more meat last year than before the pandemic, while the number of people who said they're trying to eat less meat dropped to the lowest level in at least five years, just 22%.

20:09If you're surprised by this, I know, me too. It was only a few years ago that Americans were foul on foul. They wouldn't touch it with a 10-foot skewer. The reasons were numerous. Meat was seen as unhealthy, bad for the climate and cruel to the animals. And into the meatless void came a plant-based rush. Burger King introduced the Impossible Whopper. Top restaurant 11 Madison Park went vegan and the recipe site Epicurious banned beef from all its future content. But if meat was so over back then, it is so back right now. Just look at Texas Roadhouse, which grew sales 15 percent last year and overtook Olive Garden as the country's top casual dining chain.

20:48And what's fascinating, Toby, is that meat is being embraced by people on both the right and the left. There's this bipartisan or nonpartisan movement to put meat back on the culinary map. What is going on here? 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. A lot of it also might coincide with weight loss drugs like Ozempic taking off.

21:28When 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 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 nutrition experts and also just people who analyze the food industry said this was a crazy turnaround.

22:02Cause 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. For my final number, a movie about cardinals gathering in secret to elect a new pope is booming in popularity as cardinals gather in secret to elect a new pope. Streaming viewership for Conclave, last year's Oscar-winning drama depicting a fictionalized vote on the next pope, has jumped 283 % after Pope Francis's death. On April 20th, right before the Pope died, people watched 1.8 million minutes of Conclave.

22:40On Monday, that increased to 6.9 million minutes watched. Those numbers could get much bigger because on Tuesday, the movie became available to stream for Amazon Prime members before you had to rent or buy it. So it's clear that people are turning to Conclave to learn more about this mysterious process by which cardinals seal themselves off from the world to elect a new leader. But is the fictional account accurate? Experts say, honestly, yeah, for the most part. Sure, some of it is a little overdramatic, but according to Catholic historian Kathleen Sprouse Cummings, the film did a great job of portraying the types of conversations that happened before a conclave and nailed a lot of the details.

23:19Toby, talk about making a timely movie. 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. 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.

23:52And the Cardinals actually do not address each other the way that they do in the film. 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. 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.

24:27As 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 ChatGPT, Nick Turley. When asked whether his company would seek to buy Google's browser, he responded, yes, 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. It would represent an avenue to find its way onto Android smartphones after being mostly stonewalled on that front.