Trump Announces 90-Day Tariff Pause & Drones Deliver Your Packages?

0:00This 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.

0:27Good Morning Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, Trump paused most tariffs and the S &P 500 had its best day since 2008. Hope you bought the dip. Then what the heck is going on in the bond market that has investors so spooked? It's Thursday, April 10th. Let's ride.

0:49Who among us hasn't left something valuable in an Uber? Maybe it was your phone or AirPods that you had to scramble to recover. Others leave a lot weirder things behind. Uber just released its Lost and Found Index for 2025, which lists the most unique items riders left in cars. They include a mannequin head with human hair, a chainsaw, a live pet turtle, 10 live lobsters, a Viking drinking horn, a taxidermied rabbit, and someone's divorce papers. Toby, kind of wish I shared a ride with a person drinking from the Viking horn. I love this report every single year. It also goes through the most forgetful cities.

1:28Surprise, surprise. New York, New York is number one. Also, they kind of note some trends that emerge over the year. One big one was that a lot of people were leaving Nintendo Switches behind. They recorded over 70 instances of that. So maybe Nintendo was looking at those figures and saying, we got to update the console because everyone's just leaving them behind. And then also, here's one for you astrology lovers out there. During Mercury's April 2024 retrograde, lost items did spike. Over 7 ,000 riders lost items on April 5th alone. So if you're an astrology believer, look no further than Uber's lost and found report to justify your beliefs.

2:06Now a word from our sponsor, Tax Act. Neil, can I ask a dumb question? You've never let that stop you before. Fire away. Am I allowed to do my taxes at night? Okay, that is a dumb question. It's just every time I open a W-2 after 8 p.m., it feels like I'm summoning something dark and dangerous. Well, Tax Act is available 24-7, so summon away. It's built for whenever you want to file. Day, night, 3 a.m. Panic session. Doesn't matter. What if I hit a wall emotionally or numerically? They've still got you. Tax Act's expert assist gives you access to real tax pros who can help with the tricky stuff no matter the time.

2:42That actually sounds kind of comforting. Do they make chamomile tea too? That is two strikes, Toby. One more bad question. You're out of here. Oh, I'm just going to keep swinging. Tax Act makes it easy to file on your own terms with help when you need it and peace of mind when you're done. Just don't forget, file by April 15th at taxact.com.

3:27Brand with Jimmy Fallon. Series premiere Tuesday on NBC. Calm. President Trump checked beneath his couch cushions, found his universal tariff remote, and hit the pause button yesterday, halting his disruptive trade agenda and giving a shaking global economy a brief moment of respite. Just afternoon, the president announced that reciprocal tariffs on countries who hadn't retaliated against his levies would be paused for 90 days to allow for negotiations. Who did that apply to? literally every country except China. Under the updated trade plan, tariffs on global imports were lowered to just 10 % across the board, while levies on China were raised to 125 % effective immediately due to what Trump called a lack of respect that China has shown to the world's markets.

4:15Earlier in the day, Beijing said it was hiking its own retaliatory tariffs on the U.S. to 84 % from 34%. Despite the still frosty relationship with China, all three major indexes exploded higher after the announcement. The S &P 500 leapt by 9 % to notch its ninth best day in history. Apple traded like a meme stock and had its best day since 1998, while the magnificent seven added over a trillion dollars in market cap. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick posted a tweet that explained. He sat next to Trump as he posted one of the most extraordinary truth posts of his presidency. And judging from how the market reacted, Neil, he may have been right.

4:56The market did go ballistic. I mean, 24 hours ago, we were sitting here saying that retailers big shift away from China for their production to Vietnam, Malaysia had backfired spectacularly because now these countries were being hit with tariffs of up to 46 percent in the case of Vietnam. 24 hours later, now that seemed like a much better bet because these tariffs have been mostly removed, just 10%. And you're seeing that in the share prices of retailers. Nike up 12%, Walmart up 11%, Lululemon 16 % gap 19%. The S &P 500's Consumer Discretionary Index had its largest gain since 2008. So those moves did seem to be okay after all.

5:38Another sector I want to point out is airlines. And that's because Delta earlier in the day, as these tariffs were supposedly in effect, said ripped up their full year financial forecast. They said demand is weak. We have no idea what the heck is going to happen because of these tariffs and its impact on consumer spending. A few hours later, its stock prices up 23 percent because there is a little more clarity, not a ton of clarity at all, but a little more clarity about the future direction of these tariffs. I do just want to dive deeper into these numbers to the Nasdaq closed up more than 12 percent.

6:10That was its second best day ever in history. Look at these magnificent seven numbers. Tesla up 22%. NVIDIA up 18%. Apple up 15%. Meta 14%. All the way down to Alphabet up 10%. You really just saw these massive, massive companies just rocket upwards. And we're talking history here. So I said the second largest, second biggest jump in history. The top three spots belong to one January 3rd, 2001, where the Nasdaq jumped 14%. And then October 13th, 2008, the NASDAQ jumped 11%. That's the one in the three spots. In both of those other instances, though, the NASDAQ ended up making a new low, sometimes shortly afterwards.

6:49So that is to say that this is not necessarily saying that we're so back, mainly because there is still some uncertainty that hovers over the market right now, because this is still just a pause. So you never really know what's going to happen, even though for 90 days, it looks like there is a bit of a respite. Yeah, you had analysts and economists coming out saying, well, this was very much a relief to markets. The damage is done. KPMG's chief economist, Diane Swank, said market relief is a head fake unless the administration makes a major course correction. Uncertainty is its own tax on the economy.

7:24Analysts at Deutsche Bank said something very similar. They wrote the administration is finally signaling responsiveness to the very extreme market conditions. But even if the tariffs are permanently suspended, damage has been done to the economy via a permanent sense of unpredictability in policy. There are still huge tariffs on place, by the way, 125 percent on Chinese imports. This is the largest economy in the world, the U.S., putting a 125 percent tariff on the second largest economy in the world. Trade is going to come to a halt between these two countries unless a deal is reached. 25 % on steel, aluminum, autos, and all goods not covered by the U.S., Mexico, Canada trade agreement, 10 % on nearly all other imports.

8:06So there's still very, very heavy tariffs across the board. If you had said that at the beginning of the year that we would have 125 % tariffs on China, 25 % tariffs on Canada and Mexico, and 10 % on nearly every single other good that is imported by the United States, you would have said, well, that is a lot of tariffs, And that is what these economists are saying is going to serve as an overhang for the economy going forward. In explaining his reversal on massive tariffs, President Trump pointed to the turmoil in the bond market specifically, which he said was getting a little queasy. So here's what's been going on over there and why it likely forced his hand.

8:42Since last weekend, something very strange and very dangerous has been going on with U.S. Treasury yields. They've been spiking. In fact, the 10 years four day jump through Wednesday was the biggest since 2008. Remember, soaring yields equates to a bond fire sale because yields run inversely to prices. This dynamic was rattling Wall Street. Investors have always bought American bonds when the global economy gets jittery. Treasuries are the bedrock of global finance and probably the safest asset money can buy. So investors were feeling like they just entered the upside down in Stranger Things. Why the sell off?

9:17Well, everyone has their own theory. Some said it was being driven by highly levered hedge fund trades that were being blown up. Others hypothesized that large foreign buyers of treasuries like China and Japan were dumping them in retaliation for tariffs. And in the most pessimistic of scenarios, some claim that the selling of treasuries reflects a new era where the U.S. isn't considered the safe haven it used to be. Whatever the cause of the bond sell off, it was verging on a full blown financial crisis that would require an emergency intervention by the Federal Reserve. And that would have been untenable for Trump.

9:48So according to multiple reports, the bond plunge, even more so than the stock plunge, led him to the 90-day pause because things were about to start breaking. Let's go big picture here for a second. In the past few decades, the U.S. has boasted just faster growth, more technological advancement, more cheap energy than any other really major economy. So that has caused worldwide investors to flock to, quote, American exceptionalism by buying a lot of its assets. But now suddenly that narrative is shifting a little bit. The U.S. is just a little less predictable. It's more antagonistic. It's definitely getting more isolated.

10:25So foreign investors are looking around saying, huh, it doesn't feel as safe anymore. So there might be some of that coming forward to the front of why this bond market is behaving like it is. Obviously, technical factors probably played some role. You know, hedge funds are these institutions that might have been forced to liquidate some of its holdings because their trades started going south on them. But technical factors can't go as far to explain why yields were behaving as they were, especially weeks prior, too. So a lot of this is tied to, again, I'm still big picture here, U.S. dollar dominance.

10:59The dollar has always been the U.S., or not always, but recently has been the world's reserve currency. And so investors in central banks use dollars to pay for things like imports, repay debt in emergencies. Businesses use it to facilitate cross-border payments. And all of that creates this huge need to hold dollars, which are typically invested in a treasury. So the fact that the dollar is a reserve status has contributed to U.S. Treasuries being the safe haven asset. So all of these things with a weakening dollar and, you know, treasury yields behaving so strangely has really upended so much of the global order, which is why people are pointing to specifically the bond market as an explanation for why Trump instituted this 90 day pause, because it just is the plumbing of the global financial system.

11:42And this is not the first time that a spiking yields or the bond market turmoil had led a world leader to capitulate on their big economic plans. Back in 2022, you might remember the new UK Prime Minister Liz Truss unveiled this new budget, sweeping tax cuts, a lot of borrowing from the government to pay for that. Government bonds spiked. It was almost a full-blown financial crisis. The Bank of England had to step in and she pulled that budget off the table and then later resigned. So the bond market is extremely powerful. The Bank of England in that case had to intervene and the Federal Reserve might have had to in a few days if things didn't calm down.

12:22And, you know, that seems to have forced Trump's hand. Let's move on. It's a bird. It's a plane. No, it's an autonomous aircraft from a company called Zipline teaming up with Walmart to finally solve last mile delivery for good. The idea of drones filling in delivery gaps in distribution networks has long been a pipe dream for companies like Amazon and Walmart. Instead of using big traffic-clogging trucks or people out on foot, drones can cover big chunks of a metro area with minimal cost and footprint. It's the thesis behind Zipline, an airborne delivery service that began rolling out in Dallas-Fort Worth area this week.

12:57Zipline drones, which is actually a term they avoid, preferring the name aircraft instead, come in two forms. One can hover in place using five propellers and take off vertically with a range of about 10 miles. When it arrives somewhere, a little baby craft called a Zip drops down a tether to deliver your goods. The other craft looks like a glider and go up to 120 miles and deliver its payload via parachute. The applications go beyond getting your toilet paper each month. Zipline has already worked to deliver life-saving medicines in places like Rwanda and Kenya, but it's also cutting its teeth in the U.S.

13:32market at a Walmart superstore in Mesquite, Texas. You know, there's always been this idea of drones stepping into augment delivery networks, but Zipline thinks it's finally cracked the code. Yeah, some in the industry are saying that this is a logistics revolution that we haven't seen in many years, and Zipline is at the forefront, which is remarkable because it's competing against huge players like Amazon, who's been trying to get drone delivery going for a decade in Alphabet's wing. that's under Google. So they have as much money in the world as they want. But Zipline is kind of this underdog that has come to be a leader.

14:06Fascinating company. They first started in Rwanda in 2016, delivering vaccines and other medical supplies over this vast expanse of Africa. And that's where they really cut their teeth. A 2023 study from the Wharton School found that Zipline's blood delivery service reduced deaths from postpartum hemorrhage by 51%. So, you know, So in an area where delivery via road is not feasible, these drones have been able to step in very successfully. And now they're going to an area where delivery on roads are feasible. And we'll see how many people start ordering via drones in Texas. And everything about Zipline is very automatic.

14:45They have so many sensors on board. One of them is they collect air through tubes to figure out if there's bad weather approaching. They will then use that data to reroute themselves to avoid the weather. Also, just wind speed and direction is calculated as well. Once they're in the air, their zipline operators like to say, we don't actually know which way they're going to fly because once they're airborne, it's up to them to kind of chart their path forward. So it is one of those companies that just figured, just has been working on this for over a decade at this point. And they have kind of the delivery numbers to back it up.

15:18You look at a company like Amazon who's been, you know, flirting with drones. Obviously, they'd like it. They do about they've done about 10 ,000 deliveries with them. Alphabet backed wing is another startup that have done about half a million drone deliveries, which sounds like a lot. Zipline, on the other hand, has is now well into one and a half million deliveries over their lifetime. So they're clearly kind of the leader in the clubhouse when it comes to this new technology. And a lot of people are very bullish on this from Walmart, who's rolling out this partnership to customers like Sweetgreen Chipotle.

15:49And we were kind of laughing before the show. we realized that the two best applications for drone delivery services, one, life-saving medicine in places that are hard to reach, and two, getting you your burrito on time without leaving your house. So Zipline is kind of running the gamut of these applications. Up next, I'm going to hand it over to Neil for some Neil's numbers. Race the rudders. Race the sails. Race the sails. Captain, an unidentified ship is approaching. Over. Roger. Wait. Is that an enterprise sails solution? Reach sails professionals. not professional sailors. With LinkedIn ads, you can target the right people by industry, job title, and more.

16:27Start converting your B2B audience today. Spend$250 on your first campaign and get a free$250 credit for the next one. Get started today at linkedin.com slash campaign. Terms and conditions apply. Eczema isn't always obvious, but it's real. And so is the relief from EPCLIS. After an initial dosing phase, about four in 10 people taking EPCLIS achieve 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. Evglyss, 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.

17:09Also called atopic dermatitis that is not well controlled with prescription therapies used on the skin or topicals or who cannot use topical therapies. Evglyss can be used with or without topical corticosteroids. Don't use if If you're allergic to EpGliss, allergic reactions can occur that can be severe. Eye problems can occur. Tell 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.

17:41Welcome to Neil's Numbers, the segment where I share three stats from the week's news that will hopefully take your mind off of tariffs for just a few minutes. My first number is under six hours, which is how long it took one city in Japan to build an entirely new train station. And it's not just any train station. It's the world's first 3D printed train station building, the railway operators say. It all went down a few weeks ago in the quiet seaside town of Arita. One night, the last train left the station at 1157 p.m., and that's when they got to work. employees of the construction firm Serendix took the pre-printed parts, which had been fabricated elsewhere and shipped in four parts, and pieced them together using help from a large crane.

18:23By 5.45 a.m., when the first train arrived, they were done with a new station, which measures just over 100 feet. Well, mostly done. They still haven't furnished the interior with ticket machines and card readers, so travelers won't be able to use it until July. Still, the six-hour 3D-printed train station could be a blueprint for how Japan and the rest of the world maintains railway infrastructure on the cheap. And it's completely mind-blowing for those of us who watch San Francisco take three years to install a public bathroom. I mean, the headline here is great. Like, Japan builds a 3D station in just six hours before the next train comes.

18:59It's probably more of a shelter than an actual station. This thing is not a big building by any means. But also, you don't need a big building to serve a relatively sparsely populated rail line. and it is plugging in a big need that Japan has right now. We've talked a lot about how Japan has this aging population. Their workforce is shrinking. So a lot of it becomes harder to maintain railway infrastructure when you just don't have a worker. So if you can figure out a way to make these improvements quicker and with less manpower, then even if it does look like a shelter, they're going to start pursuing this.

19:33So it is cool, but I just caution the word. It's more of a hut. Yeah, it's more of a hut. But that's fine. Yeah, this this train station serves, you know, 500 riders a day, but you do need to maintain it on the cheap. And maybe this these 3D printed prefabricated huts or stations, if you will, will do just that. For my next number and warning, this is not going to make you feel great. A study from researchers in a New Mexico lab found that the median concentration of microplastics in a human brain was about seven grams of plastic per brain. or in other words, as much plastic as in five water bottle caps or a disposable spoon.

20:13Some caveats, the researchers looked at 24 human brains from 2024 and there is a high degree of uncertainty because of the methods used. Still, it was alarming to the scientists nonetheless. Toxicologist Matthew Campin, who leads the lab, told the New York Times, I don't think I've talked to a single person who said, fantastic, love to know that there's all this plastic in my brain. Campin and his team are on a mission to discover to what extent microplastics have infiltrated humans because it is rising at a breathtaking rate. The human brain samples from 2024 had almost 50 % more microplastics than brain samples from 2016.

20:47And it adds to other recent studies that have found microplastics in human testes, placenta, blood, semen, breast milk, and a baby's first stool. The health implications of microplastics are not yet well understood. but a first step to getting to that answer is just simply measuring the amount of plastic in the body and it's an astonishing amount it is an astonishing amount i don't know about you neil but i'm two bottle caps worth of plastic in this old noggin you might have five but i'm rocking it too but one of the big findings from this study was that these fragments these plastic that make it into your brain are so so small no more than 200 nanometers long which is 400 times less than the width of a human hair.

21:27So a lot of times you think about fresh plastic entering your body, which is like, if you have a plastic cutting board, these big shards might come out if you're drinking from a water bottle. But those plastic pieces that are coming off, I say pieces, but they are still very small, are still way too big to pass through the blood barrier of your brain. But these 200 nanometer long ones, they can get in much easier. They also are usually older plastics that have been eroded over time from, you know, like the 60s, 70s, and 80s. Yeah, polyethylene, which was kind of came around in the 60s. And so you are seeing some of these these these studies, why they're so important is just finding instruments sensitive enough to actually detect these really small pieces of plastic.

22:11Yeah. All that being said, not a great vibe to know you got a whole spork, you know, floating around in your noggin every day. OK, time for a palate cleanser. My final number is 100, which is how old the Great Gatsby is today. F. Scott Fitzgerald's masterful exploration of the American dream was published exactly one century ago, April 10th, 1925, and has endured on high school reading lists and in culture till this day. Even though many of you read it in your younger and more vulnerable years, the main characters will be forever etched in your memory. Nick Carraway, Daisy Buchanan, Jay Gatsby himself.

22:49And it feels like we're all still being watched by the blue and gigantic eyes of Dr. T.J. Eggleberg. Lots of celebrations are planned, including the Empire State Building being lit green tomorrow night to reference the Great Gatsby's green light, which no one still knows how to interpret 100 years later. Toby, I'm planning on saying happy birthday by buying two eggs because that's all I can afford. How are you celebrating? I think I'm celebrating by pouring one out for F. Scott Fitzgerald because, you know, the famous story is that this book was actually a commercial disappointment. It didn't actually sell very well in the first year, let alone in F.

23:24Scott Fitzgerald's lifetime. So he actually died kind of thinking it was a bit of a failure. Today it sold over, you know, 25 million copies. He basically got Van Gogh a little bit. I'm also just happy it's called The Great Gatsby because the lore behind it is some other possibilities where under the red, white, and blue, among the ash heaps and millionaires and the high bouncing lover. Those last two actually. Among the ash heaps and millionaires goes kind of hard. A little bit, yeah. But, yeah, I think it is just one of those traditional American stories that has endured that also just did not get off to a good start at all.

23:59And do you know why it actually did gain widespread popularity? No. It's the military kind of printed hundreds of thousands, millions of free paperbacks for soldiers to read, you know, as World War II was going on. So it is like it got, I mean, it's a marketing story. Like distribution is king, but also it just shows you how stories can have mean so much in certain situations. I mean, people are literally reading this book before storming the beaches of Normandy. So it just shows how certain stories can just take a hold with our culture and endure for an entire century later. Finally, Neil, if it looks like I have a little tear in my eye, it's because I do, from joy, because the best sporting event of the year is kicking off this morning, the Masters.