Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%

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.

0:28Good Morning Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, stocks are tumbling and businesses are scrambling after President Trump announced sweeping tariffs on Liberation Day. Then, the Nintendo Switch 2 was unveiled, and it cost nearly the same as an Xbox. It's Thursday, April 3rd. Let's ride.

0:51So much news to get to today, but first, some random fun facts. Gotta get that brain stretched out in the morning before putting it to work. A few days ago, an ex-user posted, does anyone have any random fun facts about a very niche subject? And people delivered with great tidbits like crickets are actually tiny thermometers because their chirp count correlates to the temperature. Or the Earth actually takes 365 days and six hours to orbit the sun, hence a leap year every four years. Toby, you got any other fun facts? Well, first of all, some of these viral answers, you definitely had to fact check.

1:26And Community Notes was having a field day. So that's why the first fact I picked came from Encyclopedia Britannica. And they said October 31st, 2000 was the last time all of humanity was on Earth. Since then, there's always been at least one person in space. So commit that to memory to use at cocktail parties. And the next one is just more of a tip. And that's from user What's Up Caramel. And her tip was Barilla Pasta has a Spotify playlist. Each playlist is the exact length of cook time for the varieties of pasta. press play, drop the noodles, music stops, al dente noodles, which honestly is a very helpful fact, and it's way more fun than a kitchen timer.

2:04So yeah, these are just stuff that you can drop. Say you claimed them from Morning Brew Daily or just, you know, say that you came up with them yourself, but very good small talk alternatives to saying what's going on with the weather these days. Now, a word from our sponsor, Tax Act. Neil, you ever feel like doing your taxes is like trying to read a foreign language? I mean, I wouldn't say a foreign language, but sure, it can be complicated. No, I mean, I was literally staring at a formula yesterday thinking this might as well be ancient Greek, which to be clear, I do not speak. It doesn't have to be all Greek to you.

2:35Tax Act actually makes your taxes simple. They walk you through everything step by step, whether you're filing individually or bundling with your small business. But what if I get something wrong? What if the IRS shows up at my door? What if Zeus smites me? First of all, relax. Second, every return is backed with an accuracy guarantee so you can file with confidence. Ooh, I do like confidence. That is a language I do speak. File smarter, not harder at taxact.com before the April 15th deadline. 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.

3:15In 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. I went to Liberation Day and all I got was this global trade war. In a speech at the Rose Garden yesterday afternoon, President Trump took a stick of dynamite to the longstanding global economic system centered on free trade. He announced a minimum 10 % tariff on all exports to the United States, plus much higher reciprocal rates on countries he said maintain unfair trade barriers on American products.

3:58Reciprocal, that means they do it to us and we do it to them. Very simple. Can't get any simpler than that, Trump said. Holding up a chart with a list of countries and percentages, Trump ran down the list and revealed how much the U.S. would now be tariffing each one. To name a few big ones, Japan, 24%. South Korea, 25 percent, the EU, 20 percent, and other eye-watering amounts like 54 percent on China, which is 34 percent on top of the existing 20 percent. The president said this was a discounted reciprocal tariff on other countries because he's kind. Trump argues the tariffs will usher in a, quote, golden age of America because companies will begin to build factories in the United States to avoid the tariffs.

4:40He cited multi-billion dollar announcements from companies like Apple, SoftBank and Taiwan Semiconductors since his election as evidence this plan was working. Economists see universal tariffs much differently, arguing they slow economic growth, cause uncertainty for businesses and cause a spike in inflation. Remember, a tariff is a tax paid by the importer of a foreign product, say Target importing bedsheets. Maybe Target will eat some of the tax, even if it eats their profits. But studies show that often that tax is passed along to the consumer in the form of higher prices. Toby, the White House kept these tariff rates under wraps until Trump's announcement.

5:15And of all the scenarios investors had considered, this was about the worst case. Dow futures are down more than 1 ,000 points currently. The S &P is down nearly 3 % and the NASDAQ more than 3%. Let's dive into a little bit about how these rates were calculated. I'm going to use Lesotho here as an example. It's a country with a GDP of just$2.4 billion. Half of its population lives on less than$4 a day. So the Thutu is being hit with a 50 % tariff under Trump's trade plan. That is the highest of any country. And it's not because they actually impose high tariffs on the U.S. They do not. But you get that number by taking the nation's trade deficit with us and dividing it by the nation's exports to us.

5:57In the Thutu's case, they export$236 million of goods. We send them just$7 million. So the trade deficit there is 229 million. You divide that by their total imports and that you get 97%. That's the tariff Lesotho is deemed to charge the U.S. with. And so half of that, because Trump said he was being lenient, is roughly 50%. And that's what the U.S. is reciprocating with. So why is there a gap there in the first place? That is what you have to dive into here. Not because they don't really like U.S. goods. Again, they're not a rich nation, so they cannot buy things we make like Tesla's. And as for the other goal of tariffs to bring manufacturing back home, diamonds are Lesotho's top export.

6:39So we can't really reshore diamond manufacturing here in the U.S. because there are no diamonds here. So that is just one instance that provides a microcosm as to why economists may be scratching their heads here is because the manner in which that these were calculated, which is taking the nation's trade deficit with us, dividing by the nation's exports to us and cutting it in half, seems to be a little bit imprecise. And let's dive into some other countries that are getting hit with tariffs like at much higher levels than others. One nation that a lot of people were looking to and raising their eyebrows was Vietnam.

7:12So Vietnam is going to have a 46 percent duty on imports from to the United States on their exports to the United States. And, you know, Vietnam was a huge winner of Trump's first trade war on China because when those tariffs went on China in 2018, so many manufacturers, apparel makers, electronics makers set up shop in Vietnam because there were low tariff rates on Vietnam and started shipping their products to the United States. So Vietnam's economy was one of the fastest growing in the world. Now they're getting hit with a 46 % tariff. And all of those companies that had moved all of their operations or more of their operations to Vietnam are getting whacked on the stock market this morning.

7:53Nike manufactures 25 % of its footwear now in Vietnam over the past few years. Its stock is down 8%. Deckers, which is the owner of UGG and Hoka, is down 10%. Restoration Hardware, a ton of furniture makers expanded their operations in Vietnam over the past few years. Restoration Hardware is down 26%. So if you go down the line from furniture makers, toy makers, apparel makers, their stocks are getting crushed this morning, specifically because of those very high tariff rates on Vietnam. And I think one of the reasons why this trade war is harder to navigate than the last one is the fact that if you're a business, you don't know where to put up your manufacturing.

8:34And last time when it was mostly China focused, you are right. You could go to Vietnam and that's where you could feel confident about investing in your production there. But right now, it's a little bit unclear where to invest. Obviously, Trump says invest in America, but that takes a while to spin up manufacturing, actually a long time to spin up manufacturing in the United States. So while this uncertainty is hanging in the air, a lot of people end up waiting and not making those investments, which, you know, leads to demand falling as well, which could end up impacting, you know, the economy in a global economy in a broader way.

9:08So that uncertainty that this injects is one of the reasons why economists love to push back on tariffs, because you need to be able to plan one, five, 10 years down the future if you are a business. Yeah, the big picture from this announcement, according to analysts and banks who are digesting all this information is this is a massive shock to the economy. JP Morgan put out this note last night as the information was rolling out that was widely shared. And here were their main points. These tariffs raised just under$400 billion in revenue, which would be the largest tax increase since 1968. The tariffs would boost consumer prices by 1 to 1.5 % this year.

9:46The hit to purchasing power could take real disposable personal income growth into negative territory by the end of the year and also send consumer spending into negative to quote JP Morgan here. This impact alone could take the economists could take the economy perilously close to slipping into a recession. So we are waiting for these tariffs to come into effect. The auto tariffs are coming into effect today. Twenty five percent on foreign vehicles. The tariffs that were announced yesterday, the reciprocal ones are going into effect April 9th, about a week from now. And you can be sure that the phones are gonna be ringing off the hook in the White House as other countries think about retaliating in response to these reciprocal tariffs or try to cut deals with the Trump administration to lower these planned tariffs.

10:31Tesla dropped its delivery numbers yesterday and they literally dropped. The EV maker reported double digit shrinkage in the first quarter as it faced everything from increased competition to political blowback against Elon Musk. Tesla delivered just over 336 ,000 vehicles in Q1, good for a 13 % decline from the previous year and its sharpest year-over-year decline since the pandemic. It was also the fewest number of deliveries for Tesla in any quarter dating back to 2022. The figure looks even worse when you realize that other parts of the auto industry are chugging along quite nicely. Tesla's Chinese nemesis BYD saw its annual sales jump 60 % in the first quarter, while domestic rival GM reported 17 % sales growth.

11:16Even the notoriously bullish Tesla analyst Dan Ives struck a more somber tone when covering the numbers. We are not going to look at these numbers with rose-colored glasses. They were a disaster on every metric, he wrote. He then offered his advice for how to stop the bleeding, and that is Musk needs to stop this political firestorm and balance being CEO of Tesla with Doze. Luckily for Tesla investors, it looks like that day may be coming sooner rather than later. Politico reported that President Trump told his inner circle that Musk was on his way out, which helped the stock climb out of the hole its delivery numbers created.

11:52But then Trump's Rose Garden tariff announcement sent the stock down again in after hours trading. So snip, snap, Neil, snip, snap. We kind of saw this coming because early reports from around the world showed Tesla sales falling off a cliff in Australia. In Germany, they declined more than 70 % in February. In China, it's a key market, second biggest market. Sales were down 11.5 % in March from last year. In the U.S., sales were down 2 % in the first two months of the year. In California, they were down another big market. They were down 12 % last year. So the writing was on the wall. This drip of bad news, all these protests that were going on, we knew this number was going to be bad for the first three months of the year, but it was worse than expected.

12:36And it shows the number of challenges that Tesla has from Elon Musk down to an aging vehicle lineup and, you know, a very slow pivot to autonomous cars, which is where its valuation is mostly based right now. Yeah. Dan Ives called it a brand crisis at Tesla right now. Some analysts estimated that Tesla lost about 80 ,000 potential deliveries because of, quote, brand damage. And a lot of that was actually related to damage coming to Tesla shops and charging stations. There was protests outside 90 or so shops and stations. Last month, there's been a dozen or so violent acts directed at Tesla facilities as well.

13:14You know, protesters have been throwing Molotov cocktails in some instances at it. So there's definitely been a lot of pushback there. And you're right, it was telegraphed a little bit because Europe essentially has gone on strike against Tesla. Sales in Germany are falling, France are falling. So it's definitely been one thing after the other impacting this company. And it wasn't like these delivery numbers were ever going to be good, but they were a little bit worse than a lot of people were expecting. So what could Tesla do to turn things around? Well, this summer, there could be two big announcements that could rev it back up to growth.

13:47There's a June deadline for these two big announcements. One is the production of a more affordable Tesla. investors have been waiting for this for years so that it can compete with it can compete with BYD, but also legacy car makers that are rolling out new EVs at a much cheaper price point than what Tesla sells for. So one is the affordable car. The other is this robo taxi service that Tesla has said it will launch in June in its backyard of Austin. Waymo is already working there and offering robo taxi rides in Austin right in its backyard. Tesla is playing catch up, But it's hoping that during the summer, it will have these new announcements to roll out, plus a refreshed Model Y, which some analysts say was a reason for these bad delivery numbers.

14:32Let's move on. A small device with very big shoes to fill was unveiled yesterday as Nintendo pulled the curtain back on its new Switch 2 console. It's the follow-up act to the original Switch, which introduced the mega-successful hybrid console concept eight years ago. But like Ocean's 12 proved, it's very hard to create a worthy sequel when the original is so beloved. The Switch 2 will launch in early June for$450, a$150 jump from the first generation model. And that extra$150 will get you a few new features including a game chat function that will let you curse out your opponents in Mario Kart.

15:08As well as a camera function that shows your face when you spew those expletives. It's those features along with some beefed up hardware that gives it a bigger screen and more storage. that Nintendo is hoping will convince fans that the gameplay experience will be differentiated enough to make the upgrade. Which is going to be a tough ask because the original is the third best-selling gaming console of all time. It sold roughly 150 million units since it launched back in 2017. And it's not like Nintendo has always nailed its follow-up acts. It sold over 100 million Wiis, but followed that up with just 13 million sales of the Wii U.

15:45This time around, it's trying to avoid that drop-off, positioning the Switch 2 as a direct follow-up to the original instead of mixing things up. But by playing it safe, Neil, it's also taking a bit of a risk because now you're asking consumers to fork up more money for what is essentially a revamped version of its current console. Investor analysts generally think that Nintendo stuck the landing a la Simone Biles with this particular launch because it's doing it in conjunction with this new Mario Kart game. This one analyst from the research firm Omdia says that Nintendo will sell 14.7 million of the new Switch 2 consoles this year, which would easily top the sales of the original Switch for its first year, which was 13 million.

16:28And it's going to be, even with a higher price tag of$450 because of Mario Kart World, it's going to come in this package for a little bit of an upsell with Switch. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe was owned by half of all Switch users. This is an insanely popular game. This was the talk of the town yesterday after this was released. So I think this game, at least according to analysts, is going to, you know, allow the Switch 2 to maybe even leapfrog its predecessor. There are a lot more challenges this time around, though. The gaming landscape is a lot different. One, there's tariffs on Chinese goods that could impact, you know, the production, the shipping costs, impact everything.

17:05thing also there's a lot more competition from mobile games now than when the switch originally launched and then there's also just this a lot of pressure to live up to its predecessor the switch being so successful is a double-edged sword because now everyone is going to compare it to that gaming console that was so beloved so usually nintendo gets around these by designing a whole new form function when they're releasing follow-up consoles like the wii and wii u were completely different devices this time they're trying to learn from those mistakes but also they might be making a mistake because they're basically copying and pasting the original one with a few new tweaks.

17:38So there's definitely some question marks hanging around this, even though there does seem to be a lot of support and a lot of, you know, people willing to shell out that extra$150 to buy and upgrade this Switch 2. Up next, let's talk about some fun numbers, and that is coming from But Neil. Change is always happening. But no matter what changes in five years, there's one thing that will stay the same. The price of your internet. With the Xfinity five-year price guarantee, you get five years of the most reliable Wi-Fi with our best equipment included for a price that stays exactly the same. Restrictions apply.

18:19New residential customers only. Taxes and fees extra and subject to change. Most reliable Wi-Fi based on OpenSignal Awards USA. Fixed Broadband Experience Report, August 2024. Eczema isn't always obvious, but it's real. And so is the relief from EBCLIS. After an initial dosing phase, about 4 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. EbGliss, 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.

18:58Also called atopic dermatitis that is not well controlled with prescription therapies used on the skin or topicals or who cannot use topical therapies. EbGliss can be used with or without topical corticosteroids. Don't use if you're allergic to EbGliss. 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.

19:29Welcome to Neil's Numbers, the segment where I share three stats from the week's news that will get you to God's country. My first number is 5%, which is the share of all avocados consumed in the US bought by Chipotle. That's 143 million pounds of avocados Used across its 3 ,700 locations each year But when you buy 5 % of the U.S.'s avocados And the vast majority of them come from a single country, Mexico You need to diversify your supplier base Because being that concentrated is bad Not only are you at the mercy of the weather in a single area But Mexico has also been a frequent target of U.S.

20:06tariffs That could raise prices According to the Wall Street Journal Chipotle started this diversification process seven years ago scouring the globe for other sources of avocados besides Mexico, which had accounted for 85 % of its avocados. The U.S. is one option, but we don't make nearly enough of the fruit to fulfill Chipotle's demands. So they started scooping up avocados from farms in Peru, the Dominican Republic, Brazil, Guatemala, and Colombia, transforming local economies along the way. Now, after years of building a new food supply line, Chipotle has reduced its reliance on Mexican avocados to just 50 % from 85%, but diversification also brings a number of new challenges.

20:45Yeah, some of the challenges are Chipotle is very particular about which avocados they use. They love Haas avocados, which are a lot fattier. They have more fuller flavors, so you can't necessarily use some of those avocados native to Central and South American countries, which usually have a lower oil and a more muted flavor. And also when you diversify your avocado source, you create a lot of challenges within Chipotle kitchens themselves because Peruvian and Colombia avocados have different shades than the ones that come from Mexico and California. So that leads to a differing experience for customers who are looking at the shade of the avocado.

21:23I definitely do this when I go into Chipotle. I go, is this looking like a fresh batch or is this looking like a little too oxidized and aged right now? And I make my decision if I want to upgrade for that guac based on how it looks and especially So Chipotle knows this, so they've really kept their staff educated and updated on how to deal with various species of avocado. Just a very fascinating supply chain issue, all the way from where you source it from to how you present it at the restaurants themselves. And it's super critical because about half of all Chipotle customers order guacamole every time they go in, which is a lot higher share than I was expecting.

21:57For my next number, you might consider yourself a fan of a musical artist or an athlete, but I can guarantee that the fans in Japan go harder than you. According to a survey by two Tokyo marketing firms, 11 % of Japan's population engage in Oshikatsu, a term describing activities that support their favorite celebs, mascots, anime characters, and VTubers or virtual YouTubers. In most cases, showing love for your idol involves spending money. According to Reuters, respondents in the survey spent an average of$1 ,700 per year on Oshikatsu, equivalent to a$23 billion annual influx of consumer spending into the world's fourth largest economy.

22:36That's just 2.1 % of Japan's total annual sales each year, but it's a share that is increasing and the sector has even caught the eye of economists and the Bank of Japan who are looking for any areas of growth to stimulate lackluster spending. So how does one engage in Oshikatsu? What are they actually spending money on? Well, merch for one, but also things like buying ad space as a gift for your hero on their birthday. Or in another case, a woman went to a Tokyo cafe to sit in the same seat where a member of a boy band she loved once visited and created a shrine to him for a photo op. Toby, Oshikatsu is a force in the Japanese economy.

23:13It's absolutely a force. I mean, when I read that people were just going to places to sit in chairs that their Oshis went to, that was kind of mind blowing to me. That's a phantom even beyond what the Swifties do here in America. But this is an absolute economic force that is here to stay. It definitely gained some speed during the pandemic, but the Bank of Japan is referencing it because they're like, this is a legitimate driver of consumption in our economy right now. Is this especially good to note? Because right now it looks like Japan's in line for some very big pay raises. 20-somethings will probably receive a very large raise come springtime.

23:51and obviously, you know, the economic authorities want to know where that money is going to go. And it looks like a fair amount,$23 billion is not nothing. It's not the biggest part of the economy, but it's also not the smallest part. So Oshikatsu is definitely something that is an economic force, which sounds kind of crazy to say, but you know, it absolutely is a driver of spending in that country. For my final number, the leaders of the world's largest atom smasher have dreamed up a new atom smasher that is going to smash the current one two bits the top nerds at cern the european organization for nuclear research released the blueprints for a project a decade in the making a new particle collider that will eventually replace the large hadron collider a network of magnets used to smash particles against one another at velocities approaching the speed of light in order to unlock the mysteries of the universe okay let's get to the numbers, sorry for the weight, the future circular collider, the new smasher will be a 56.5 mile loop below Lake Geneva on the French, French Swiss border with tunnels 16 feet in diameter and buried 656 feet below ground.

24:59For comparison, the large Hadron collider, the current one is just 17 miles around. So the new one is going to be at least three times as big. CERN says the future circular collider will be the quote most extraordinary instrument ever built by humanity to study the constituents and the laws of nature at the most fundamental levels but the most extraordinary instrument ever built by humanity doesn't come cheap it'll cost 17 billion dollars to construct and even if funding is secured they won't start smashing atoms until 2046 there is this meme of just one more collider bro i just need one more just give me 20 billion more and I'll solve antimatter, we promise.