Wall St. Thirsts For Tariff Refunds & AI ‘Workslop’ Costs Millions

0:00Tuesday on NBC, Jimmy Fallon and Bozma 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. This 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.

0:34Good morning for your Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, American soybean farmers are scrambling after being snubbed by their biggest customer. Then AI Work Slop is giving employees headaches and costing businesses millions. It's Thursday, September 25th. Let's ride.

0:55Man, it feels good to be back. Toby, thanks to you and Kyle for holding down the fort while I gorged myself on apples and honey. You know, over the last few days, I had some downtime and all I could think about was how excited I am for our holiday party coming up in December. There are already hundreds of you signed up to come. And after today, there's going to be a lot more. Yes, Neil, that's because we've been in the pre-sale portion of selling tickets, but now the sale is open to everyone. As a reminder, this event has the potential to be the greatest evening of business news you can have with your clothes on.

1:27You'll hear us relive some shows from the past year, play some games, and most importantly, meet Neil, myself, and hundreds of other MBD listeners in person. Even if you don't live in New York City, I'd say this is worth a trek to Brooklyn for. So yes, pre-sale period is over. The sale is now open to absolutely everyone. And you can sign up for tickets by heading to the link in the show description. Go pause the show, give it a click right now, and we will see you all there. And now a word from our sponsor, Remarkable. Neil, do you feel like more of a writer or a texter? What's the difference?

2:00Writers have prestige, a sense of craftsmanship, and they're more present than just typing away at their phones all day. Sounds to me like someone's jealous that I have all these friends texting me. I'm not jealous because one, those are spam, and two, there's the remarkable Paper Pro Move for this exact reason. It's the portable paper tablet that helps you keep your flow going, fit all your paperwork conveniently into your jacket pocket, and digitize and organize anything you don't want to lose. It's also a lot more fashionable than a stained dog-eared notebook. It's even got two weeks of battery life, so you don't have to spend every few hours having to charge it.

2:34You can try Remarkable Paper Pro Move for 100 days for free. If it's not what you're looking for, get your money back. Get your paper tablet at Remarkable.com today. That's Remarkable.com. Wall Street has found a new way to potentially make money off of Trump's tariffs. That is risky, but has some asymetric upside. Investors have begun buying up claims to tariff refunds from American companies that have been hit with Trump's import duties. The idea is importers have been dutifully paying their customs import fees, but may be entitled to refunds if the Supreme Court ultimately rules that some of the tariffs Trump passed are unconstitutional.

3:12But since that is still a big if, hedge funds and investment firms have been offering up cash at a discount of the claims value. For example, if an importer paid$50 million in reciprocal tariffs, an investment firm might buy the refund claim for$10 million or about 20 % of its face value. But not all tariffs are the same or carry the same risk of being overturned. Trump's first set of tariffs announced in February on imports from China, Mexico, and Canada tied to the fentanyl crisis are considered a lot more legally durable, so investors are only paying about$0.05 on the dollar for those claims.

3:48His second set, the so-called Liberation Day tariffs that were first announced in April, are viewed as more vulnerable in court, making those refund rights fetching closer to 20 cents on the dollar. So, Neil, investors are dipping a toe into buying these tariff refund claims for pennies on the dollar, hoping for a massive payout if some Supreme Court decisions fall their way. While importers are happy to have a little cash in their pockets now rather than hope for a refund, there really is a market for anything and everything. It really is. The rights to tariff refunds. I think we've seen it all.

4:19And I'm expecting a Michael Lewis book and subsequent movie starring Steve Carell coming soon. There is so much money at stake here. The United States government is bringing in so much money through these tariffs. They have brought in 80 billion dollars through June 30th that are subject to these particular that could be subject to refunds. So there is so much money at stake here. The United States government through June 30th has brought in$80 billion in connection with these particular emergency tariffs. And Apollo, a big private equity firm, estimates that right now the United States government is bringing in$350 billion in tariffs annualized, which corresponds to 18 percent of annual household income tax payments.

5:05So even if the Supreme Court invalidates these tariffs and orders refunds, the government is going to fight tooth and nail in order to prevent these refunds from going out, which is why we're seeing this particular price being placed on these refunds. Why would a company sell their right to a refund, though? Because there is a lot of money at play. Why wouldn't you just sit on your haunches, hope the Supreme Court strikes it down and take a lot more money down the line? It's kind of like a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush right now. legal challenges are very slow to move. Government is going to drag this process out for sure.

5:39And immediate cash does cushion some of these current tariff losses that you're taking. A lot of these businesses are paying far more money in import fees than they have in the past. And they're having a Wall Street firm come to them and say, hey, we're not going to pay you the full amount, but we'll pay you some cash right now. And some people are looking at that check and saying, absolutely. I don't think that these are ever going to, I'm not ever going to see these. I I need the cash now. I need to stay in business now. So yes, I will take your money right now. That is why companies are selling their rights to a refund.

6:08Yeah, the Washington Post talked to an executive or just the leader of a maker of drawstring bags. And he's paying an extra$75 ,000 on each shipping container from China and$50 ,000 extra on goods from Cambodia because of the tariffs he's had to cut his workforce from nine employees to just three. So it's kind of just a mom and pop operation at this point. He's paying so much money in tariffs. And then you got Wall Street coming to him saying, yeah, I'll pay you a couple million dollars here to cushion the blow. And if you're looking at the, you know, the court landscape and how long these legal challenges might take take to wind through or you'll actually receive your refund payments, just a huge if.

6:47And you're you're seeing a check in front of you right now. So it's very understandable why these importers would take this deal. Now, is this going to happen? Is the Supreme Court going to strike down some of these tariffs? There is certainly a possibility Scott Bissett, this Treasury Secretary, said that he's confident in Trump's tariff, but said that if the court says it, we'll have to do it. That's in reference to paying half the tariff revenue they've collected back to importers. So he's definitely saying that it would cause a massive disruption. It wouldn't be good for America, but there is a very real risk that if the Supreme Court rules one way, especially on these a little bit more legally tenuous tariffs that were applied reciprocally to basically the entire world.

7:27There are some a lot more legally sound tariffs. Section 230, for instance, requires a lengthy review process into certain industries like steel that will be able to stand up to court. But some of the ones that Trump kind of passed down through executive emergency action, that's where you're seeing a little bit less stable footing. And that's why you're seeing a real fund, a real risk of a refund. Oral arguments for this begin on November 5th. both sides, both the government and the company's challenges in court want an expedited ruling. So there's clarity. If you've ever received an email from a colleague that contained a few too many M dashes and far too many uses of the word delve, you might have been on the receiving end of work slop coined in the Harvard business review by researchers from Stanford and better up labs.

8:14Work slop is the new term for AI generated content that looks polished, but lacks substance and usually ends up creating more work for others. Consider this example. I send Neil a message about what I think we should cover on the show, but I use an LLM with suggest stories that are a week out of date. Neil is left with a few options, all of them bad. He can call me out, which is awkward because we're a co-host. He can ask someone else to look for stories like producer Ray, but then that's just more work for Ray. Or he can do it himself, which is more work for Neil. When I toss a little work slop out there, What I'm really doing is transferring effort downstream from the sender me to the receiver Neil.

8:53And that has real costs on a business. The researchers took a survey of over 1 ,000 U.S. employees, and 40 % said they had encountered work slop in the last month. Respondents also said they were wasting nearly two hours on correcting, debugging, or redoing each instance of work slop they encountered. And based on self-reported salaries, that comes out to about$186 a month in wasted effort, which when you scale it to an organization of$10 ,000, totals$9 million wasted dollars a year. Neil, AI is supposed to be making people more productive, not less. What is going on here? Well, these researchers are trying to square a circle here because they're looking at a couple stats and trying to figure out what's going on here.

9:34So according to Gallup, AI use has doubled at work since 2023 from 21 % to 40%. So a lot more people are using AI at work. However, an MIT Media Lab report found that 95 % of organizations don't see a measurable return on their investment in AI, despite$30 to$40 billion in enterprise investment into generative AI. So they're seeing so many people are using AI at work, and it seems helpful on the surface. But then 95 out of 100 organizations aren't seeing any return. So what is going on here? And they think they've identified at least one of the primary factors, and that is the proliferation of workshop that imposes a lot of costs.

10:16It's not beneficial. It imposes a lot of costs. And the cost does have a dollar amount because it is just wasted time. If I'm giving you work that you have to go then do yourself, that is time that you could be spent doing other stuff, and that's wasted time for you. But then maybe a more insidious cost is the fact that it just erodes trust and reputation of people within a business. 50 % of senders see people who send them workshop as less creative, capable, and reliable. 37 % see them as less intelligent. And one-third say they're less likely to work with that colleague again. So if someone sends you something that is clearly AI-generated, over time you're just not going to respect that person, which creates all sorts of issues in an organization.

10:56You need to be able to collaborate. You need to be able to trust your fellow employees. So that is probably even a bigger cost than the actual dollar amount assigned to that wasted work. And the researchers say this is a direct result of AI being mandated by employers to use for everything. I know I've talked to friends who say that their bosses or even higher up in the organization say for every single email you send, you need to put it through AI first. before any time you do a personal reflection or any sort of mid-year report or full-year report on something, you need to put it into AI. It feels like there's this top-down mandate to use AI, but instead, and that's leading to a lot of work slot because employees are just being told to do this by their bosses.

11:38So they're just following orders, but instead it should be maybe more piecemeal, more targeted. These researchers say, be more specific about when AI use is appropriate. Treat AI output as that of an untrained intern that makes factual and stylistic errors. Just always be skeptical of and don't send it along unless you've checked it for first. And then finally, use AI to polish work, not to create it. Moving on, the soybean harvest has gotten underway in the Midwest, but there's just one problem. The biggest customer is MIA. China has not placed any orders this fall for American soybeans, none.

12:16And that's extremely concerning because in a typical year, more than half of the soybeans grown in the U.S. are sent to China, its largest buyer. Without any Chinese purchases, farmers in states like North Dakota and Iowa fear of a financial wipeout that echoes the widespread bankruptcies of the 1980s that gutted rural America. One North Dakota farmer told the New York Times that this is the first time in the farm's 76-year-old operation that China has stopped buying soybeans, which will cause it to lose $400 ,000 this year. China's snub of U.S. soybeans is directly related to the trade war. After President Trump slapped tariffs on China back in February, China raised tariffs on American soybeans to 34%, making them pricier than other producers like Brazil.

12:58Beyond the tariff, American farmers believe that China has stopped ordering U.S. soybeans altogether as a negotiating tactic to win concessions from the White House. Toby, for decades, the U.S. has grown its soybean infrastructure in order to directly supply China, the world's biggest buyer of the crop. Now the rug has been pulled from under them and there are no good solutions. I really want to call out Iowa here, too, because the Hawkeyes are getting wrecked by this. Iowa's soybean market is almost$6 billion a year. And the knock-on effects from China not buying soybeans from Iowa are huge because you have all the manufacturers that supply industrial ag equipment to soybean farmers, John Deere, Vermeer.

13:38Then you have crop insurance is a huge business in Iowa as well. They are going to start losing business. And then just the logistics that make the entire operation work, the processors, the rail, the storage facilities, these all depend on consistent revenue coming in from China. And Iowa State economist Chad Hart said, we've built our entire production system around China's demand. If that disappears, it's hard to replace. They're seeing just how frail that decision was because, yeah, if your buyer goes missing, what are you supposed to do? Yeah. So where's China buying soybeans from, if not the United States, because you know they're buying soybeans.

14:12There's a lot of mouths to feed over there. Well, they're buying from Brazil. So let's take a quick history lesson. For many decades, the U.S. was the leading exporter of soybeans, but Brazil came on very strong. And in 2013, Brazil overtook the U.S. in soybean shipments for the first time and then have just expanded their market share till now. And with China drawing down its purchases of the United States, it's really ramping up its purchases from Brazil. And from January through August, Brazil set a record for shipments to China. So that's where China is turning toward. It's not just Brazil, but also Argentina.

14:48So it's really boosting the South American agriculture economy at the expense of American farmers. So what is going to be the knock-on effects from this even further? I did mention storage. farmers are going to have to sit on a lot of these unsold beans. It's going to put a lot of stress on there because there's only so much space you can have for storing soybeans. And then also there's, again, chatter about a potential farm bailout being floated. A similar thing happened back in the 2018 trade war. So you might be seeing some more push for that because, again, this is a very large industry within the U.S.

15:21If you lose your biggest buyer, then you've got to find out a way to help these farmers survive. So this is just a geopolitical story, though. China's cozying up to, you know, those BRICS nations, Brazil and Argentina. It does feel like this is about to be, you know, ground zero for debate around trade policy is now Iowa soybean fields. We're going to take a quick break and come back with some news numbers. One of the hardest parts about B2B marketing is reaching the right audience. I remember when I bought a coffee maker and then months later kept getting served ads for a coffee maker after I'd already cozied up to my new one.

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16:35Toby, I want to talk to you about exposure. Oh, you mean like that reoccurring nightmare where I show up for the podcast in my underwear? It's actually nothing like that at all, because I'm talking about exposure to the NASDAQ 100 index using micro-index options. Oh, well, that's totally different. NASDAQ 100 micro-index options, XND, offer precise and manageable exposure to the NASDAQ 100 index at a smaller notional value. The smaller notional value can make it an attractive option by allowing retail investors to participate in options trading with lower capital requirements. Plus, this can provide flexibility for those managing smaller accounts or looking to diversify investment strategies without committing significant resources.

17:17Potential tax benefits can help sweeten the deal too. Index derivatives like XND index options may benefit from a potentially lower blended tax liability. There are many more ways you can benefit from XND index options. So to learn more, head to nasdaq.com slash mbd. That's nasdaq.com slash mbd. Welcome to Neil's Numbers, the segment where I share three stats from the week's news that will make you the friend who says, Well, actually, my first number is 3 billion, which is how many monthly users Instagram now has. So if you're not getting any engagement on your reels, it's not because there aren't people out there to like them.

17:58For Meta, which announced the milestone yesterday, Instagram becomes the third app in its pantheon to reach 3 billion users joining Facebook and WhatsApp. But Instagram's rise in particular will go down in the business history books. Back in 2012, Facebook bought the startup photo sharing app for$1 billion in a deal many criticized as way overpriced. These days, it's considered one of the savviest acquisitions ever as Instagram's become one of the most popular consumer apps of all time. To stay relevant and keep growing, Instagram has evolved from a feed of square personal photos in the face of competition from TikTok and, to a lesser extent, Snapchat.

18:34More than 50 % of the time people spend on Instagram now involves watching videos, most of which are made by people you don't even follow. And private messages have largely replaced sharing to the public feed. Instagram says DMs are the most popular way people share on the app, followed by stories in second place. Toby, whether you want to call it adapting to changing trends or blatantly ripping off competitors, Instagram has defied the critics time and time again to become Meta's crown jewel. It's an absolute wagon, but it has absolutely evolved over time as well. Adam Aseri, the head of Instagram, said at MetaConnect, people think of us, they think of a feed of square photos, but that's just not how people use Instagram and hasn't been for a long time.

19:15To reflect those changes, Instagram is trying to tweak its app a little bit. They're moving messaging and reels more front and center. And they were also doing some of these tests in India where when you open Instagram, and automatically opens two reels, basically trying to take on TikTok directly rather than seeing, you know, your friend's baby photos anymore. It is trying to say like, hey, short form video is the future. Let's just make it the whole app at this point. There's been a lot of backlash to that because it is not the Instagram of old, but you know, when you look at the actual data, that's what you're spending time on Instagram doing.

19:48So they're going to test this in India and South Korea. And then another way they're trying to tweak their product a little bit to change with the times is that you're going to be able to type in directly keywords or topics that you want to see in your algorithm. And this is kind of what TikTok also pioneers, is the concept that this is my algorithm. This is the kind of stuff that I want to see in Instagram is following in that footsteps of the very explicit way to get the content you see right in your face when you open up the app. For my next number, the Broadway musical. Impressive as a third date, less impressive from a financial perspective.

20:24According to the New York Times, none of the 18 commercial musicals that opened on Broadway last season have made any money, revealing a deep slump at the epicenter of American musical theater. Unprofitability is afflicting new shows and revivals alike. New musicals like Tammy Faye, Boop and Smash have flamed out. But old classics Cabaret, Gypsy and Sunset Boulevard have also failed to break even. There are five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred reasons to be worried. Andrew Lloyd Webber, who is doing his part by writing Phantom and Cats, said, Broadway is not a business anymore. The statistics are terrible.

20:58I am very worried. I look at the economics of this and I just don't see how it can sustain. Broadway has a deep bench of musicals that continue to play to pack theaters. Hamilton is enjoying a resurgence as audiences embrace the cringe. Wicked got a boost from a two-parter movie. In Disney's Star Wars, Lion King and Aladdin continue to chug along. But finding the next Hamilton or Wicked is proving to be a daunting challenge. Of the 46 new musicals that have opened on Broadway since the pandemic, just three are profitable. Toby, as Sir Andrew said, the economics of Broadway just aren't adding up.

21:31Yeah, this is a business at the end of the day, and every single input cost has gotten more expensive over time. Labor is more expensive. Materials are more expensive. Rent, vendors, everything just costs more money these days. you can open a musical now. You used to be able to open it for around like$15,$20 million. Now it's costing$30 million plus. And then at the same time that costs are rising, ticket prices aren't rising. The average Broadway musical ticket was$127 last season. That's only up 3.25 % since pre-pandemic era. So that is not rising in line with inflation because people are very price sensitive to the top musicals like you mentioned, Hamilton, Wicked Lion King.

22:12They can charge whatever they want. But Tammy Faye can't raise prices above$130 before people just stop wanting to go. So it is a power law where the rich are getting richer. The best musicals are still charging whatever they want, but everyone else can't. Sure doesn't feel like the tickets are staying the same, but I suppose the data show something different. There is a sector of Broadway that's doing really well, and that is plays. Seven plays that opened last Broadway season were profitable, ones that have a ton of star power. Good Night and Good Luck, which had George Clooney, Othello, which had Denzel Washington, and Jake Gyllenhaal.

22:47They all broke box office records, but the problem with plays is that, first of all, they're just not as good as musicals, and second of all, they just don't last as long. There's only so long you can keep Denzel Washington going on stage night after night after night, so it doesn't turn into one of these years-long or decades-long blockbusters like A Wicked Aladdin or Lion King. So yeah, times are tough on Broadway. There's going to be two new musicals opening in the fall and i'll be doing my part to keep musical theater alive in america my final number is thirty thousand dollars which is how much some long island homeowners are charging on airbnb and vrbo for four nights this weekend it's because of the rider cup the u.s versus europe golfing slugfest which begins tomorrow is transforming the economy of farmingdale the small town of 8 500 people where the tournament will be played more than 50 000 attendees will stream into the Bethpage Black golf courts each day of the event, and many of them need places to stay.

23:46Enter local homeowners who say renting out their properties is a rare financial windfall they just can't pass up. One resident told the New York Post that his daughter has an upcoming bat mitzvah and his son just started at college, so quote, the extra cash is nice. And golf fans, for whom the Ryder Cup is a once-in-a-lifetime experience, seem happy to pay up. All told, booked revenue for short-term rentals this week in Farmingdale and surrounding towns totals$2.1 million, a 345 % increase compared to the same week last year. And that's not counting driveways, which some homeowners are renting out for as much as$100 a day because parking is going to be a nightmare.

24:22Toby, this is the biggest to-do on Long Island since Gatsby's party. This is just the Augusta playbook being played out on Long Island. Augusta is where the Masters happens every year, and that is just a massive boon time for Airbnb hosts. There's$8.5 million in booked rental revenue across the seven days surrounding the tournament. In total, the month of August brings in$20 million. That is a massive increase from a normal day in Augusta, Georgia. And we are seeing this in every mega event. When the Olympics came to Rio, host earnings averaged$4 ,000 a month. And I was just perusing the Airbnb host subreddit and looking ahead to the World Cup, which is coming to America.