Emmys & Streamers, NY Politics, & TikTok’s Deadline 9/15/25

0:00Bring in show music please. Hi, I'm CNBC producer Katie Kramer. Today on Squawk Pod. A long look at the U.S. economy with budget director Phil Swagel. We see lots of signs that the economy is weakening. Looking out at the next three years of the American pocketbook. The challenge is that both labor supply and labor demand are falling. So the break even for the monthly jobs number has got to be much lower. It's got to be much lower. And TV's biggest night, we're recapping the Emmys with Variety's Brent Lang. If you look at who actually won here, the streamers absolutely dominated. Plus, China cracking down on NVIDIA.

0:44TikTok parent ByteDance up against another divesting deadline. And New York Governor Kathy Hochul is backing Zorhan Mamdani for NYC mayor, which leaves the rest of the Democrats to decide where they stand. I think this is a fall in line scenario. Isn't that what's happening? I think it is. It is Monday, September 15th, 2025. Squawk Pod begins right now. Stand Becky by in 3, 2, 1, cue it please. Good morning, everybody. Welcome to Squawk Box right here on CNBC. We're live from the NASDAQ market site in Times Square. I'm Becky Quick, along with Joe Kernan and Andrew Ross Sorkin. Overnight, China ruling that NVIDIA violated anti-monopoly laws in a preliminary investigation.

1:30China's market regulator there making that announcement in a one-sentence statement without elaborating. NVIDIA has previously disclosed it's facing scrutiny in China where regulators have demanded it keep supplying local companies in return for approval for its acquisition of Mellanox. Now, that's a networking technology company that NVIDIA acquired in 2020. NVIDIA has said it may face penalties in China in that case. So you're looking at that stock off about 2.5%. Separately, China now launching two investigations targeting the U.S. semiconductor sector as well. China's Commerce Ministry saying just yesterday it has now opened an anti-dumping probe related to certain U.S.-made chips, the kind made by Texas Instruments and analog devices.

2:11A second probe focused on anti-discrimination rules. Those relate to U.S. moves in the China chip sector. Now, on Friday, the U.S. added 23 more Chinese companies to its entity list, which imposes restrictions on companies deemed to be acting contrary to national security or foreign policy interests. And so, I don't know if this is tit for tat. I don't know where we are. I don't know how much of this is just about this negotiation that's taking place as we speak. For NVIDIA in particular, is it simply that they are following the U.S. authorities' rules on these things, that they won't sell chips to Chinese companies because they've been told they're not allowed to?

2:48Unclear to me exactly what's going on. I'd just be glad that NVIDIA bought that company. Melanox. Whose idea was that? Terrible name. I just think it's a, I mean, if you, you know, eat something really spicy. Oh, I thought it sounded like melanoma. Even worse. It sounds like either it's bad. U.S. and Chinese officials began a round of talks, trade talks, in Madrid yesterday. The Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, and U.S. Trade Representative Jameson Greer met with their Chinese counterparts in the fourth meeting in four months among the topics under discussion, the fate of TikTok. The platform's owner, ByteDance, faces a deadline of September 17th, just a couple days from now, to divest its U.S.

3:36operations or face a U.S. shutdown. Last night, President Trump said he could again extend the deadline or, in his words, let it die. Let what? TikTok die? Let TikTok die, yes. Let TikTok die. In the last hour, U.S. officials in Madrid told Reuters a Chinese delegation came into the talks with a fundamental misunderstanding of the U.S. position on TikTok. And they said many technical aspects of divestiture of TikTok assets have been worked out. But Chinese officials have attached demands on U.S. tariffs as well as technology restrictions. In order for that sale to go through. Right. On this week's Squawk Planner, the Fed is in focus.

4:19We've got that FOMC kicking off a two-day policy meeting tomorrow. Speaking to Reuters yesterday, President Trump said, I think you have a big cut. It's perfect for cutting. Economists are widely predicting a quarter-point interest rate cut with a slimmer chance of a half-point cut. Also of note, the Senate is set to vote tonight on whether to confirm President Trump's pick, Stephen Myron, to replace Adriana Kugler on the Fed's board of governors. If all the former steps proceed, Myron could have a say in this week's meeting. And he's going to keep his job. And he'll keep his job at the White House, at least temporarily.

4:52Go on a leave. It's supposed to be a four-month position. Seems so problematic. I mean, this goes to a true... working for the white house right yeah you're working for the white house you're on the fed and what do you make of the lisa cook news over the weekend that she apparently said it but then when it came down to the rate she got she did get the primary residence rate so it's nice to i don't know it is the first time it's looked like lenders were aware at least that it well this goes to the issue actually knows what i what i don't understand about this is if this is true which it looks like it is why she didn't say this almost immediately yeah that's the only problem with this whole situation you don't think you think it could be an oversight that she goes hey wait a second this this is not a primary residence when they actually did the mortgage which allowed her to get the lower payments say that again she when the final documents were done and it said primary residence why didn't she say no that's not right i told you this was vacation instead she was able to get the lower rates that you get from having it as a primary residence instead of When the rubber met the road, she still allowed it to manage her.

6:02Well, this goes back to whether the bank was defrauded or not. The whole thing is whether she lied to the bank. That's the whole story. Right, but on the mortgage app, if she didn't say, wait, hold on, then. But if her mortgage broker, for whatever reason, knew that it was a vacation home because she was listed as a vacation home, which now there's documentation that she did. But then it was the mortgage broker's fault? I'm just saying I don't understand enough about what's happened here. And the truth of this is a question of whether you defrauded somebody or not. So if they were aware of this for whatever reason and they decided to offer her this rate, I can't tell you what the story is.

6:44But I'm just suggesting to you that there's clearly more to it. Seems like. Maybe. You don't know a lot about it, but you're willing to take her side as a default position. I have not for the last four weeks. No, I know, but now. Now that there's documents. No, I don't know. Andrews did raise the question, why didn't you say this earlier? I said the whole time, why didn't you say this earlier? You mean, why didn't she say, I said it was a vacation? I've said from the very beginning that the issue, that if she's innocent, I would have thought within the first 72 hours or weeks, she could have come out and said, this is all a misunderstanding.

7:21I had listed it as a vacation home. it was they asked me to list it this way or this whatever the whatever the explanation is i don't know what the explanation is and that would have been a lot better clearly and i don't know i shouldn't say clearly anything she had a lawyer who told her not to say a word until now right why that is i don't know i'd love to know there is a court that could rule as as late as tonight as to whether or not she'll be allowed to vote in this fomc meeting whether she'll be crazy because There's 12 votes on it there. None of it's really going to matter for Myron or for her.

7:55You know how we go like this? January, February. Yeah, you're supposed to start from the other side. Start from the other side. So the Romans had the same problem. Because March 15th is obviously the odds. September 13th is the odds. So I said that, yeah, March, May, July, and October are the 15th. Everything else is the 13th. So I was incorrect. I have to, I'm sorry. I don't waste time. But if I'm factually wrong, it's not the Ides of September, Andrew. Will you remember that? I try not to. New York Governor Kathy Hochul has endorsed Zoran Mondami in the New York City mayoral race. In a New York Times op-ed, she said she had frank conversations with him in the past few months and had disagreements.

8:41But she characterized him as the leader who shares her commitment to the future of the city. And we've all been sitting around debating this issue, guys, this morning about her decision to do this, what it means. We're all wondering whether Eric Adams is going to step down or take himself out of the race. Would that mean Cuomo would win or still not? I think it would be hardly a toss up even there. I think you'd have to get Sliwa out of the game as well before you'd even have a, you know, a neck and neck kind of race. And by the way, Cuomo told us last week when he was here that if if any if anybody wanted to be off the ballot, I think they had to do it.

9:20There was some question around it, but it was potentially by last week. By last week. So the other thing is, it's possible the name is still on the ballot. Even if you that confuses the voter to begin with. I don't know what's going on here. I will say I was in shock last week. I still am in shock about this one. I don't know if you saw. He doubled down. This was about, I think, on Friday in an interview with The New York Times. Netanyahu. That if Netanyahu were to come to New York, by the way, could come to New York to go speak at the U.N. or something else, that he would have the New York PD, the NYPD arrest him, which would put him, by the way, in direct conflict with the federal government, which, of course, doesn't acknowledge.

10:01You know, he said that he's a war criminal, doesn't acknowledge the international justice. unless he got rid of the police then the social workers would be trying to arrest that you know this i mean this is alexander hamilton's paper but it's still funny when that's why you have to say that but so the question is does hakim now is everybody coming in line now that i think this is i i fall in line scenario isn't that what's happening i think it is but there are plenty that haven't yet, like some, you know, some shred of respectability, they're maintaining. Okay. This is an interesting thing. I was looking this up because I wasn't sure.

10:40I thought this was the case. The United Nations headquarters is technically located on U.S. soil in New York City, but the land is technically extraterritorial. So if he took a helicopter to the U.N., the New York PD couldn't come arrest him. Maybe, but there's really no way to get there. And it city. And the whole point is to represent the people of the city. What the people of the city think about what's happening in the Middle East is sort of not the story. The story is, deal with the subways, deal with the sanitation, deal with the school system and education, deal with the stuff that the city and citizens care about.

11:22And who knows, by the way, what the perspective of the New Yorkers is on Israel and Palestine. I don't, I, unless you're having a vote by, you know, referendum by the, by the, uh, you don't want the folks who live here. It tells you what his view is. You really don't want him focusing on those other things in the city because he's all of his, all of his ideas about how to fix them are going to make. No, no, no. But I think the responsibility of a mayor is those things. I think taking, international positions on what the way the universe should look like is not the role of a mayor. No. Historically.

11:57And it would put, by the way, New York in a direct fight, effectively, with the federal government. And is that what New Yorkers want? I don't know. Maybe they do. But I can't imagine that that's the case. push comes to shove does this young man who seems smart and very capable does he have he's got no experience running anything does he really have any business being the mayor of new york andrew well i think this is the fundamental question putting aside all the different issues around what you think his position on on israel or palestine is or what you think his perspective is on the first thing he's ever done is run his campaign it's doing pretty well well and the Yeah, but the question is, could he run the city and run it well?

12:43And that is the fundamental question. But what surprised me about the Bibi Netanyahu comment was this is a guy who, since winning the primary, had appeared to be moving to the center, had been trying to placate business folks and folks who didn't agree with him and said he wanted to be inclusive and this and that. And so then when he came out with that comment, which, of course, is relatively divisive, I would imagine, but maybe not. Maybe the world's all moved into a different direction. I'm not sure. But if that's the case, it just surprised me because I thought there are people who would go, I don't know.

13:19Maybe it didn't poll well. That's what I'm saying. Maybe it's a polling thing. Right. Cheese will be next. Coming up next on Squawk Pod, the man who referees budget fights in Washington. OMB director Phil Swagel crunches the numbers on the true cost to the economy of tariffs legislation and higher prices. Inflation since January has come in a bit higher than we expected. Oh, it has. It has. So it's higher than you expected. It's higher than we expected. That's right. It's lower than what Wall Street expected.

14:00that. Welcome back to Squawk Pod. Stand Joe by. Three, two, wipe up to him. His mic. Q. President Trump just posting on Truth Social. Governor Kathy Hochul of New York has endorsed the little communist Zoran Mamdani running for mayor of New York. This is a rather shocking development and a very bad one for New York City. How can such a thing happen? Washington will be watching this situation very closely. No reason to be sending good money after bad. President DJT.

14:42The Congressional Budget Office is projecting higher inflation and unemployment this year with slowing economic growth ahead. Joining us right now to discuss it is CBO Director Phil Swagel. And Phil, thanks for coming in today. Yeah, Becky, thanks so much. Thanks for having me. So the new numbers, the new estimates take into account several things. One is population growth because of immigration. You're anticipating that it's going to be significantly lower. The other is the one big, beautiful bill, what the costs are associated with that. And I guess the costs are higher. And that's the two impacts that we have on these numbers.

15:15No, that's right. And we have the bill, the reconciliation bill is boosting the economy and immigration is slowing it down. And then the effects of the tariff are both raising inflation and slowing down the economy, both businesses and households facing the drag from the tariffs. I mean, I think about trying to compute all of these numbers with the many, many moving pieces that you have. It's a pretty complex situation. And I would imagine it changes on a pretty daily basis. But let's focus on population growth first, because that probably plays into the jobs numbers that we've been getting. And that's kind of front and center for what the Fed is going to be deciding this week.

15:54What do you see with those population numbers? No, that's right. And the challenge for the Fed is that we have both labor demand going down as the economy is weakening, but labor supply is falling dramatically. And we have our population numbers that you mentioned look to be several hundred thousand fewer each year over the next 10 years and something like a million fewer this year alone. And that's from the change both in the law that was passed on July 4th provides more money for enforcement and the wall and things like that. But since January 20th, the administration has put in a series of administrative measures that have really stopped people from coming in across the border in the way that they were the previous four years.

16:37And, you know, there's lots of issues around that. But for the economy, it means fewer people and fewer workers. Does that suggest that the jobs market is healthier than we may anticipate, given some of these reads? Because the unemployment rate is still 4.3 percent. Yeah, that's the challenge is that both labor supply and labor demand are falling. So the break even for the monthly jobs number has got to be much lower. It's got to be much lower. But still, we see lots of signs that the economy is weakening and that obviously the Fed is seeing that as well. Yeah, I'm trying to square that up with what we just heard from Ed Yardenny.

17:11He looks at it and says, yeah, maybe we'll get a 25 basis point cut. But he thinks that we're basically at neutral levels now. The labor market data has been weak. There's been a downward revision, but I don't think the GDP numbers are going to get revised. So I think the productivity numbers are going to get revised up. If if we've got now productivity led economic growth, then interest rates are basically where they should be. If they lower them, then the risk is that you get a melt up in the stock market and then you get a meltdown. He's a pretty straight down the middle guy who just looks at markets and and and by the way, thinks the markets are going to continue to grow for the next several years pretty, pretty effectively.

17:48Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean, Ed is really interesting because he sees the complexity in this. Yeah. And that's one of the challenges for us. And you talked about how the economy is changing minute by minute and policies are changing. And we see the tariffs changing day by day. There's a lot of uncertainty in the economy. Yeah, how do you even put the tariffs into this? What are your assumptions? Yeah, so we essentially follow what the administration is doing really day by day. And we have a team at CBO that does the modeling of this. Whatever they do, we look at it. We wait until the dollars hit the Treasury statement.

18:19And then we assume that those policies will continue out forever. What happens if a judge rules that these tariffs, or at least many of them, are illegal? The Supreme Court. The Supreme Court, right. This is now in front of the Supreme Court. It's one of the key uncertainties in the economy. Have you run the numbers? What would you do? You don't count them anyway, right? No, no, we do. But you don't count them in terms of deficit reduction? No, we do. So we have the tariffs that the president has put in place since January 20th. We have those reducing the deficit by$4 trillion over the next 10 years.

18:54So it's$3.3 trillion of revenue and then$700 billion of averted debt costs. So that would be a big reversal in terms of the deficit. On the other hand, it would be lower inflation and probably higher business investment, higher consumer spending. So, Ned, you still came up with that the tariffs were going to increase it. Oh, no. It was the OBBB was going to increase the deficit by$4 trillion. By, that's right, it's by$3.4 trillion plus the debt service cost. Did you offset it with the tariffs? No, we will. In our future budget updates, we will do that arithmetic, putting everything together in the same place.

19:32For the score of the bill, we only look within the four corners of the bill, and that's where the tariffs are separate. The bill, you said, would increase the deficit by$3.4 trillion from 2024 to 34, but then you say the debt service costs added up to$4.1 trillion. The additional. With the additional adds it up to$4.1 trillion. Exactly. That assumes that interest rates are at what level? Because that's a big factor in all of this, too. No, no, that's a key. So we have, for that cost estimate of the bill, we were using our economic assumptions that were made on January 17th. And that's just, that's the budget rules, right?

20:05That's what Congress tells us to do. We will be looking at it again now and see, well, what is the trajectory of interest rates? By the president wants a 300 basis points lower. Yeah. I mean, we do expect the Fed to cut interest rates. We have 75 basis points of cuts between now and the end of January. So we do expect that to happen. There's just kind of so much going on in the economy, it's hard to know where it will end up. Do you make judgment calls as to whether tariffs are good for the economy? Do you make judgment calls about one big, beautiful bill? How do you come down on it? Yeah. So what I tell members of Congress is that they get our analysis and not our opinion.

20:42So I will tell them, here's what it does to the economy. tariffs, higher inflation, higher revenue, slower growth, whether that's good or bad is up to the Congress, to the president, now to the Supreme Court. So we're looking at just the budget and economic effects and not whether it's the right thing. Have you run the numbers as to what would happen? Do you run different scenarios if the Supreme Court were to overturn those tariffs? You know, we haven't done that yet. It's implicit. We haven't said, well, if the Supreme Court does that, what would happen to the economy? I mean, it's implicit in the four trillion of revenue, four trillion of revenue plus net interest costs.

21:19That would reverse over the next 10 years. So would inflation? Inflation would be lower. I mean, this is a 3.3 trillion. But you literally haven't run these numbers or you don't want to tell them because you don't want to? No, no, no. In our economic assumptions, we look at the law as it is now. And that's what Congress has told us to do, to say, tell us the baseline, assuming current law. Current law plus current policy has the tariffs. If those are reversed, we will certainly do that arithmetic. And again, it's a mix, right? Because it's less revenue, higher deficit, but it's like a big tax cut on businesses and households.

21:58In terms of the inflation numbers that have surprised so many people on Wall Street, has it come as a surprise to you? Or how often do you tweak those numbers? We do. So we update our forecast just a couple times a year, generally three times a year. That's what we did just last Friday. Inflation since January has come in a bit higher than we expected. Oh, it has. It has. So it's higher than you expected. It's higher than we expected. That's right. It's lower than what Wall Street expected, but higher than what we expected. And it's probably the tariffs. The economy has been weakening over the course of the year.

22:33And you'd expect that to lower inflation. But the tariffs have probably been pushing up inflation. Not by a lot, but by enough to show up. Where else are your assumptions far different than Wall Street? Now, that's a good question. The biggest change would be that by law, we assume current law. So we don't assume future changes in fiscal policy. And Wall Street naturally does. So at some point, there has to be either lower spending or higher taxes. And we don't assume that because Congress wants us to tell them what's the situation under current law. Right. That's interesting. Phil, thank you for coming in.

23:15We always appreciate talking to you. Thanks so much. How come you have two L's? I've never seen Phil with two L's. It's funny. It's just childhood. Well, Philip, there's a lot of Philips that have two L's. There's lots of Philips, but the short. Philip said Philip, have you ever seen Phil? Yeah. P-H-I-L. That's how you know if somebody really knows me. Wow. If they spell it with one L, then they don't really know me. Mary Erdos' husband, Phil, I think spelled P-H-I-L. Did you play correctly in Too Big to Fail? I think you did. Good, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I can't say that for sure, but I'm pretty sure after looking at it last week that he spells it too well.

23:44Four consonants and a vowel. Rare. How's your daughters doing well back on the hill? We're still on TV though. Coming up, we'll discuss this later. Next on Squawk Pod, an Emmy Awards recap and a reality check. I don't know, I've never seen SV. Do people watch any of that? I'm old, I don't watch that. SVU? Where do you live? Variety journalist Brent Lange on what he's watching, and it's bigger than streaming. This is not a normal regulatory environment. When you're talking about people having really personal relationships with the president and that will determine whether or not something goes, stays or goes, I mean, that's a very different, uncharted territory.

24:25And when you look at how that Paramount deal went down, I mean, that is not a normal way that a deal gets approved.

24:38This is Squawk Pod. Stand, Andrew, by. Three, two, one. Up in Andrew. Cue his mic. If you're watching Squawk Box on CNBC on this Monday morning, I'm Andrew Osorkin along with Joe Kernan and Becky Quick. Joining us now to recap the Emmys. I guess we can do that. Variety executive editor, editor, Brett Lang. I guess we can keep it to streamers versus legacy versus linear. because I did see the first five minutes. I admit it, Brent. I'm not usually up that late, but they made fun of streaming. I think they said another way to lose money, didn't they? They certainly did. But, I mean, if you look at who actually won here, the streamers absolutely dominated.

25:23You had Netflix that tied with HBO and HBO Max with 30 wins, and then Apple comes in and gets 20 wins, including a record number for the studios. So I think it just shows that the momentum has really shifted here towards streaming players and away from broadcast, which was almost nonexistent last night. What won? I don't I didn't look at everything that won. Did any of the linear offerings win? Has anyone watched that? I saw Ice-T interviewed before. Then the guy called him a legend. And I'm like, I don't know. I've never seen SVU. Do people watch any of that? I'm old. I don't watch SVU. Where do you live?