The Orange Pill with Mike Novogratz & President Trump vs. Tim Cook 5/16/25

0:00Bring in show music, please. This is Squawk Pod and I'm CNBC producer Cameron Costa. On today's podcast, Trump versus Tim. As the president wraps up a multi-day swing through the Middle East, complete with a CEO receiving line and billions in potential deals, he takes issue with Apple CEO Tim Cook. Yale's Jeffrey Sonnenfeld on the corner office and the Oval Office. CEOs, you know, they don't have a choice whether or not to deal with Trump. They have to figure out how to deal with him. And it's not by putting them on the spot, it's through collective action. And Mike Novogratz's galaxy is going public today.

0:40He's been betting on the blockchain for a long time. And finally, the herd is catching up. Slowly but surely, people got orange-pilled. First on Bitcoin and then on the whole idea of this decentralized revolution, on what crypto could do. Plus, a marriage between the largest U.S. cable companies, meditating on TikTok and tri-state travel. It's hard. Good luck if you live in New Jersey, basically trying to get anywhere right now. It's Friday, May 16th, 2025, and Squawk Pod begins right now. Stand Andrew by in three, two, one, cue Andrew. Good morning and welcome back to Squawk Box right here on CNBC.

1:22We are live at the Nasdaq market site in Times Square. I am Andrew Osorkin, along with the great Kelly Evans. Waking up early. What do you think? You got three hours of sleep? I did not do well, folks. I think people should stay tuned for that. It's going to be... We could do it. I think we should do like a daily Oura Ring score, basically. Yeah. The sleep is... For those who are Oura Ring users, no. This is 61 is what it says. Fair. Readiness, 73. Well, they didn't measure the length of sleep. They just said... No, no, no. No, no. I can give you that in a second. I'm sure the quality... Four hours, nine minutes.

1:59Four hours, nine minutes. The HRV for those tracking at home at 21. What's HRV? Heart rate variability. Okay. That's not a good score. Okay. I could have a stroke. And as you drink the coffee? Just hope I don't have, yeah. The U.S. and the UAE are working on a path to allow the United Arab Emirates to buy some of the most advanced U.S.-made semiconductors for AI development. That's according to President Trump, who spoke at a Business Council breakfast today in Abu Dhabi. This will generate billions and billions of dollars in business and accelerate the UAE's plans to become a really major player in artificial intelligence.

2:36And I read where the oil and gas and oil is great, but you're going to have equally big and maybe even bigger at some point, you'll be surpassing it with AI and other businesses. The president is wrapping up his four-day visit to the Middle East. In the UAE, Trump announced deals totaling more than$200 billion, including a roughly$15 billion deal between Boeing, GE Aerospace and Etihad Airways for 28 jets. The White House also saying the U.S. and UAE will partner on a massive AI data center in Abu Dhabi. The White House has not provided documentation for the$200 billion investment figure, so NBC News cannot verify its accuracy.

3:18Shares of Boeing and GE are up, but fractionally. We got a little bit of deal news, potentially. Potentially, I say. Bloomberg reporting that Charter is now in advance talks to merge with privately held Cox Communications. Could be a cash and stock agreement. Would value Cox at more than$30 billion, including debt. The report saying that the Cox family would hold about 20 % stake in the new company. Would receive board seats late last year. TV pioneer John Malone argued that Charter should be allowed to merge with a larger rival in order to stay competitive. If finalized, a deal of this size would be one of the biggest of the year.

3:55I know you've been saying deals are coming, and I think these are the kind of deals that people would like to see come. And the question is, will they? By the way, the deal that people were expecting. That's what I was going to say. In Comcast land. Show shares of Comcast. In Comcast land, exactly. However, part of the issue has been whether this administration would allow a deal of this kind of sort and this kind of scale and of these companies, given some of the comments that the president has made about them. Guys in the back, if you can just put up CMCSA. I'm just curious if they're selling off at all, because to Andrew's point, there's long been speculation in the market.

4:33Look, not much lunch. You know, a 20 because here's the point. If Charter's going with Cox,$20 billion deal, you're not going to turn around and merge with Comcast. Again, no one other than people in the industry have speculated about this. But the idea being if Comcast is going to spin off some of its cable companies, maybe look at an administration more friendly to M &A. And Charter, to your point about Malone, pursues now bigger scale because the industry has changed so much that maybe they're more open to that. But it's not with Comcast. It's with Cox. and therefore would be by the way if you ever think there's going to be a comcast deal down the road this would then be three years right yeah absolutely very very interesting and and again to your point a bigger deal than certainly the dicks one yesterday it was 10 times as large so maybe things are picking up who knows meantime new jersey transit uh is shut down today potentially stranding 350 000 commuters who use that rail system to get to work.

5:31Now, members of the railroad engineering union went on strike just after midnight today. Negotiators failing to reach an agreement, largely over a dispute on wages. The union saying its members are the lowest paid locomotive engineers of any major passenger railroad in the country. Now, New Jersey's Governor Phil Murphy and CEO of New Jersey Transit said that they are open to continuing negotiations at any time. Governor urging people to work from home today if possible and said there would be extra bus service available Amtrak and path trains are still running. Yeah, this is a big... Is this one of those things, though, where you can...

6:05Can you force the issue ever? What do you mean? I mean, on a federal level, sometimes when it comes to a strike, you can say, you know, there's certain things that are sort of a requirement for, you know, societies to operate. This happens to be one of them. People are pretty upset back at the ranch where, you know, we rely heavily on the local train station. This affects some bus service also, so you could see a lot of weirdness as a result. So talking to people in the neighborhood, like they're working from home in many cases, at least for today, kind of see what happens going into next week.

6:36And by the way, next week, Amtrak's also coincidentally going to start work on the tunnel from, I believe, Sandy or one of the storms 12 years ago. So there's just a lot that's going to be a huge headache on top of all the problems at Newark. So good luck if you live in New Jersey basically trying to get anywhere right now. And then there's the congestion pricing. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. Can't go anywhere. Nobody wants us. TikTok turning to new age solutions to try to help soften its image as the company faces pressure over child mental health and late night scrolling, which, by the way, could be applicable to adults as well.

7:11I was going to say. Exactly. The company launching an in-app guided meditation exercises and other well-being tools aimed at young users. Now, TikTok says the meditation feature is aimed at improving sleep quality and will trigger during what they call sleep hours. It will be turned on by default for users under the age of 18. That starts at 10 p.m., though. Wow. I think maybe earlier would be better. Their feed will be interrupted by the meditation exercise. That will be followed by a second prompt if the user keeps scrolling. Now, here's the problem. I have a timer. Uh-huh. Like on screen. time limit on all sorts of social media apps on my phone already not already but you know when you reach the time yes it tells you you've reached the time and you just keep going and then it says would you like to bypass that for 15 minutes or would you like to bypass that for the day it's like hitting snooze on the alarm button okay and so then i do the 15 minutes and then i do the 15 minutes again and then sometimes i just do screw it just do it for the day well if you're on a plane for six hours.

8:20Totally. So I don't know. I don't know. I don't think that my children are scrolling, which they should not be if they're waking up right now and they're watching. There's a lot of shoulds. There's a lot of shoulds. I know, but is this really going to help at all? I don't know. Probably look if you're meta, maybe if you're snap, you're like, great, go ahead. We'll take all the frustrated and annoyed TikTok users when they jump off to come check our app for a second. There's this bill advancing the kids online safety act. You know, I guess they had tried it last year, has a little bit more traction now.

8:47And I wonder if some of this is trying to get ahead of these things by saying, hey, look, look, look what we're offering. Look what we're doing, you know. Yeah. To avoid addictive scrolling, which I think is one of the targets of the bill. But look, we've talked about this before. In China, the TikTok doesn't exist for children. Like they don't even allow it. It's just a different product. I still wish Apple could do something with the iOS to set it up more like, you know, parents do have some control, obviously, over their kids' phones. Who is this profile, this person using it? What do you want them to have access to and not?

9:20Like, make the phone go dark at certain times. Oh, there's no question, by the way, for everything that's fabulous about this phone, and most people know I love Apple. I love all the things they do, except for the controls for kids. Yeah. It's actually shocking. It's the one piece of the software that they have not nailed, and they clearly, it's an underinvestment, and they haven't done it. I don't get it. And even when you want to use it more, so sometimes for the one, the two, the three-year-olds, It's like, I want that video to keep going. Don't let them. And you have to watch YouTube videos about how to hijack the controls to kind of keep the security.

9:51I'm like, make it easier for them to watch, too. It's not all just about taking it away. There's got to be a better way. There's always a better way. I think a lot of this is coming from D.C. as well. TikTok especially has to try to get ahead of it. Cheese will be next. Coming up on Squawk Pod, how CEOs are navigating President Trump's trade war. that the professor called the CEO whisperer Jeffrey Sonnenfeld. Half of Elon Musk's production worldwide is in China. He produces two million cars in China. Nobody talks about this. One million are sent for export outside of China. Wait a minute. Why isn't that being complaining about that?

10:33This is Squawk Pod today with Andrew Ross Sorkin and Kelly Evans. I had a little problem with Tim Cook yesterday. I said to him, Tim, you're my friend. I treated you very good. You're coming in with$500 billion, but now I hear you're building all over India. I don't want you building in India. That was President Trump taking a very public shot at Apple CEO Tim Cook for not manufacturing the United States and for a closer look at the White House's relationship with American business. I want to bring in Yale School of Management Professor Jeffrey Sonnenfeld. He is the Yale Chief Executive Leadership Institute and CNBC contributor as well.

11:08Good morning to you, sir. Good morning. OK, so Tim Cook has ostensibly had one of the best relationships as as these relationships go with this president. You've seen lots of stories praising him for navigating the president. And here we have a situation where all of a sudden the president's taking shots at him. What do you make of this? Well, it is It's a perfect case study to look at in how to manage a relationship with Donald Trump. I've known President Trump, as you know, for a quarter of a century, which is longer than anybody of any of his immediate lieutenants, other than family members and Steve Wyckoff.

11:49And through that period of time, I have seen CEOs that melt down, that understand how to take him on. is the old sports superstar agent Mark McCormick had once said that anger can be used as a negotiation tool, but not as a calculated, but it has to be as a calculated act and not as an emotional reaction. So when President Trump uses anger, he knows what he's doing in advance. It's not usually a tantrum, even though it looks it. But if you respond the same way, you lose control. It's basically, you can't fire back. And Tim Cook has been very careful to not get into the mud. And he hasn't. My question is a slightly different one, which is I was with a very senior executive in America just yesterday as this happened.

12:38And we were discussing and he said, that's what you get. You go you go down to Mar-a-Lago in Washington. You stand next to the president. You do all the things you say. I'm going to do five hundred billion dollars. I'm going to genuflect. I'll bend the knee. I'll kiss the ring. I'll do all the things. And then he's going to come after me anyway. And so. Or is it he did 99 of the things, but he didn't go on the Middle East trip? I mean, was that a catalyst for him? I don't know. Well, the guys who went on the Middle East trip, I think they were smart to do it. But I don't know that he turned it down.

13:11I think that there were specific AI focused deals there. And, of course, that's a business of Apple intelligence. But I think that Trump does take things personally. However, you don't respond personally. The divide and conquer antic is a scary one. We've seen CEOs meltdown when they got into that. Trump's negotiation style is always to, instead of building up trust. But did he pull back on India then? I mean, look, to the extent that there's a company that is stuck, given these sort of political headwinds, they're in a place that's actually very complicated. Well, he did, you know, Trump 1.0.

13:54Tim Cook did what Trump wanted. He moved out quite a bit of production, of course, to Vietnam. 20 % of iPads are from there, and 90 % of his watches, I believe, are from there. That was Vietnam, rather. And India is about 20 % of phones, and he could ramp up 60%, 65 % in India. if need be. But that wasn't enough as now President Trump's changed his mind on India and on Vietnam to bring it all back here. But there's no way that he's that Tim Cook is going to allow prices on an iPhone to increase more than three times to three thousand five hundred dollars per phone. And what what he does is he doesn't put Trump in a corner.

14:38He doesn't insult back. Trump can be like a wounded animal slashing away back at you if you take him on that way, if you poke the bear. Tim Cook talks to him quietly. But Tim Cook also knows that this leadership model is different. It's like a hub with spokes coming off of. It's almost a tribal model is that he knows who to deal with. It's not Howard Ludnick. It's not Peter Navarro. I'm sorry to say I introduced Navarro to Trump years ago, even before Jared thought he did. Jared now admits I introduced him to him, so blame me. But many CEOs, a major transportation CEO yesterday that I spoke with and a major industrialist told me just the day before they will have nothing to do with dealing with Navarro, but they do know that working with Scott Besson and working with Jameson Greer, the trade rep.

15:23I have a separate question, which is, we've heard since the beginning of this administration, you know, so many big foreign direct investments or big investments by American Corporation announcements. If we look at this three years from now, what do you think we're going to see? I mean, do you think that it's actually going to be a record and we should go, oh my goodness, this is really a seismic change and this is fabulous for the country, which is my hope? Or do you say to yourself, we're going to see something very different? Well, I think Trump and even Navarro are not completely out of bounds in talking about the need to adjust the China relationship.

16:06Navarro used to talk about the seven deadly sins. I wish they'd get back to that intellectual property issue and forced ownership and things like that, that data can't travel outside of China that's produced there unless it's managed on Huawei equipment things. That's crazy. Things they needed to address, but not putting in these cross-the-board tariffs. CEOs, 85 % tell us it should be selective tariffs. I get it. I'm asking a different question. Well, what will last? I'm asking, when you look at the NVIDIA announcements or different chip manufacturers who say they're going to be manufacturing in Arizona, is that something you say to yourself, all this is going to happen anyway?

16:43Do you say this happened because of this administration? Do you say they say they're going to do it and it's not going to happen? Obviously, Apple came out with its$500 billion investment. Do you think that when somebody goes back and measures that later, they're going to look at that and go, this was an unbelievable time in America? Or are you going to say this was policy by press release and the press release wasn't worth what was on the page? Well, if you take a look at the chip makers, they're doing a fairly good job privately meeting with them, as well as people like Michael Dell, Arvind Krishna of IBM, they put zero money in.

17:15IBM, I believe, has never given a political donation in their history. But they have great influence by talking privately with Trump about, for example, revisiting the Chips Act. Just because it was a Biden creation doesn't mean it was wrong. In fact, Biden was too slow, as actually the Secretary of Commerce was too slow, in releasing the funds. I believe the CEO of Intel lost his job because only 5 % of the funds were released that should have gone out on the Chips Act. there. But so you'll see some things that the Taiwan semiconductor, you've probably seen it. I've seen it just north of Arizona.

17:43That construction has been underway for years. He's taking full credit as if it just happened. Some of that stuff will be lasting, but they're going to take a look. Is this equal protection? They're getting the same deal. Do you realize that half half of Elon Musk production worldwide is in China? He produces two million cars in China. I know nobody talks about this. One million are sent for export outside of China. Wait a minute. Why isn't that being complaining about that? Is, you know, Ford only produces 25 percent of what Tesla does in China. GM produces twice as much. But Ford GM is for the.

18:15Hold on. Just so we're clear, though, the cars that are being produced in China by Tesla that you say are being exported are not being exported to the U.S. They're being exported to parts of Europe. They're being exported to parts of Africa, being exported elsewhere. Correct. Yeah, it's still being exported elsewhere, which is which is an issue. Now, if you believe Navarro, that the Tesla in the U.S. is an assembler of parts made elsewhere. And of course, Elon Musk took issue with that, took issue with that. We talked about it on this show. But then we put in the, you know, drivetrain brake systems and tires.

18:44And we realized, you know, maybe Navarro is not exactly crazy yet again. There's there are sources that coming from elsewhere are people being held to the same rules. And that's that's a critical issue. But CEOs, you know, they don't have a choice whether or not to deal with Trump. They have to figure out how to deal with him. and it's not by putting them on the spot. It's through collective action. The Business Roundtable has done a fair to mediocre job. Surprisingly, they've been really backpedaling a little bit. They make some statements and all, but to the shock and amazement of everybody, the ultra-conservative, historically, National Association of Manufacturers has been, Jay Timmons has been way more out there and direct.

19:20I mean, they were in favor of the Vietnam War. They were not big environmentalists. They were not big on civil rights issues. And the business, they were very reactive. Not now. And that's a dispute, a difficult group. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce was just a huge group, large and small, you know, old and young, you know, more rural and urban. And yet they're doing a very good job there of addressing Trump. You don't want individual CEOs to poke the bear. And the business roundtable needs to step up a little bit more. They backpedaled a little because I don't know why, but they sit in rows and columns like they're in church pews when Trump comes in to meet with them.

19:55And they don't actually have an active, lively debate. Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, it's always good to see you. Thanks, good to see you. Up next, the Trump family's crypto empire continues to grow. And the venture is drawing some more scrutiny. Comments from Eric Trump next. And Mike Novogratz's Galaxy starts publicly trading today on the NASDAQ. It has been a long road to mainstream crypto adoption, and Novogratz is betting there's even more coming. As more and more young people inherit the money from their old people that kiss the face of God, you're going to see crypto equal gold. And that's a long way from here.

20:36SquawkPod will be right back.

20:44Welcome back to SquawkPod. You're watching SquawkBox on CNBC. I'm Andrew Ross Sorkin, along with Kelly Evans, who's hanging out today. Thank you so very, very much for waking up early. Becky and Joe are off. Meantime, this week, Pakistan becoming the latest to partner with the World Liberty Financial, the crypto company that counts the Trump family as one of its top investors. But the dealings by the company now raising some questions around potential conflicts for the first family. Mackenzie Sigalos sat down with one of the president's sons and joins us now. What did you learn? Hey, good morning, Andrew.

21:17So foreign investments and World Liberty Financial is a big point of concern for Democrats and government ethics experts. This project has its own token where the Trumps collect 75 percent of revenue. And we've already seen Chinese billionaire Justin Sun publicly disclose a 75 million dollar investment into that token right as the SEC began negotiating a settlement in its fraud case against him. And then recently, this project decided to launch its own dollar peg stable coin USD one. The Emirati-owned MGX fund is using it for a$2 billion investment in finance, the same exchange that just settled with U.S.

21:51regulators, for$4.3 billion over sanctions violations. And critics say it all raises major conflict of interest concerns for the Trump family. So I asked Eric Trump what he would say to those critics. It's a beautiful thing if the largest crypto exchange on Earth wants to put so many people who have never touched the U.S. dollar on the U.S. dollar. That's a beautiful thing for the United States of America. And that should really be embraced. Meanwhile, the White House says there's no conflict of interest because the president's assets are in a trust managed by his children. Guys, did he get into the whole sort of critique of it in a big way?

22:28No, it was a that was the full response. It was kind of a hedge to say that we're glad to be working with finance. And going to your point in the intro about World Liberty now teaming up with Pakistan, They're teaming up with a month old organization called the Crypto Council that was formed and actually added the founder of Binance, who served time in the U.S. to its advisory board. Now they're working with the U.S. government to integrate blockchain tech through World Liberty Financial. Mackenzie, the stablecoin bill that failed, some said, oh, it's the Trump family's fault because they've kind of given crypto a bad name with all of this stuff that's been going on there.

23:03What else does that have some truth to it? And what else can you tell us about the fate of that legislation? Yeah. So the stablecoin bill, the Genius Act in particular, was supposed to be a layup for the crypto industry, which, remember, outraised the banks and big oil in the 2024 election cycle. And they were successful in electing the most pro-crypto Congress that we've seen. But at the last minute, you saw a lot of Senate Democrats pull their support for the bill, some of them indeed citing potential conflicts of interest by the Trump White House. But according to a source on background, it looks like enough concessions have been made that that bill may progress with a vote as soon as Monday, Kelly.

23:40All right. Mackenzie, for now, thanks. Appreciate it. Mackenzie Sigalos.

23:48Galaxy Digital Holding is going public today on the NASDAQ through a direct listing. It's going to list under the ticker name GLXY. Joining us in an exclusive interview this morning is Galaxy CEO Mike Novogratz here in the home of the NASDAQ. Good morning to you. Good morning. It's a big day. We're excited. Help the audience that doesn't totally understand the Galaxy story, understand what the actual business is. And to the extent that they're going to start to think about the valuation of the business, as they'd say, as an investment banker would say, what are the comps? Yeah. Well, listen, we started off wanting to be the Goldman Sachs of crypto.