Venezuela’s Exodus & AI’s Power 12/29/25

0:00Bring in show music, please. This is Squawk Pod, and I'm CNBC producer Cameron Costa. On today's episode, President Trump's campaign against Venezuela, the oil, drugs, and immigration factors at play with CNBC contributor Michelle Caruso Cabrera. Maduro is in league with Russia, China, Iran, Hezbollah, and Cuba. And with new AI comes new challenges. Tech's year ahead with investor and entrepreneur Bradley Tusk. You need vast amounts of energy. And if energy consumption doubles, which is what the prediction is, and if energy supply stays relatively flat, obviously prices go way, way up. Plus, the rest of today's news that got us squawking, Bank of America's CEO on tariffs, and blink and you miss the changes that come to legacy tech companies.

0:58It's hard. It's hard to keep up. Do we know whether the Mag 7 is... Will they be the new Mag 7 in the AI world? It's Monday, December 29th. Is the Santa Claus rally on? Gold and silver. Asymptotic. Silver is. SquawkPod begins right now. Stand Joe by. Three, two, one. His mic here. Good morning and welcome. Welcome back to Squawk Box. You're probably here on Friday. Here on CNBC Live from the NASDAQ market site in Times Square. I'm Joe Kernan, along with Leslie Picker and Mike Santoli. Becky and Andrew are off today, but we've got we've got you covered since we go to you all the time for it. And we go to you, too.

1:46Maybe we can. Do you know, do any banks have positions in silver, like short positions or something? I don't have. Haven't you heard over the years all these rumors about. Yeah, I know. But I've heard so many. Oh, J.P. Morgan's doing this. This is crazy. When it went. This is like Hunt Brothers. You weren't around for that. But I mean, I was literally alive for that. But I wasn't watching the silver market too closely. You weren't like. But I think that's honestly why. You're like Alex P. Keaton watching silver when you were like four. Mike Santoli was, though. Yeah, he was. But here's the thing.

2:17That's why you have the constant conspiracy theories. Somebody's cornering the market and that there's something not on the up and up. It's just not that big a market for J.P. Morgan to care that much about cornering it. Suddenly it was the second biggest asset class. That was weird. But wow, it's almost as big in market cap as a former graphics chip. It's a single company. I mean, NVIDIA before it became NVIDIA was just like a great... Yeah, kind of power on the Xbox. A couple of days left. This is the Santa Claus period right now. It's the last five trading days. It's day three. Day three, and then a couple in the new year where we start saying, as the first hour of the first day, so goes the first day, so goes the first week.

3:04As the first week goes, so goes the first month. and we start making all these ridiculous forecasts. Not much of it really is that much of a clincher of an argument one way or the other. No. Frankly, I mean, the Santa Claus rally, we were down the last two years. You had two great years in the market that followed. When was the last time? All it was ever supposed to do was give you an early warning signal of potential difficulty in the year to come. Now, you want to talk about the springtime pullback being what the negative Santa Claus rally last year was telling you? I doubt it. So I just think we've kind of we've combed through these things a little too.

3:38And when was the last time you had to rack your brains to think, was that an original AFL? Was that an NFC? Remember when we did that every year? It was like, do you remember? Yeah. It was an original one. It had to, you know. For example, the Kansas City Chiefs original AFL. That stopped. Right. That stopped, right? We don't even pay attention. Right. Because they work until they don't. Because it stopped working. Yields I saw this morning, if you're following those, I thought 4.11 on the 10-year or so. Well, where is it right now? It is 4.11, which we act like three basis point moves make it different.

4:15I know. Nothing's really. For two years, it's been pretty steady. The bond vigilantes are, you know, people that want them to be back keep saying they're back, but maybe they should be. I mean, I think you'd have to say four and a half at minimum is that's when you're talking about, okay, there's something else getting priced into long into the curve. I don't know. Also, though, you talk about maybe getting a couple more rate cuts on the short end. How flat do you want the yield curve to be? Like, how much do you want long-term yields to go down if you actually think you have a good growth outlook, nominal GDP is going to be pretty strong?

4:48I don't know of how much you'd expect it to go below 4%, if at all. So, well, we are still watching those metals this morning. Silver topped$80 an ounce over the weekend for the first time ever. You see, It is pulling back this morning. It's under 75, so about 3 % over the last little tracking period. It was up more than 14 % last week alone. For the year, it is up more than 150%. Gold coming off records as well from the end of last week. It is up about 70 % this year. You see it's at 4 ,481. It did have a peak above 4 ,500, down 100.6%. Copper slightly off its all-time high. Meantime, platinum and palladium giving back some of Friday's big gains as well.

5:34And Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan says most countries around the world are starting to have clarity on the tariffs they'll face when doing business with the U.S. After initial confusion when President Trump rolled out his tariff plans in April, Moynihan taped an interview with CBS's Face the Nation earlier this month than it aired yesterday. What you say now as time has moved on, it's sort of a 15 percent on one side and then a higher number based on people who won't commit to purchase from the U.S. or won't commit to lowering their non-tariff barriers and things like that. To go from a 10 percent across the board to 15 percent for the broad base of countries, not a huge impact.

6:09And that's where our team says it's starting to de-escalate and that you're starting to see the resolution of the discussions. Moynihan noted China was a special case given there are national security and rare earth mineral issues involved there. He said the president's tariff announcement back in April hit small businesses hard, but now their main concern is labor availability. He said business owners want rules when it comes to immigration, regardless of what those rules are. He's been really beating that drum of kind of the small business impact relative to large corporations that are doing fine, making the distinction between the two as it pertains to loan demand, as it pertains to who's being impacted by inflation, as it pertains to immigration and labor issues as well.

6:52There's been a big split. Obviously, the small business sentiment surveys have been pretty weak. Also, you know, when it comes to who Fed rate cuts help, it actually is more small business than it is the big companies that can access the public bond markets. And people have also argued that in the AI world and also the benefits to scale. So it does seem as if there's a big split between, you know, the fortunes of big and small companies. Yeah. Well, President Trump is scheduled to talk about the Israel-Hamas peace process and security situation in the Middle East today when he meets with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Florida.

7:27Trump and Netanyahu last saw each other face-to-face in October at the start of the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. That has largely held, but progress has slowed with both sides accusing the other of violations. Trump and Netanyahu may talk about a more complicated second phase of the peace process today, including implementation of Trump's 20-point plan for Gaza. Threats from Iran are also expected to be on the agenda. Former IBM chairman and CEO Louis Gerstner has died at age 83. IBM chairman and CEO Arvind Krishna announcing Gerstner's death in an email to employees yesterday. The message did not specify a cause of death.

8:10He became the first outsider to run IBM when he took the top job at the company in 1993, coming to the role from the CEO position at RJR Nabisco. I thought, is he at McKinsey? It might be right, yeah, before RJ. I saw him not too long ago. He was credited with turning around IBM's business and pivoting the company towards services. IBM stock was up more than 700 % during his tenure. Recently had a bit of a resurgence, but had some real tough years in terms of revenue and everything else. Became old tech, became legacy tech. He retired from the company in 2002. You might recall became the chairman of the Carlisle Group until 2008.

8:58and we send sympathies to his family. I'm just hearing about this now. Yeah, it was kind of a really important figure in the whole 90s kind of restructuring wave. I mean, it got a lot of criticism at the time. I think there were 350 ,000 IBM employees in the early 90s. There are 270 now, and the company's vastly bigger in market value. His book was Who Says Elephants Can't Dance, which was about his remaking of IBM. And I think it's a reminder, it's relevant now, as big companies are dealing with technological productivity shifts and all the rest of it, that the whole 90s was full of large legacy companies shedding a lot of employees and getting their costs in line.

9:38And, you know, Gershner was right there with all that. So I guess I would say elephants can't dance, probably. Maybe not well, you know. No, it's the market. Market cap has come around, but. Oh, yeah. I mean, it was the preeminent tech company in the world with mainframes. It's$285 billion. Now, they've split off businesses over the years. They get out of PCs and laptops. Doing better than digital equipment. Yes, exactly. Data general. Hey, listen, they started out with, like, time clock machines and stuff. And, you know, they've managed to remake themselves. But I mean IBM, literally. Landscape is just littered with, it's hard.

10:15It's hard to keep up. I think it's even hard. Do we know whether the Mag 7 is, will they be the new Mag 7 in the AI world? Well, I think that's the big question. They're all trying hard. Yeah. Yeah. They're doing better. Google's been in Microsoft and Microsoft no matter what it seems to they've they've navigated like two or three major ships pretty damn well organizationally they're the tech companies of today though are just different they're they're positioned to be able to pivot and when you see the layoffs from Amazon and others a lot of time it's just to be more streamlined to be able to adapt to the new technologies and things like that whereas more of the legacy company has just had so much It was a manufacturing company, pretty much.

10:53Right. You know, so back then. So it was structured as one. Yeah. As opposed to a tech company. You know what? I'm getting off MySpace. It's just not what they're doing for me. I've never been on MySpace. But they. I was going to say. Weren't they in the same business as. Sure. Yeah. The kind of before Facebook. Wasn't managed quite as well. No. Wasn't managed as well. Didn't take advantage of the strategic. That's right. My understanding, it still exists in shit. No way. Out of a shell for it, but almost exclusively as a way for bands to keep in touch with their fan bases. Really? That's what I hear.

11:29Wow. This could be five-year-old information. No, I was never on. I was never on MySpace either. I've never been on Facebook. No? Never. Instagram? You, my man, Mike, give me a high five. You have not? No. You've never been on Facebook? No. I don't care what other people are doing, especially if they're doing great things. You know, if they have an office, I don't need FOMO. Nobody, I don't want, nobody used to find me. Cheese will be next. Coming up on Squawk Pod, CNBC contributor Michelle Caruso-Cabrera helps us unpack what's happening in Venezuela, including its mass exodus and its stolen election as the country's president, Nicolas Maduro, attempts to concentrate power.

12:13The opposition has been on a roadshow trying to prove that they can lead. They started it here in New York. I attended. They've got a whole PowerPoint presentation.

12:29And we're back. This is Squawk Pod. You're watching Squawk Box on CNBC. I'm Joe Kernan, along with Leslie Picker and Mike Santoli. Becky and Andrew are off, obviously, this morning. Welcome. Thank you. How was it? It's been great. Great. No, no. The alarm? Oh, I actually woke up before my alarm. I always do. I always turn off my alarm. It was weird. Really weird. I dread hearing it. It's so horrible. But getting up isn't so great. Today, but you know what? Aren't we not happy to be here? Not a lot to complain about. The U.S. stepping up pressure on Venezuela's oil sector as President Trump tries to turn up the heat on Maduro's government.

13:12Joining us now is Michelle Caruso Cabrera, well known to CNBC viewers. But she's now CEO of MCC Global. I almost feel like saying effing enterprises because it's so global and also a CNBC contributor. So you didn't want to focus Western Hemisphere, Monroe. You're global. Yes. Did you worry about being called a globalist because of that? Or do you think you need to do everything, right? Or else you can't just cover one part of the globe. Well, I used to be the chief international correspondent here, right? Which basically meant I covered financial crises for you guys. You didn't think, wow, that's too much.

13:53No, I can handle the whole world. You can handle this. This is good. What's happening in Venezuela, and just reading your comments and talking to you, you don't really you're not shy about this uh what a lot of people would call an interventionist policy you i i sense that you think the monroe doctrine is is something that that is still relevant today and that it matters what what happens in the western hemisphere well certainly the trump administration has reinvigorated the monroe doctrine they have put it but you agree with it i think don't you well i would say venezuela is one of the leading causes of instability in the Western Hemisphere.

14:31Pretty much. I mean, the cause of mass migration in the Western Hemisphere is essentially Venezuela. How many people? 25 percent? 25 percent. More than 25 percent of the population of Venezuela left. That's roughly eight million people. We got three quarters of a million here. Three million went to Colombia. The gangs of Venezuela, which are extensive, it's a very criminal place, have used that exodus of people to send gang members throughout the Western Hemisphere. We had them here in the United States. It was an election issue. It's been an election issue throughout Latin America. And so that's been a cause of instability.

15:02The other issue is that Maduro is in league with Russia, China, Iran, Hezbollah, and Cuba. Gives all those bad actors a foothold in the Western Hemisphere. And many administrations looked the other way for decades, and now this has returned to the Munrun Doctrine and then also the corollary that was put in place by Theodore Roosevelt, which said, you know, we can use gunboat diplomacy if we need to. So they've obviously embraced that for a number of reasons. And I see, you know, critics of the Trump administration said that they're not a big exporter of fentanyl. Like, it makes a difference whether it's coke or heroin or fentanyl.

15:42They have been poisoning the country with exports of illicit substances for years. It is without a doubt that they provide cover for the export of drugs. Remember, I sat on this set during the Obama administration, did a story about Maduro's stepson being arrested by the DOJ in Haiti. He had flown into Haiti in a plane with cocaine, expecting to do a deal with another drug runner, turned out to be an undercover agent. And that plane left the presidential hangar in Venezuela. So there's no doubt that they, even if they're not producing fentanyl, they're very much involved with the drug trade for sure.

16:19And the thing is, you break it, you bought it. Like, what comes next? Okay. Well, we look at Argentina and we think things, good things can happen for the world in South America if things go right. Yes. At least, I mean, I know that we're, you know, we have our own idea about what go right means. I mean, there's socialists that wish that socialism was working down there. But is it okay to say when capitalism breaks out and free markets break out, good things happen to the entire hemisphere? So what's so interesting about Argentina and what the parallel is to Venezuela is that Argentine voters chose free markets and capitalism and small government.

17:00Voters almost never choose small government. And so did Venezuela. They held an election, which Maduro ignored and is still in power. So the opposition does have democratic legitimacy. Well, that's why Trump has so much sympathy for Venezuela. Another stolen election down there. Yes. I'm kidding. So I just got that. The opposition has been on a roadshow trying to prove that they can lead. They started it here in New York. I attended. They've got a whole PowerPoint presentation that you can look at for all of the different sectors that you can invest in in Venezuela if and when they come to power.

17:35A very, very orthodox investment structure as opposed to what they've been living under. That doesn't mean they can lead, though. It takes more than that. And they're all trying to show that they can't. And others say we just want to steal the oil. That's not it either. If you destabilize the oil economy of Venezuela, then the regime might not last. I would turn that around. People say we want to steal the oil. I think the way to think about it is if Venezuela could go back to producing the 3 million barrels per day that they used to produce, that they could easily produce instead of the less than 1 billion barrels per day that they do right now, they would have more revenue.

18:13They would have a more stable economy. Eight million people wouldn't want to leave, right? They would want to, you know, return. That's the socialism equivalent of three billion per day, 700 ,000, isn't it? That's what you get when you... It's been complete mismanagement, which started long before the sanctions. I hear all the time, oh, the sanctions did this. No, the sanctions did not do this. When Hugo Chavez came to power 26 years ago, the plan was for the Venezuelan oil company to produce six million barrels a day. And he said, that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Why would we want to produce more oil?

18:46That will lower prices. We should produce less oil. That was his rationale. We might take care of Cuba with one fell swoop. So Cuba's very interesting. Cuba obviously is very connected to Venezuela. Cuba survives only because of Venezuela. Venezuela providing them used to be 100 ,000 barrels per day, then 80 ,000 barrels per day. What I read is now it's 30 ,000 barrels per day. They have terrible instability there. More people left Cuba last year than they did in the early 60s. Because it's so desperate there. Yeah, I mean, that's, you know, Mary Anastasia O 'Grady has a very good column today in the Wall Street Journal about, OK, post-Cuba, what do you do there?

19:25That's almost even harder because that infrastructure is much more debilitated even than it is in Venezuela. We're rushing to the spot of Maduro's gone. What does it take to get there? That's a very good point. I mean. He has survived. Yeah. tough situations before. So what would the U.S. have to do beyond what's going on right now? And that's a good question. What we don't know is to what degree is the military with him or not, to what degree if you cut off. So what is the goal of stopping the tankers, stopping the drug votes? The goal is to cut revenue to the administration, right, to Maduro's.

19:57And that's how he keeps everybody happy, right, those chits and that money that goes out. If you cut that off, the theory is, okay, maybe the military turns, maybe there's something. And maybe you do a negotiated change, where you say, OK, the top X number of leaders got to go. They got to go into exile, whatever. And then they co-opt the military, they co-opt the Chavistas, and then come up with some negotiated settlement, which there is precedent for that in the world. The trillion dollar question is, what comes after Maduro, if we get to that point, which is a good point? I don't know. Just listening to you, it just didn't sound like you didn't sort of have some empathy towards what the administration is conducting.

20:38I can't imagine anybody who doesn't have empathy as an American that it would be better to see a difference. They go crazy with the drug boats and stuff, and we're doing that without due process or whatever. Remember when we set out to kill all the people on the drug boats with the first strike, right? That's what we're trying to do is to destroy the boat. And then how long did the media, it was about two weeks that was just nonstop, that there were a couple guys hanging on the side of the boat. There are certainly questions about the legality. What I'm saying is a change in Venezuela to not desire an improvement in the economy, which has fallen 30%, 40%.

21:22I mean, they're below 2012 level. This is the Michelle Cruz of Cabrera of old. This is the, you know I'm right, Michelle Cruz of Cabrera. That was the name of your book, was it not? Yes, it was. you know I'm right. More prosperity, less government, yes. More prosperity, less government. I mean, and then you lost your way. You turned into Mom Donnie for a while. I have never, never. Are you still, if you were to run again, what would you? Personally, I believe personal accountability and capitalism is something that should be true for both parties. And I have many friends in the Democratic Party who believe that.

21:56You're still a Democrat. I'm a registered a Democrat, yes. Okay. You're in New York. To each his own. Thank you. It's good to see you. It's always good to have you on. It's always fun. Thank you. We know each other. For sure. More than 20 years, dude.

22:12Next, the holiday weekend at the box office. People complain we don't have any movie stars. Is Timothee Chalamet, is he ever going to be Clark Gable? And the artificial intelligence revolution driving the need for more power in the U.S., investor Bradley Tusk on the energy slowdown that could leave us behind. We have a huge problem in this country on energy permitting, just like we do with building affordable housing, and it makes the process so wildly slow and expensive that it becomes really hard to bring new forms of energy online. Squawk Pod will be right back.

22:56You're listening to Squawk Pod today with Joe Kernan, Mike Santoli, and Leslie Picker. Stand Joe by. In three, two, there's Mike. Q. Avatar, Fire, and Ash remaining number one at the box office. This is the third film in the Avatar franchise that earned$64 million over the weekend, $88 million between Christmas and yesterday. The movie did open softer than the prior Avatar film, but did better in its second weekend in theaters. Overseas, it has earned more than a half a billion dollars. I saw this separately. Timothee Chalamet, the drama Marty Supreme, took the number two spot at the box office over the long weekend, earning$27 million and beating the Jack Black comedy Anaconda.

23:42The total for Marty Supreme is a major win for Indie Film Studio A24. It's by some of the same gentlemen that did Uncut Gems, which was... Yes, it was one of the Safdie brothers. Josh Safdie directed, yes. Very unsettling to watch Uncut Gems. I've seen it twice. And you need to see it. Adam Sandler and Kevin Garner was amazing. This was amazing. In terms of if you don't think... People complain we don't have any movie stars. Is Timothee Chalamet, is he ever going to be Clark Gable? No. But is he a font of unbelievable talent? Yes. I thought you were going to talk about Kevin. I was going to, in reference to this, because Kevin, we had him on.

24:21He talked about it. He was hilarious. He admitted it, that he was cast because they wanted an a-hole. Absolutely. Over and over again. I didn't have to act. They just said, be yourself, which he is. And he's great. And he co-stars, literally, with Timothee Salome and Gwyneth Paltrow. I mean, he really does. John Katsimatidis. I know. I saw him. I clocked him right away. But O 'Leary said, working with Chalamet, that when he walks in, there's sparks coming off of it. Yeah. And there are. Kind of amazing. Through the entire, the thing with this, with the way they direct these movies or whatever it is, there's a lot of talking over, like this show.

24:58Yeah. But a lot, the way that the scripts are, you can't wait for one person to finish and then start listening to the other. It's wild. It is wild. That's what keeps the pace going. The speed at which he's speaking. Did you see it yet? I did so, yeah. Wasn't it great? Right? Excellent. Crazy. Yeah. Maybe I'll see it next time. Everyone's hustling. Most of the hustles don't work. Crazy, though, some of the scenes. Wild. The dog scenes, the bathtub scenes. Abel Ferreira. Some of the Gwyneth Paltrow scenes. Crazy.