4/10/25: Trump Admits Caving On Tariffs, Bond Market Bomb, Insider Trading Scandal
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Good morning, everybody. Happy Thursday. Have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed we do. It looks like the cultural revolution is off. The intellectuals are going to get at least a reprieve from being sent to the iPhone factory to screw in all of the little, little screws. For 90 days. Temporarily, anyway. So, of course, we're going to cover a lot about the tariffs. Show's not 100% tariffs, but it's about...

90% tariffs, I would say. We've got Joe Weisenthal coming in to break down what Trump is doing, what it means, market reaction, all of that good stuff. We've got some pretty serious and I think pretty credible allegations of insider trading. So we will break down for you the timeline and the evidence and you can evaluate for yourself. We've got a bunch of, you know, Republicans and administration officials, what they were saying before.

Or the pause or the rollback, what they're saying now, it's pretty extraordinary. The president himself being much more honest about the reason that he decided to change course, basically got freaked out by the bond market. So there you go. He was a panicking. He was a panicking. He joined the panic hands, I guess. I'm really excited for this. We have Ryan Peterson. He's the CEO of Flexport coming on to talk about

This tariff regime, what it's going to mean, but also more importantly, there's another change that's coming down the pike that we briefly mentioned the other day that could be incredibly significant and quite devastating to supply chains and to global shipping. So really want to hear from him on that.

And then we've got a couple of updates with regard to both immigration policy. Social media accounts are now going to be filtered for any sort of quote-unquote anti-Semitism before people are given student visas or grade card status, things like that. And also we have a

Quite significant couple of court updates with regard to the Alien Enemies Act. So I wanted to follow up on that since we had that segment with Pisco breaking down the Supreme Court ruling the other day. So to all of you guys who have been helping us out this week amidst a lot of economic turmoil, we have really, really appreciated it. We've seen a big spike this week just because of interest in tariffs and what's going on. So if you can become a premium member, of course, we really appreciate it. If you can't do that,

Totally get it. If you can like, if you can subscribe, if you can share the videos, that helps us tremendously. Exactly right. BreakingPoints.com. And for the podcast listeners, we don't forget about you either. As we said, the best thing you can do, leave a five-star review or take the episode, literally just share it with a friend. It's tremendously impactful.

So let's go ahead and start with the tariffs, as you said. The White House, I'm sure some of you have heard at this point. A pause is on. Let's go and put it up there on the screen. Quote, based on the lack of respect China has shown to the world market, I am hereby raising the tariff charged to China by the United States of America to 125 percent if

immediately. That's a retaliation for their 84% tariff that was put into place. There's still some big questions as to that 125% tariff. Does it, in addition to the 20% tariff that were there, meaning it would be, what is that, 155% tariff? It seems to be possible, he says, but this is the most important point. I have authorized a 90-day pause and substantially lowered reciprocal tariff during this period of 10%.

effective immediately, he says, as a result of more than 75 countries that have called representatives of the United States to express interest in negotiations. So immediately afterwards, there were a lot of questions here. Did Trump cave? Was this his strategy

All along, was he a madman? Was he bluffing? Did he have to convince people he was crazy? Was it the art of the deal? Well, Trump actually answered that for himself. He came out immediately in front steps of the White House, and he's like, yeah, I did it because people were getting afraid. Let's take a listen.

why you decided to put a 90-day pause? -Well, I thought that people were jumping a little bit out of line. They were getting yippy, you know? They were getting a little bit yippy, a little bit afraid, unlike these champions, because we have a big job to do. No other president would have done what I did. No other president. I know the presidents. They wouldn't have done it.

And it had to be done. What was happening to us on trade, not only with, you know, if you look at it, not only with China, but China was by far the biggest abuser in history and others also. But somebody had to do it. They had to stop because it was not sustainable. Last year, China made $1.

$1 trillion off trade with the United States. That's not right. And now I've reversed it. It's for a short period of time, but we made $2 billion. We're making now $2 billion a day. And somebody had to do it. Roger actually said it. Charles Schwab was here a little while ago, one of the great financial people, and he said...

He's been waiting for 40 years for somebody to do what I did over the last month. Nothing's over yet, but we have a tremendous amount of spirit from other countries, including China. China wants to make a deal. They just don't know how quite to go about it. You know, it's one of those things that are not quite the proud people.

People are getting a little bit yippee. That's what the president says. Yet if you listen to his advisors, this was the plan all along. Here's the Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. Nobody backed off. Absolutely. This was all part of the plan. Let's take a listen.

So, Mr. Secretary, tonight you can definitively say this was not a walkback. This was not something that the bond markets were cratering and you were worried about it, that this is part of your plan. There's a lot of folks saying there were just mixed messages that really left the markets jittery.

Donald Trump is the best negotiator that there is. He understands how to do these things. And he gave, these were crystal clear instructions. No negotiating until two days ago. He would be willing to negotiate, but broadly. And then yesterday was, I'll do bespoke. And bespoke, that's what launched it. I mean, every country wanted to come and talk to us. And what are we supposed to do? So Scott and I went in and talked to him about what do we do and how do we do it. And I think...

This is where we are. So the president made his decision. He truthed it out with Scott and I in the room, just the three of us together. And this is where we are. We just, Scott, Besant, myself, and Ambassador Jameson Greer, who's our USTR, just have so much work to do.

with so many different countries, but we've got to make fair deals for America. And Donald Trump said for the big countries, the lead negotiator of those transactions is going to be Donald Trump. He wants to do it. He wants to drive it. And what could be more fun for Scott and I? It was not a back down. What could be more fun, Sagar? Markets are getting yippy. And so Trump says we're doing it because people got afraid.

Howard Ludnick, all part of the plan. You idiots never read Art of the Deal. Yeah, there's not a single scrap of evidence to support that. And in reality, all of the talk from behind the scenes was not only that he was not going to negotiate, he didn't care about the markets. And then he comes out and he just says it. He actually undermines all of his big defenders that are in the media. So before we get to the bond market thing, you have anything you want to say? Well,

Well, yeah, a couple of just pieces of reporting to add to the context. There are apparently two big things. So first of all, I don't know if you guys saw this floating around, this interview that Jamie Dimon did with Maria Bartiromo. Reporting is that Trump watched that where he said, I think that we are going to be in a recession because of these moves. Many other people had already said this, but and it was like,

increasingly glaringly obvious. And by the way, odds are still pretty decent that we're going to end up in a recession. We'll put that aside and talk to Joe Weisenthal a little bit more about that. But apparently that, for whatever reason, had an impact on him. And then the real thing was the bond markets. And

Typically, when you have the stock market fall, you have a lot of people fleeing and buying up Treasury bonds because it's a flight to safety. That's what they call it. The very opposite thing was happening here. That freaked everybody out because it's an indication that, first of all, things are so bad, everyone's just having to liquidate everything to make margin calls or keep their head above water. It's an indication of that. It's also an indication, guess what, guys?

maybe the U.S. isn't going to be the safe harbor anymore. So when you have those factors, and then also think about Trump as a real estate guy who is known to use astronomical levels of debt

Well, guess what? Your bank loans, the interest rate that you get on that is going to be related to the Treasury rate. So he had a very long time, deep understanding of how bad this would be for real estate developers or other businesses that want to borrow money from the bank. Not to mention one of the 8D chess theories of what was going on here is they're crashing the economy in order to get the

interest rates down. The exact opposite thing is happening. So if you're going to have to roll this debt that the U.S. has, there's this big debt wall coming up, you're going to be paying an even higher price because of these moves that you're making. So in the end, he did join the panic hands and was like, holy shit, this could be worse

And one of the things that was reported, I can't remember which outlet reported this, but he was like, you know, I'm OK with a recession, but I was getting worried about that. We might be in an actual depression. And so he walks back from the edge. Now, to be clear, there's still a very hefty tariff regime in place.

I mean, China's our number one trading partner. So you guys know so many of our consumer goods come from China. There is an insanely high tariff, 125 or whatever the hell it is, 40 percent, 140 percent on goods coming in from China. That alone is.

insanely impactful, then you still have 10% tariffs across the board. You know, if this is what he had originally announced going out to the Rose Garden in that speech, there would have been a massive market reaction because it's actually worse than what was expected going into that speech.

But there's a relief because, number one, just, you know, it's not as bad as it was. And number two, because it showed that Trump could be moved and wasn't just a total madman going for the like next Great Depression. Yes, that's right. That's an important point. And it actually gets to kind of a market veto. Let's get into this for the podcast.

bond market before we bring in Joe Weisenthal. Charles Gasparino over at Fox News really broke down the scare in the bond market and why it ultimately forced the White House's hand. Let's take a listen. I want to tell you right now that Donald Trump outsmarted the world. Trust me, I'm an American. I support my president.

but that's not really what happened here from what i understand and i know i'll get pushback but here's what it is uh first off we should point out that one of the good things about this is that scott besant is finally in the white house he's finally leading this i mean up until a couple days ago it was lutnik it was peter navarro the commerce secretary the trade advisor very much hawks now it's scott besant who believes in cutting deals as opposed to

You know, just not not, you know, just putting these tariffs out there and let's be a mercantilistic economy. That's number one. But number two, let's recall what happened overnight. And from what I understand, and I'm getting this from people that are talking to the White House, the what happened in the bond market overnight, the spike in yields on the 30 year and the 10 year bond, which showed that people were dumping our bonds. And who are those people dumping our bonds?

Japan, the biggest holder of bonds, was selling bonds. That's what I'm getting from some very big money managers. China, maybe to some extent, but it was largely Japan and others. If you have a mass sale of bonds, that means people are losing confidence in the U.S. economy, on the ability to do deals with us. And from what I understand...

This is what forced the hand of this 90-day reprieve. Now, is it a good thing? Are people coming to the table? Yeah. But if you read between the lines, or not even what Scott Besson said, we have no deals.

Right. There's nobody that is really there saying this is what we're going to do. And they paused it anyway. So my thing said, well, I'll give you this. There is some art of the deal here. And by the way, brilliant move by putting China in the corner. But that's a whole separate thing, because remember, that's a very difficult negotiation. Everybody else is a lot easier. They really wanted they do want to deal with us, whether they want to be forced into

really bad trade deals on their end is a whole other negotiating story. But make no mistake about it, you cannot divorce this decision right here from what happened last night, which was, you know, people focus on the stock market all the time. It's the bond market and the sort of lending markets that's the plumbing of the economy. And those markets were imploding last night.

And that's why we have a 90-day freeze. Let's see if those markets improve. Someone told me we had a decent treasury auction today. But if you can't sell your treasuries, guys, and people are unloading your treasuries, like Japan, which is, I believe, the largest foreign holder after China.

So as you guys can see there from Charles Gasparino's reporting, the bond market is really what forced Donald Trump's hand, spooked the United States Treasury Secretary. Coming into this, it said one of the stated goals was to make sure that the yield on these bonds was going to go lower. That would have, of course, increased in the yield, would have made mortgages more expensive. It would have made the debt servicing more expensive. And it's one of those where the massive size of that and the overall financial impact was a major recessionary indicator. So very clear what went on here. Yeah.

Donald Trump, this is not art of the deal. This was straight up. He got panicked because of the bond market. And now we'll see. Well, he admits it himself. Yeah, he said it. I'm not saying it. And it was funny because Gaspar, that was on Fox. Fox News or Fox Business? That was Fox News. Yeah, Fox News. And, you know, it's in the midst of all this like North Korea style propaganda about, oh, art of the deal. And this was the plan all along. He's like,

Not really, based on the reporting and now based on the president's own words. So let's go ahead and get to Joe Weisenthal of Bloomberg to break all of this down and where we are and what might happen next. Does this podcast make you happy? Of course it does. That's why you're here. But it only comes out once a week. For happiness every night, you need Adam and Eve. Yes, I'm talking about sex toys. It's cool. It's cool. You have earbuds in, right?

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We'll be right back.

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Very excited now to be joined by Joe Weisenthal of the Odd Lots podcast over at Bloomberg. He's an all-star. Him and his co-host, Tracy, are incredible, and we highly recommend you all listen to them. Joe has been making the rounds everywhere, explaining to the people about what the hell is going on, and we decided that we had to have him on here to tell us specifically about this whole bond market.

thing, which we're doing our best to break down. Joe, let's take a listen to what Donald Trump had to say about the bond market, get your reaction, and also an explanation. So let's take a listen. Is it the bond markets that persuaded you to reverse course? No, I was watching the bond market. The bond market is very tricky. I was watching it. But if you look at it now, it's beautiful. The bond market right now is beautiful. But yeah, I saw last night where people were getting a little queasy.

I think everything had... Well, the big move wasn't what I did today. The big move was what I did on Liberation Day. We had Liberation Day in America. We were liberated from all of the horrible deals that were made, all of the horrible trade deals that were made. And I was helped by people just like this, senator, congressman, and friends, right? And we had great help in the Senate.

Of course, Republican senators have been amazing. They stood tall and likewise in the House. So, Joe, Trump all but admitting there that the bond markets are really what forced his hand. Can you explain specifically about why that was so impactful for his decision making?

Yeah, there's a lot of, like, I would say sort of exoticization of the bond market, particularly in media. And people like to have these fantasies about China's jumping bonds in response or Japan's jumping bonds in response. It's not that complicated, really. What was going on Tuesday night was extreme panic.

And in a state of extreme panic, what do you do? You think about, I got to pay my mortgage at the end of the month. I got to pay my cell phone bill. I have to pay my Bloomberg subscription. And all of that stuff is denominated in dollars. And so you sell anything that's not dollars. You start selling stocks. You start selling gold. You start selling bonds, even, which are ostensibly the safest asset in the world because you want just those liquid dollars to pay your bills.

It doesn't help that one of the stated goals of this administration, outside of everything else, was to lower yields. And so this was the exact opposite going on. And I think if there's probably one market that really resonates with Trump more than the stock market, it's the bond market. Because when you're real estate, you're sort of like live and die on your cost of borrowing, your cost of capital. It became an untenable situation when you saw those dynamics. Maybe you can tolerate a hit to the stock market at all.

which I'm actually kind of skeptical that the people would have, the public would have put up with very much longer. But it truly becomes untenable when people start having to dump what is perceived as like the second safest asset in the world, or the safest asset in the world, which is just overnight dollars. Got it. Guys, can you put a six up on the screen? I thought this was interesting chart showing that now the mix of tariffs,

is now actually more tilted towards consumer goods, which is just an overall reminder that everyone's sort of acting like, okay, well, that's over. But there's still actually a very steep and almost unprecedented level of tariffs

that are hitting countries around the world. And obviously, the massive tariff on China in and of itself is a huge deal. So can you help people understand what the reality is now and what sort of potential impact it can have on the real economy and your assessment of what the markets have done and where they might be headed? Yeah.

Yeah, look, I'm not surprised that we had this huge stock market rally yesterday after he pulled back from the brink a little bit. Because as I mentioned, again, Tuesday night panic. But the reality is if you just go from now versus sort of like pre-Rose Garden speech, and you don't pay attention to anything that happened in the meantime, you have stock futures that are significantly lower. So we've made a hit to the valuation of corporate America. Rates are higher.

than they were. And the U.S. economy, our imports are significantly more terrible than they were. And even if you accept this theory that, well, you know what, this is about this big strategy because we're going to isolate, we're going to box out China, we're going to make a

all these deals with all these countries that have lined up to avoid any aggressive reciprocal tariff. Even there, we've actually started to drive a wedge between us and all of those countries that we want to make a deal with, including our continental partners, which are more higher tariff. So the fact is, Amanda, that consumer prices

um will be higher now how this feeds through to like cpi like actual inflation i don't think it's like totally obvious because if business is slowing then incomes are going to be slow and hiring is going to be slowing investments going to be slowing maybe you don't actually get inflation but you certainly get less affordability of what people were able to buy so

several weeks ago. I think that's a real key thing. The cost of doing business in the United States is now materially higher than it was a week ago. One of the things, Joe, that you were constantly talking about over the last week is there was a lot of cope coming from MAGA influencers in the White House, but the stock market is not the real economy. It has no connection. And I think you have such a good way of articulating why that's just empirically not

correct. And I want people to also understand you're not some Wall Street explainer or somebody right here. Nobody really feels that more than you in many respects. But as somebody who's been covering this now for, what, 20 years, just explain that to people, why that's incorrect. I've always hated this term. It's just a cliche that probably some columnist once came up with. Oh, the stock market is not the economy. The stock market matters to the economy in various ways. And I'll just sort of run through them.

A lot of people own stocks. At least more than half of the US is some sort of exposure. So it's not just this niche rich thing. To the extent that it is skewed, and it is true that the ownership of stocks is highly distributed to the rich, it's also true that consumption is highly skewed. So you're going to hit parts of the economy that are important drivers of consumption and ongoing economic

But there is more than that because also like business investment is in part going to be determined by the cost of capital and the stock market. When companies see their stocks going up and they're being rewarded for what they're doing, they do more of it. And then when they're not and the stock market goes down, they take that as a message. Oh, we need to cut workers. We need to expand. So it has an impact on that. It has an impact on VC and early stage hirings.

Because the dream of any startup is to either go public or sell to a public company ultimately. And if that IPO window is closed or if those public companies have diminished valuations, that reduces your possible exit. That reduces the multiples and the valuations you're going to get in the early stage or early stage activity.

Finally beyond that, I would just say that like no one really talks or speaks up for the stockholder. And I don't mean that in a facetious way, like who's going to think of the poor stockholder? I mean, a lot of people, you know, like,

Buy stocks on Robinhood. And, you know, it's so funny to me that there's all this anxiety, particularly from Democrats, like how are we going to reach out to, you know, young bros who listen to podcasts and stuff like that? But they don't talk about them. They talk about, like, oh, working families and the cost of, you know, buy stuff, all of which really matters. But a lot of, you know, young men who listen to podcasts have Robinhood accounts.

And so there's this sort of like ignorance of the fact that a lot of people are in some way or another directly exposed to the stock market, which is why I say that even setting aside the bond market sell-off that we saw over the last couple of days before the blank, I don't think it's like tenable to just let stocks fall apart like that and not acknowledge how much that directly is going to affect things and how quickly it's going to affect things, both from a consumption and hiring standpoint.

Does this podcast make you happy? Of course it does. That's why you're here. But it only comes out once a week. For happiness every night, you need Adam and Eve. Yes, I'm talking about... Sex toys! It's cool. It's cool. You have earbuds in, right? ♪

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We'll be right back.

Sleepiness, sometimes serious, can occur. Common side effects include dizziness, nausea, tiredness, difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep, and dry mouth. See full PI and medication guide, including boxed warning, at addy.com slash PI. Or call 844-PINK-PILL. Addy. That's A-D-D-Y-I dot com. Texting privacy policy and terms and conditions posted at textterms.us. Texting the rules for recurring automated text marketing messages. Message and data rates may apply or play. Stop, opt out. Consult a

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What is your sense of what this is actually all about? You know, because you get all these different explanations, depends on the day. Sometimes the same person will say multiple different things. It's reindustrializing. It's more revenue. It's, you know, it's a it's a negotiating tactic. Actually, we want Republicans that one of their copes like free trade type Republicans like, oh, we're actually going to try to get to a zero tariff regime. That's the real goal. I mean, what

you able to divine? And by the way, another theory of what's going on here is just like insider trading that, you know, Trump can make announcements and move the market and buy, you know, and if you're on the inside, you can profit off of that. And if you're not, then you don't. What is your sense of what's actually going on here? Yeah. The insider trading theories assign a level of coordination, internal coordination in the White House that I do not

then I think it's probably giving the White House too much credit. You read that reporting in the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times, where no one even on the inside knew that there was going to be this pivot until maybe 10 minutes before. And so I, you know, I,

I do not think that the entire plan was like that well crafted. It's like, okay, we're going to put the word out among the insiders. All that being said, I don't know. And I think this is part of like what the issue for the market is. You know, it's hard to know what the end goal is. We all, what do we know? We know Trump has been a fan of tariffs for decades. So that's a reality. Um, one possibility, there seems to be this cultural thing, uh,

among a lot of influencers where they just like think that manufacturing is like per se good that would be sort of rejuvenating for the nation in some respect if more people were working in the manufactured goods sector what i find annoying about that take is this sort of uh you know covering the eyes of the fact that we actually had a lot of factories built in 2022 2023 etc a lot of this was already going on in fact it might even get worse under a tariff regime if imported uh uh

intermediate goods to build things actually get costlier. So it could actually reverse it. And then the other thing I'm wondering about afterwards is, you know, I used to think that part of the goal here was like, it's important for the U.S. to match China on key manufactured strategic goods, particularly related to high tech.

or particularly related to things that go into weaponry. Now I'm wondering if the goal is just to crush the Chinese economy, which again is about the U.S.-China tension, but it's different. It's a little bit more overt and like the goal is not to match China or supersede China. The goal is to actually do damage to a growing geopolitical rival.

Yeah, it's certainly possible. One of the things that you and I have been talking a lot about recently, Joe, is about this idea of bringing manufacturing or jobs back. But what you have consistently pointed out is that since the imposition of tariffs, it is the manufacturers themselves who are screaming about increased costs. So in any regime where there would be tariffs, what sort of capital injection tax plan confidence would these people have to have?

to actually wind up to the stated goal of the White House and I think of many Americans who bring certain critical industries, manufacturing, etc. back to here because we don't see that right now. Industrialization is insanely difficult. Most countries historically seem to fail at

these efforts, where they seem to work, there seems to be a sort of two things have to happen. You have some protection for domestic industry, and then you have to create some mechanism, sorry, for those companies to compete like hell in the global marketplace to prove that they're actually doing good things rather than just taking in government money or rather than just being protected and getting protectionism.

And so in theory, what you would want to see is you'd want to say, OK, we're going to give you some degree of protection, either in the form of tariffs. You're going to own the U.S. market or export subsidies. But to continue to get these things, you have to prove that you're doing the best, highest tech production and competing at the global level. One way that you could theoretically do it, which I don't know if there's any appetite for really, but I would say invite BYD and Xiaomi to set up car factories in China.

you know, Georgia, Mississippi, et cetera. And then you get twofold. You get that technology transfer where they're like, okay, this is experienced people who know how to build up a plan. And then you make the Teslas and the Fords and the GMs compete in the world's biggest auto market or maybe the second biggest auto market now.

against some of the best players in the world, force them to step up their game even further. And then you actually can combine industrial policy with capitalist competition. It's very hard to do. It's very hard to do politically. You know, shareholders don't love it. But if you're actually serious about, like, we want to have a dynamic manufacturing industry. I mean, I don't think we want to have an undynamic manufacturing industry because then we're really just talking about assembly line jobs, right? Like, if you're having an undynamic manufacturing, these are not...

particularly desirable jobs. And I think, again, like people should sort of like, I don't know, stick up a little bit for the laptop class. And remember, we are very lucky to have a lot of employment in this country that doesn't require backbreaking labor that you can do in a cool and air conditioned, comfortable office. These are not bad things. I feel very fortunate that many Americans get to work in an office instead of an assembly line. But if you want to bring back undynamic, undemocratic

non-competitive manufacturing, you would bring back a lot of pretty miserable jobs. Well, especially at a point in time when the labor movement has been decimated. So you are not talking about going back to the 50s. You are talking about going back to the 1900s when you had much less labor regulation and lower wages and no federal child labor laws and things of that nature. I mean, I'm being a little bit hyperbolic here, but the reality is you're not going back to those sort of like

solid union middle-class jobs that can support a whole family and buy a house because also those things like housing have become wildly more expensive, healthcare, education, those things have become wildly more expensive. Something else I wanted to get you to weigh in on, Joe, is guys, can we put A5 up on the screen? People are sharing this chart around. Yesterday, obviously, was a big rebound in the market. One of the biggest...

in the S&P history, eighth best day in history. Then you go look at the other large gains that are on that list, and it's like, oh, 1933, 1929, 1931, 2008. And even 2020 makes the list here as well. So I guess give people a sense. Are we kind of out of the woods here? Or one of the things that we've been asking the question about as well is even when you roll back the tariffs-

Yeah, we've got a 90 day pause. We're going through we're going through all this again in 90 days. Like if you're a business owner and we are business owners like, yeah, you can't. How can you make any decision? I would expect that most CEOs are just going to kind of freeze in place and see what the hell is going to shake out.

Why would you take any risk, at least for 90 days? And look, this is the Trump White House. Why would he want the drama to end in 90 days? Why would he want the show to end in 90 days? At least for the next three months, why would you want to make any major capital outlay or seriously think about expanding headcounts in an environment like that? But yes, it's just completely true.

that many of the biggest gains have been during periods of extreme market volatility and historically have preceded more ugliness. I notice even today some of the gains aren't holding particularly well. Look, I don't like to get too worked up by short-term stuff. Again, I'm not surprised that we saw that big rally yesterday. But there are reasons to think both on the financial side and the real economic side that this story isn't over yet. Yeah.

Yeah. That's my last question for you, Joe, is as you just alluded to, 90 days. What does that, I mean, that's an entire quarter of business activity. There's going to be very little investment. There will be no major capital allocation or decision. That seems to be the exact opposite of what you want for a roaring economy. So how is this all going to play out over the next three months in our capital markets, in our job markets, economic consumer confidence? What are people supposed to do? I mean, I,

I would actually, I like actually what I've been trying to talk to people for the last 12 hours is like, what is the counter argument? Because the way you like this articulated that, that just seems so obvious to me. So I'm like, what am I missing? Like, where's the growth impulse going to come from? And I mean that like in a serious way, like I'm like asking people like, what is it? Cause it sounds very bad at a minimum.

And I think there's something else, too, which is that even if you take Secretary Besson's comments yesterday very seriously, OK, now China has been exposed as a bad actor and we're going to make these deals and we're going to like isolate that. We're going to make these deals with our friends. We're going to isolate them.

This administration has spent the last several weeks insulting various friends, threatening the sovereignty of Canada, threatening Denmark via the claims that we're going to acquire Greenland, deeply insulting things that have completely shaken some of the most, you know, sort of stable relationships that we've had to even setting aside the tariff shot. This 90 day negotiation is coming in an environment where,

in which perceptions of the US internationally, which normally I don't care a lot about, let people dislike us if we want. But now we're at the point where we're negotiating deals with their democratically, in many cases, elected leaders who have to be accountable to people who now have a much more negative impression of the United States, which is not giving me a lot of hope that in these next 90 days, we're gonna have these big, beautiful deal. Yeah, well, not to mention,

I think Sagar said this the other show, so I'm stealing it from him. But China's fighting a trade war against us.

Yeah. We're fighting a trade war apparently against the whole planet. So that 10 percent terms are still in place. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. And God only knows what happens next week, the week after that, 90 days from now, et cetera. So, Joe, thank you so much. Like I said, I know you're super busy. Thank you for making the time. I'm really glad to have you on the show. Thanks, brother. It's great to see you. Everybody goes to the odd lots podcast. Share it. Listen to it with a friend. It's a great show. See you, man. Thank you.

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All right, so let's talk a little bit about the timeline of what unfolded yesterday and these pretty significant questions about who might have had some inside knowledge here and been into a position to benefit from the massive market spike that came after Trump's announcement of this tariff rollback.

So let's put this up on the screen. Early in the day, he posted this on TruSocial. This is a great time to buy DJT. Now, apparently, according to the reporting, at least at this point, he hadn't necessarily decided what he was going to do. But I mean, who knows? Right. Who knows? So he posts this. OK.

And then, of course, later on in the day, he makes his announcement. Even before this, there were some questions about whether he was just like screwing with the market to benefit the people around him. And I'm not talking about fringe Internet figures or whatever. Even

Even on CNBC, they were raising questions about whether or not this was part of what was going on. Let's take a listen to that. Given what the government's been doing and this administration's been doing, it would not shock me, and I hate to speculate, if we were to find out that a whole bunch of people who work in Washington as our elected leaders one way or the other ultimately sold stocks last week or potentially worse than that, shorted the market. So Andrew Ross Sorkin there. That's a big one.

That's a big deal. We should explain that because people don't really... Andrew Ross Sorkin is the guy who wrote Too Big to Fail. Andrew Ross Sorkin is the voice of the... Between Wall... He's like the Wall Street Whisperer. He wrote Too Big to Fail. He is...

I mean, I'm having trouble describing it to a lay person. I guess what? The morning Joe of financial news? Like, everybody hangs on his word. He's got the best reporting. He does the New York Times deal book. He can get an interview with anybody. He can get an interview with every billionaire on the, I remember talking to a guy who worked for a billionaire and he goes, I don't understand this Andrew Ross Sorkin guy. He's like, he goes around all of us and he gets to these people's phones. He's like, he doesn't even have a phone number. He changes his phone number every month. That's the type of person we're talking about. And if,

He says it. There are a lot of people on Wall Street who are saying, because these are people who think in terms of market movements and who stands to benefit. So when you have one man who is, and, you know, with this very small cloistered group of advisors who are making these extraordinary seat of the pants announcements that are sending the entire market into total meltdown or reviving it with a new truth,

You have to ask the question. And who was in a position to place the trades at the right time? And we're going to show you in a minute there. I mean, there is some evidence based on market moves to back up some of these theories. It wasn't just Andrew Ross Sorkin on CNBC either, though. After the Trump announcement, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick is on CNBC and the host comes right up to the brink of asking him flat out,

Basically, was this is Trump just manipulating markets and trying to insider trade here? Let's take a listen to how that went down. He also seems to be a great stock pundit, Mr. Secretary. Earlier this morning before the pause, he he put out a message saying it's a great time to buy. And here we are. Here we are much higher. I know his bet on Donald Trump every time. He also wrote DJT, which is a ticker for.

for his media company no no no every every time just as I was just every text he sends to me that's his name but that was a great time to buy the market right I mean

Uncanny. Look, Donald Trump understands that America is the greatest country. All right? We are the greatest country, and we have the capacity for incredible greatness. But someone needs to take the shackles off. Someone needs to let our farmers sell corn to India. Okay. So she tiptoes right up to it, but doesn't quite come out and say it. She really should have, though, actually. Go ahead and put...

C5 up on the screen. This is from our friend, Unusual Whales, who pointed out, okay, interesting. Before Trump posted that now would be a great time to buy on True Social, you had traders opening up these certain type of calls. These are exchange traded funds that track either the NASDAQ or the S&P 500. So just to put this in layman's terms, this means you see the spike.

you had a huge jump in somebody who was betting that these markets were going to go up significantly. And on one of these in particular, they were betting it was like just a day was the time frame. So they're basically saying like, I think this market is going to

jump up like crazy today. And these are highly leveraged. So this is a very, very risky bet, especially to make in the midst of a massive market meltdown. It can go to actual zero. It's not like buying the S&P 500. Exactly. Exactly. So right before the news, he says someone opened up 509 of these calls expiring today. And those calls are up 2100 percent in a single hour.

So if you happened to be in on what was going to unfold during the day, this would be exactly the type of market move that you would make. Yes, and for example, billionaire Charles Schwab was literally in the Oval Office around the time that this announcement was made. Here's Trump actually bragging about it on camera while he's in the Oval Office pointing to Charles Schwab and saying this guy made $2.5 billion today. Take a listen.

This is Charles Schwab. It's not just a company. It's actually an individual. He made $2.5 billion today, and he made $900 million. He's in financials. Wow. I'm just saying, look, I mean, as Joe said, was there really a concerted effort? I don't know. Listen, if you're Charles, you hear this going on, and you don't get on the phone, and you'll call your broker, you're an idiot, right? That's why I was like, why wouldn't you do it? Or elected officials, let's say Trump,

read in John Thune or any of these other folks. We don't know if any of that is true or Speaker Mike Johnson. We know from Unusual Wells and others, these people are trading all the time. And if any of this sounds ridiculous, I mean, let's not point to the fact that during the market crash,

Remember, Senator Richard Burr was under federal investigation. They seized his cell phone for insider trading allegations and even the appearance of corruption. Don't forget, also, we will not even get the disclosures from members of Congress for months now before we even know if they were able to trade on this information, let alone White House officials. The way that they're reporting all works is going to take forever for this to be able to come out. So there is zero transparency here. If they even bother to comply. Yeah, yeah.

Right. Even if they do. And actually a lot don't. There's a lot of these exclusions and things that you can get. Even the form is ridiculous. It's like I'm worth between $12 and $50 million. You're like, okay, great. Thank you for the disclosure there. Right, exactly. I don't know anything about this.

But my point, just broadly, is that if you look at the data, it is obvious something happened. Here we have, for example, C7, please. You can see exactly similar spike in the graph that Unusual Whales found. This is increase of over 10% on calls to options 10 minutes before the announcement. Somebody was making a huge bet right before that this all happened. This was 10 minutes before. Right.

Trump says, guess what, guys? We're switching it up. 10% tariffs, 90-day pause, 10 minutes before. That person, they just must be a market genius, Sagar. Maybe, yeah. Market genius. Look, it's theoretically possible. They're like, oh, I really think Trump is going to make a big move today. It's the middle of the day right around.

I'm like, yeah, I don't know. Nobody's got really that. I mean, remember that whole October 7th insight that we had and we covered here on the show? To this day, nobody really knows who shorted the market there immediately before. What was it? Like shorted on October 6th and got miraculously lucky. There are all these apocryphal tales about 9-11 as well. And look, we can just simply add this one to the list. The data is clear. Somebody did make it. So SEC and IRS will know exactly who this person is.

It would be nice. Oh, yeah. At the very least, just do an investigation. I'm sure Trump's SEC will be all over it. Well, this is the problem with the data is that this stuff, I mean, dramatically undermines confidence in the overall system as it should because everybody's like, I'm sitting at home. Like, let's say you're one of the – Joe just stood up for the stockholder.

And you're just like average Joe, like Joe, and you're at home and you're watching CNBC and you're just sitting there panicking or thinking. I read a horrible article in the Wall Street Journal, and this is a good example of how stock crashes can be very impactful, of people who have mandatory withdrawals for their children's 529 plans. These are people who have responsibly saved and whose kid must go to college in the fall. And they're like, yeah, now it's down 20% and I may need to take out a loan.

That's horrible, you know? And yes, they've been investing over an 18-year period. They've definitely made a killing on the first half. But what about the last couple of years that they put their money in? Or maybe the money in that they just put in now, they've actually taken a net loss, you know, on that. That is...

That is exactly the type of thing, behavior, savings, and all that otherwise, where there are real consequences. Not to even mention all the retirees who have mandatory withdrawals from their 401ks right now. That's right. Well, think about it this way. So yesterday was the largest gain, I believe, in history for billionaires, just like astronomical amounts of money made. You mean from law? Yes. I guess technically. Yes. I mean, we're still down 12% from the all-time high. Okay. Yeah. But-

If you were in a position to know that this news was coming out and you were in a position to make those moves, if you're like, you know, a union with a pension fund that you're running, you weren't on the inside. No, no. And you're talking about that is to benefit ordinary working class people. Right.

So you are still down, right? Some people were in a position to make a killing. Apparently, Charles Schwab made billions of dollars yesterday. That is a direct upward transfer of wealth from retail, from pensions, from, you know, all of these things.

groups that, you know, are just sort of like normal, regular people. What is it, 60% of Americans have some exposure to the stock market? So that's why these stories really matter. I mean, when we think about, we covered so much of the insider trading allegations with Congress, Nancy Pelosi and all of these people. And she's

she would be in a position to benefit from the knowledge that she has of what Congress is up to and what particular companies stand to benefit. That is much more indirect, frankly, than, I mean, vastly more indirect than Trump literally being able to truth out a total new global trading regime. And Lord knows these people have no scruples. I mean, Trump...

did a pump and dump with his shit coin and his wife's shit coin. Like they're not ethical people. They are happy to cash in to their benefit. He certainly is when, you know, he has knowledge that can benefit him. So frankly, I'd be shocked. The big question is whether that's the whole purpose of what they're up to here. And, you know, some people are looking at this and are like, I can't really define any other purpose that makes any sense here. So it is possible that the whole point

It's just a sort of like global economic wide pump and dump. And if that is the goal, well, so far they've been phenomenally successful for that. There is one person that does not seem to have been on the inside, Sauer, in terms of knowing what was going on. And that's the U.S. trade representative, Jameson Greer, who also that's the person who Emily had floated might have been mistaken for Jeffrey Goldberg. But I think it was I think it might I saw that it might have been someone different. But in any case, maybe he was supposed to be on the signal chat.

letting everybody know. And instead, Jeffrey Goldberg got up and said, he was testifying before Congress.

when and learned in real time what was going on with this. And the Democratic member who was questioning him, when he finds out, he also immediately goes to the place of like, what the hell are you people doing? How do you, you're the U.S. trade rep, how do you not know what's going on? And who does? And what billionaire is standing to benefit here? Let's take a listen to how that went. Dad, this is C4, guys. Let's go ahead and play that. Are you aware that the tariffs have been paused?

I am, yes. When were you made aware of that? Well, I understood the decision was made a few minutes ago. Sitting here. And under discussion. Sitting here, under discussion. So did you know that this was under discussion, and why did you not include that as part of your opening remarks? So typically what I don't do is divulge the contents of my discussions with the president. What are the details of the pause?

Well, my understanding is that because so many countries have decided not to retaliate, we're going to have about 90 days. No, excuse me? China increased their tariffs on the United States. Trump blinked. What's the blink, sir? What do you know about this pause? What are the details of it?

Well, the details, as I understand it, is that China continues to retaliate. Other countries didn't retaliate. The president two or three days ago said we wanted to negotiate with those countries that asked for meetings. That's what we're doing. What are the details? How long is the pause? How many days? How many weeks? I understand it's 90 days. I haven't spoken to the president since I've been in this hearing. So the trade representative hasn't spoken to the president of the United States about a global reordering of trade negotiations?

Yes, I have. I've just been in a hearing with you. But yet he announced it on a tweet. WTF? Who's in charge? The President of the United States is in charge. And what do you know about those details? Just...

I don't know. What can you even say?

He did the formula. You know all the justification of the formula? It was him. That's his office. That's what their job is supposed to be. They're supposed to work with Customs and Border Patrol and all these other agencies to actually implement these tariffs. So it's pretty insane that he not only was not in the room, he wasn't even consulted. And he learned about it by a truth log. He's testifying live before the United States Congress. And the thing is, if you look at his opening statement, the entire opening statement is a justification.

of the tariff regime. And then he has to be like, actually, it's very smart. What are we doing? Insanity. Well, I guess it's part of the deal. Does this podcast make you happy? Of course it does. That's why you're here. But it only comes out once a week. For happiness every night, you need Adam and Eve. Yes, I'm talking about sex toys. It's cool. It's cool. You have earbuds in, right?

Adam and Eve, America's most trusted source for adult products, has been making people very happy for over 50 years with thousands of toys for both men and women. Just go to adamandeve.com now and enter code IHEART for 50% off almost any one item, plus free discreet shipping. That's adamandeve.com, code IHEART for 50% off. Hey, Janice Torres here. And I'm Austin Hankwins. We're the hosts of Mind the Business Small Business Success Stories.

Produced by Ruby Studio and Intuit QuickBooks. Catch up on seasons one and two and join us for a brand new season of the podcast as we talk to small business owners about how they manage and grow their businesses with the help of platforms like Intuit QuickBooks. Listen to Mind the Business, small business success stories on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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