100 (More) Days of Trump: Big Tech & Voter Sentiment 4/30/25
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Hi, I'm CNBC producer Katie Kramer. Today on Squawk Pod. 100 days into President Trump's second term, what's changed? For voters, pollster Frank Luntz says not too much. The level of hardcore support among Trump voters for their president I've never seen in 35, 40 years of politics. The hostility among those who did not vote for him is similarly as great, as intense.

Three eventful months, including a skirmish between the White House and Amazon over tariffs and potential price changes. Wired editor-at-large Stephen Levy explains the tension, the placating, and the big tech big picture. This is just, you know, like a little scuffle that's, you know, portending bigger scuffles to come.

Plus, the first trade deal made. Really? So the Commerce Secretary says. And the U.S. economy contracts for the first time since 2022. GDP, sentiment, and all the number crunching with CNBC's Steve Leisman. I have explained a lot of very complicated things on television in the last 20 years. This is the most complicated thing. Really? It's Wednesday, April 30th, 2025. Squawk Pod begins right now.

Stand back here by in three, two, one. Good morning, everybody. Welcome to Squawk Box right here on CNBC. We're live from the Nasdaq market site in Times Square. I'm Becky Quick, along with Joe Kernan and Andrew Ross Sorkin. And here we go on this Wednesday morning. Had to think about what day it is. April has been a bit of a rebound month. If you're looking right now at where these markets stand, it's been six days in a row of wins for the Dow.

That's the first time that that's happened since July of last year. The S&P is up for six days in a row, and that's the first time that's happened since November of last year. The Dow and the S&P 500, both on those winning streaks for the S&P. That's the longest stretch, as I mentioned, since November of last year. Both the indexes, though, are on pace at this point to be down for the month of April. If you're watching through what's going on, not just April, but down for three months in a row at this point.

I think if you're looking at the S&P, it's down by less than 10%, by 9.5% off its all-time highs. Dow's down by just over that. NASDAQ is off by a little bit more. I think it's just over 12% or 13%. It's flat for the month, isn't it? I'm sorry, from the all-time highs. Right. From the all-time highs. The dark days... We're down below the 50-day moving average and the 200-day moving average for all the major... But the dark days were...

Twice as close. Early April. I think it was like April 5th, 6th, and 7th. We broke. Right after Liberation Day. Right then. We lost. We were under 5,000 briefly on the S&P. And now we're almost to 5,600. So I think, you know, looking at it, I think we're up a little bit. We're down by almost 1% for the S&P for the month today. For the month. Yeah, down nine-tenths of a percent.

Because if you just look on, I saw the thing, it's a one-month chart has the S&P up 44 points, but I don't know what it's measured from. It's down nine-tenths of a month, but based on, I'm just looking at our charts on how we measure them from Chris Hayes and the notes that he sent out. Right, but it got much worse briefly. It did. And I think, did we go into bear market territory? Barely on the S&P. Now we've gotten back up. Barely. It just hit 20%. Now we're less bearish.

I think the thing that surprised me yesterday is the Russell 2000 has been under so much pressure. It's actually out of bear market territory. It's down by 19%. Did you see oil today? I did. Did you see the 10-year today? I haven't seen the 10-year. 416 or something? So a lot of things. But those are growth. Those could be growth. Oil in a 416 could be growth concerns, obviously, as I think Calci now forecasting a negative print.

You know, it's a betting market. Yeah. But a negative print for GDP. So there are recession fears that may account for that. But the world didn't completely stop buying Treasuries. Obviously, that was that was the concern. Right. Meanwhile, President Trump is saying China is going to be hit hard by tariffs he's imposed on the country. He made those comments in an interview with ABC News, marking his first 100 days back in the White House. This is what he had to say.

145% tariffs on China and that is basically an embargo. They deserve it. It'll raise prices on everything from electronics to clothing to building houses. You don't know that. You don't know whether or not China's going to eat it. That's mathematics. China probably will eat those tariffs, but at 145, they basically can't do much business with the United States.

The interview aired last night. The same evening, the president was in Michigan for a campaign-style rally marking 100 days in office. Here's what he said then about interest rates and the Fed. I have a Fed person who's not really doing a good job, but I won't say that. I want to be very nice. I want to be very nice and respectful to the Fed. You're not supposed to criticize the Fed. You're supposed to let him do his own thing. But I know much more than he does about interest rates, believe me. As a real estate guy.

Who likes low interest rates. That's all he likes. It was it was like one of the one of his rallies. It was a campaign stop. I watched some of it. You can see when he's reading what he's supposed to read. And then you can see when he decides I'm just going to. There are people that are behind everything he says at those rallies. OK, let's just say that. So he knows he's going to get a good recession. But some of it.

Really goes off. It really goes off the rails. He was talking about President President, former President Biden being able to sleep in these these crappy lounge chairs on the beach and how when he tries to stand on the beach, the sand is there. And it just it's like, what? Where are what are we talking about here? It's it.

So they they they roar, though the crowd roars for. I will say I was sitting behind him once at the Economic Club in New York during the campaign season when he came and spoke to the Economic Club about his plans. I could see the prompter. There was more in the prompter than I than I realized. Some of the crazy that some of the stuff that I thought he was ad libbing was actually a prompter for some. It's not not what not what you were just talking about on some of those things. But then you can see it gets back on on track. Yeah.

No sign of him

acknowledging that, like the cover of the New York Times today, Andrew, is like unbelievable. But it's a totally different take on where we are right now between Republicans. You know what the split is. I think it's 90% of Republicans are like, yeah, this is great. And 1% of Democrats think the world might not, or 9, yeah, 1% think the world is not ending at this point. We're in a very fractious, divided world.

I don't think it's as bad as people think. I'm not sure we get a recession at this point. Labor, we'll see tomorrow how the jobs. I mean, the problem with all the data that we're seeing at this point is it's backward looking. We're going to get first quarter GDP today. That number is backward looking. Everything we've heard from the companies that are reporting earnings is backward looking except for the outlook. So that's been the valuable point. But the problem with government numbers, we don't get the outlook.

look. He keeps talking about strategic uncertainty. And that's, I think Scott Besant mentioned that yesterday, that this, it almost is like they're insisting that there is a method to... A plan. A plan. Yeah.

One thing that has been a little disconcerting for the markets is, you know, President Trump creates what I would call strategic uncertainty in the negotiations. So he is more concerned about getting the best possible trade deals for the American people. You know, we had four years of bad deals for decades of unfair trading. And we are going to unwind those and make them fair. And

And that this keeping your enemies on their toes, not knowing what is coming, is a grand part of it. The problem is it also keeps investors and business leaders and consumers on their toes. I think they'd like a deal. I think they'd like a deal, any deal. South Korea, India they would love. You heard the comments yesterday from Lutnick. There's a deal that's very close. We don't know which one it is. But then he said that the prime minister and the parliament both had to sign off on it. Right.

Treasury Secretary Besson is focused on China. That's his portfolio. He's got to get something done with China. And my portfolio is the rest of the world's trade deals. So they are coming. That's a big portfolio. Oh, it's the greatest thing because we have every country in the world, just like Donald Trump has said, who wants to do a deal with us. Now, here's the point. I have a deal.

Done, done, done, done. But I need to wait for their prime minister and their parliament to give its approval, which I expect shortly. Treasury secretary was saying similar things too. Yeah. We might shift a little to, you know, we're going to talk more about this big, beautiful bill again.

If there's any progress at all on trade deals or who knows, on any given day, he could say, you know. And by the way, when Lutnick made those comments yesterday, the market traded to its highs at the session. And as we were just mentioning, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick saying that the Trump administration has finished negotiating its first trade deal, but he said it wasn't finalized and he declined to name the country involved. Again, this was something where he said both the prime minister and the plenum

parliament of this other country, both have to sign off on this first. He said the Secretary of the Treasury, Scott Bessant, was handling China trade negotiations and that his purview was deals from the rest of the world. Okay, but you know how awkward that is because we've had Scott Bessant on and saying that he says that he's not handling the China trade deals at all.

Are there negotiations? Was there a phone call with President Xi and President Trump? You know, Joe, Treasury Secretary does a lot of things, running the White House switchboard in one of them. So all aspects of government are in contact with China. And in terms of trade negotiations, we'll see where this goes.

From the lowest to the highest, there's supposedly some talking going on, but he doesn't monitor the switchboard. He doesn't know what's going on. He doesn't monitor when the president's here. He knows about all of the tariff negotiations with every other country in the world except for China, and Lutnick just said that the one country that he is responsible for is China. He didn't say that to us.

Go rewind the tape. That's not a quote. I think he just said that he's not... He didn't say, I'm not responsible for China whatsoever. No, no, no. He literally... He was on ABC. He said that those are conversations... After us or before us? No, before. Those were conversations that were happening with the president. Who's handling... That was a special negotiation... Just for President Trump. That he was not a party to. I thought he was telling us that he was... That there were...

There are discussions from the very lowest to the very highest. At least that was the claim that he was making. I'm sure I think he was talking specifically about the meetings he had around the IMF and World Bank. In which case he said there was no conversation about tariffs whatsoever. Just from his meetings last week. He said explicitly the conversations he was having did not engage in tariffs. And so then you have Lutnick saying the one person who's responsible for China tariffs is

is this guy and he's saying that he didn't have those conversations. - They probably pushed back on that, but you seem very, very animated about this. - I just, it's like, I-- - I know, I know, it's a hair fire, I got it. - It's not hair fire, it's just-- - No, this is your thing, Gary. - It has to be an honest set of facts

And if you can't have an honest conversation even here about what the honest set of facts are, then you have a problem. Because the public can't then understand what's happening because they're being lied to. Well, there's all kinds of machinations going on. Some of it is hype, some of it's not hype. I don't, you know... But this is no different than the way sausage is made in Washington on every... Any time you see... But then...

But you can't say my hair is on fire because my hair is not on fire. My job is to identify. How many facts are we going to do? What about ism again? Was there ever any facts? It's not about what ism. Was there ever any facts about Biden's mental capacity? Why are we relitigating the past every time? Because it's just business as usual. That's not what we're talking about. Let's talk about what's in front of us. But it's the way it works in Washington. It's not the way it works in Washington. That's part of the problem with this whole thing.

conversation is that everybody's moving the conversation to what abouts them always. I just don't want your heart rate going up. I get it. Okay, so it's really bad. Don't make it personal. It's not a personal situation. It's the facts are the facts. You started yelling at me. Because you push back on things that are the facts. The facts are, he says one thing. You don't own the facts? And you seem to think you do a lot of times about masks and everything. You don't own facts. It's on tape. Okay.

So they're lying. Lutnick's saying it is. Besson's saying he's not. So they're lying to us. Well, somebody's not telling the truth. Okay. That's the point. All right. It's the first time that's happened in Washington. But shouldn't people know that? Or no? We should just pretend that they're all... It's a pretty confusing situation. It's a lot of uncertainty. Tease will be next.

Coming up, how American politics have evolved in the first 100 days of President Trump's second term with pollster Frank Luntz. Partisan voters have dug their heels in, but polling for Donald Trump looks worse, Luntz says, when you look in the middle. The independents, people who had voted Democrat in the past and chose to vote for Donald Trump this time, those people asked for less wasteful spending, but didn't like how it was done. They asked for...

Less illegal immigration, but the execution wasn't quite what they were looking for.

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This is Squawk Pod from CNBC. Here's Andrew Ross Sorkin.

We continue our coverage this morning of President Trump's first three months in office. Senior economics reporter Sue Leisman is at the table. He's got a look at the first 100 days. He's going to do it by the numbers. Yes, and Andrew, what numbers we have from the first 100 days are dismal, with historic drops in consumer sentiment.

and downgrades to the economic forecast. But forecasts and feelings, they are not facts. The question is whether the president can avoid the fate economists have penciled in. Among the starkest numbers, CNBC finds the plunge of consumer expectations is the third sharpest three-month decline in the 50-year history of the conference board. The other declines, the other two, would have been linked to recessions. The biggest came just after the 1990 recession.

and the next largest came just before the 2001 recession. Weak actual consumer spending the past two months showed those worries about the future can lead consumers to hold back on their spending. The first 100 days also showed a dramatic decline in the growth outlook. The first quarter had been expected to be around 2.1% back in January. It's now seen at negative

we're minus 0.4 we'll get that at 8 30 this morning a second quarter bounce back largely the reversal of trade front running is then forecast to give way to two lackluster quarters of well below trend growth to end the year at the moment those quarters are not negative but you can see they're kind of down there below one percent maybe teetering a little bit at the same time

Jobless cases remain low and March saw strong job growth, perhaps as employers have tried to hold on to workers that were hard to hire after the pandemic. That could change over coming months. You have these government layoffs and you also have firings, some of them linked to the president's new tariff regime. There's also been good news on the inflation front. Oil is down. Some of that could be linked to a weaker growth outlook, some of it to greater production by Saudi Arabia and

And OPEC. It looks like any turnaround, though, is going to need a major assist from a change in tariff policy that leads to a rebound in business and consumer sentiment. It's hard to see you getting back to those robust GDP numbers with these really lousy business and consumer sentiment numbers. The GDP today, though, it's like, yeah.

Okay backward looking what does it tell us? What can we pull out of it? Am I wrong? Is there something we should well reading deeply into this? I think you got to think about the two quarters together and Becky I have explained a lot of very complicated things on television in the last 20 years and

This is the most complicated thing. Really? Yes. I've heard a lot of what you explained. I have a hard time moving back. I've explained auction rate securities, and I've explained CLOs and CBO squared. All right, I'm going to give this a shot. And guys, don't play the music on me. Just, well, do play the music. Final countdown? No, no, no. Play it out, Stevie. But here's the thing.

Okay, so today we get a number that will be negative because of the front running of imports. Okay? Yeah. So all those imports came in for reasons we don't really understand. They did not end up as either sales or in inventories. I don't know why that is.

So you bring stuff in, and you don't want to count it in your gross domestic production. So you subtract out the imports, and they end up as either a sale or an inventory. But they haven't ended up there, and we don't know why. Wait, wait, wait. Explain that again. It comes in here, and we're not counting it?

no they didn't it wasn't sold it wasn't either sold and it's not being counted in in inventories so it just doesn't exist we don't we don't it's just only the negative part of it exists we don't know where the positive part is okay i don't how is that possible i think it's a sequencing issue as to the counting of inventories so it's going to show up in the next quarter's numbers thank you very much okay that's why i'm saying okay okay now

Now, what's going to happen... The positive impact in the second quarter GDP numbers, and that's going to throw off all of that numbers, and we're not going to know what to think of that and think, oh, maybe the economy is doing better than we think.

I'm retiring. Becky got it. That's what it is. That's exactly what I'm about to say. But there's one other element I want to... Okay. So, folks, just to repeat what Becky said, you will have a positive import effect in the second quarter. So the first quarter is going to look worse. The second quarter is going to look better. But here's the thing. Because of all the pull-pulls. Forget all that. Forget what I just told you. What we really want to know about is not this top-line number. See, I just continued. You just told me to wrap. I'm not even done yet. But here's the thing. Here's the thing.

Forget all that because the number you want to look at is final demand. Okay. It gets rid of all that important inventory nonsense. Okay. And that's going to be reasonably strong this quarter. It's next quarter that's going to be weaker, which is to say, folks, I guess you can tune in for this if you want, but you can also tune back in in the third quarter. We might have a better look. Check with us in six months. Check with us in six months. But now you've seen the problem for the Fed. Right.

Right now, Joe wants him to cut now, whatever. The Fed is not going to be know what the heck's going on in this economy for six months. So what else is new? Is it possible it could be just a headline horrific number that Drudge puts on minus one and a half percent? Is it possible? It could be. Yeah, because we don't really know. Right. Is it also possible it could be a plus and be totally wrong?

I think it's going to be hard for it to be a plus because the import numbers, I think, are what they are. The question is the magnitude, but it's...

It's a very complicated thing. Let's look at real final demand at the end of the day. What businesses are buying and what consumers are buying. And let's try to get rid of all this front running. You know what you said? You talked about long lasting pandemic effects. You talk about I mean, there's so many cross currents. This is it. And we've never had tariffs like this before. There's so many things that we that are.

Are you appreciating my job right now? No, I'm just saying that some of it's almost some of it could could be positive. Some of it could be very negative. We just we just don't know. Give people an idea of what's going on on all these different fronts. We just I mean, oil at 59 is good. There's no there's no two ways about it. It's not data sets for us to watch. It's not good for production. No, I know. I know that. But it's good if it filters because I still think that filters through. I think you're right. Everything.

Good fun, huh? Yeah. Thank you. See you in a little bit.

100 days back in office, polls showing Americans more worried about the economy than they were at President Trump's inauguration. Joining us right now on the president's first three months, pollster and political strategist Frank Luntz. Frank, it's great to see you this morning. You've now done a whole number of polls in different sessions with voters, Democrats, Republicans. Tell us what you're hearing. There is increased anxiety, a fear that the coming months will be more difficult.

A recognition that the 401ks that they depended on are not going to be at the same level that they were a couple months ago. A belief among Trump voters to stay the course, not to abandon him. This is something remarkable. The level of hardcore support among Trump voters for their president I've never seen in 35, 40 years of politics.

The hostility among those who did not vote for him is similarly as great, as intense. And the reason why the polling numbers have gotten worse is because of that small group in the center, the independents, people who had voted Democrat in the past and chose to vote for Donald Trump this time. Those people asked for less wasteful spending.

but didn't like how it was done. They asked for less illegal immigration, but the execution wasn't quite what they were looking for.

An overall conclusion is that Trump has been exactly what they were expecting. Only for Trump voters, he's been even better. And for those who didn't like Donald Trump before, they really don't like him now. So where do we go from here, Frank? I mean, do you think there's a way to bring people together around where things are? Or do you think that the next three years are just going to be a complete split? I think it's going to be worse than a split.

I think we're truly going to be at each other, and that is a concern. I'm looking for that common ground. And that's been a common discussion that we've had over the last 10 years of our conversations, that ability to put aside the differences when the nation needs it. And Andrew, I'm not convinced at this point in 2025 that there is that common ground, that there is that constitutional unification that would get us to be on the same side at the same time

if we really needed it in this country. That's how deep and personal and poisonous this difference is between those who like Trump and those who dislike him. — In terms of his supporters, do you see— you see no shift. You're arguing that they're saying that things are even better than before.

Do you think that this tariff issue or this economic issue is going to have any impact if it has one? I mean, I think there's an argument to be made, at least thus far, it has not had a meaningful impact yet, though obviously there are people who are predicting it might. I've been mocked for saying I'm surprised about this, but I'm surprised about this, that Trump voters who acknowledge that they're worth less today than they were on Election Day

that the 401 case they depend on for their future has been hurt, has been damaged. And yet they stand behind him. They'll make excuses that the markets were overbought. They'll make excuses that we need to level set. They were willing to accept personal pain

for them to get a readjustment of the relationship between the US and China, a readjustment of the relationship between the US and the rest of the world, they'll take personal pain to get that readjustment. And Andrew, I've never seen this before, because usually when you're hurt economically, that changes your perspective and your politics.

Now I'm with these people. This is what we heard. And actually, if you go all the way back to before any of this happened, I think Elon Musk said there's going to be some near term pain. And that was about doads. That was about something else, Frank. But this is they keep talking about eating your vegetables. I was looking for a dessert that has vegetables and they told me carrot cake was not. But

I mean, and to put it in perspective, if you didn't sell, you're back to correction mode, which happens every couple of years or every year in the S&P. And to give it some and I'm not saying that it makes it any easier for people that are retiring this year. But you remember we were talking about retesting thirty five hundred on the S&P, retesting four thousand on the S&P. I mean, we are not in retest.

some type of market crash calamity situation that you would think we were in based on a lot of the coverage right now. And I'm surprised that these polls are not even more negative, given the negative coverage. Look at the cover of The New York Times today, Frank. It's it's it's almost unbelievable. And it's

illustrative of what you're saying about the two sides, looking at the same situation with a totally different, it's almost a Rorschach, with a totally different take on what's actually happening. There actually is an answer here, which is that they do want an end to illegal immigration, but they don't want people just rounded up and thrown out of the country indiscriminately. They do want an end to wasteful Washington spending, absolutely.

but they don't want entire departments just eliminated without figuring out what those departments do. And is there a need that's going to affect the average individual in their day-to-day lives? They do want lower prices. They need more affordability. That's why they voted for Trump in the first place.

but they don't want the instability and the shaking and the inability to predict what the future is going to be. I believe that the president's agenda is supported. I believe that the way he's doing it is not. Frank, can I just ask? I mean, your 401k is one thing, and I know if you're close to retirement, that might concern people, maybe less so if you've got a longer time horizon. And the markets were overbought, if you look back to the beginning of this year. A bigger issue might be...

what happens at the grocery store or on some of these items that to this point they've held prices down. The lead story in the Wall Street Journal today about how for the average price of some 10,000 items that they surveyed at Amazon, Walmart and Target has remained flat since April 2nd, the beginning of this month. But the retailers are warning that they can't hold off on that forever, that it will get a little tougher. Do you expect

Americans to be able to keep up with that too if it means that their prices on essentials go up. Well, Becky, here's the weirdest thing of all. Usually up until this point, it's been our wallets, our pocketbooks, our bank accounts that matter most. And now it's not. It's our political allegiances. If you're a Republican and you see prices go up, you'll ignore it. If you're a Democrat and prices stay flat, you'll say they went up.

We're not judging anything anymore based on demographics, based on gender or age or income or education. We're judging it based on who we voted for in the last election, which is problematic. And what it's leading to is a deal alignment that I've never seen in 50 years.

That dealignment means we do not trust the government. We do not trust Congress. We do not trust the institutions that run us. We don't trust education or healthcare. We're pulling away from all the things that once united us. The only institution that still has support is the military.

Everything else is crashing right now. The media is crashing right now. And so to go back to Andrew's question, we don't have the ability to come together because we don't trust the elites or the institutions that they run. And I think this is going to be a problem when we do reach a crisis, which is inevitable over the next few months or even a year or two from now. But what do you mean from the divisiveness? You're not talking about

you're not forecasting like some type of financial calamity yet. And the price increases, we saw price increases, but not in this administration, not yet. And we will, obviously, it could happen. But the prints we've gotten recently have been tame and oil's under 60 bucks. So- The issue here is that they were so agitated, not just Republicans, but the country was agitated that the last four years before this, nothing seemed to happen.

And so they were willing to give this new president, who was the old president, a chance to do the job that he wanted to do. Make no mistake, after four years of inaction, the public said, go fix. The issue is how he articulated that fixing. Elon could have been the biggest hero in America.

They did not want him to rev up that chainsaw on that stage. They wanted a scalpel, not a chainsaw. And so it's the execution and communication that is a problem in this administration. It may make some people happy. It makes hardcore Trump votes excited. But for the rest of America, it makes them concerned and anxious at a time when the economic situation is very unstable.

Frank, want to thank you. Good to see you this morning. Thank you. Up next on Squawk Pod, the brief but heated spat between Amazon and the White House over showing customers the costs of tariffs. Don't worry, President Trump says Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is a, quote, good guy after all. But what does the scuffle mean for big tech in the administration? Wired editor at large Stephen Levy. On one hand, they have to be in lockstep with companies

the president. On the other hand, that's hurting their business. So what's the point of going along with him totally if it's hurting your business anyway? So I think they stuck a toe in the water saying, you know, gee, maybe we can inform our customers. They got slapped back. Plus, the first economic report card of the new administration, Q1 gross domestic product hit today. That's after this break.

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Welcome back to SquawkPod. Hop on, Becky. Thank you.

You are watching Squawk Box right here on CNBC. I'm Becky Quick, along with Joe Kernan and Andrew Ross Sorkin. President Trump has called Amazon founder Jeff Bezos a good guy after Amazon rejected the idea of highlighting tariff-impacted prices on its low-cost site, Amazon Hall. Join us, Hall, H-A-U-L. Join us now with more on Big Tech's relationship with the Trump administration. Stephen Levy.

editor at large at Wired. Stephen, you had a little bit different take than what I thought. You said just because that they actually tried to, or at least broached the idea of doing this on some of their products, that that shows that they're not just automatically bending the knee. I thought the walk back, as quick as it was, I thought that showed total confidence

The story wasn't accurate. Right. But they were not about doing the whole thing, but they were going to do it a little bit. They were considering doing a little. And Stephen is saying that that shows that my point is you say you say that that in and of itself shows they're not bending the knee.

Well, he wound up ultimately bending the knee because the pressure was so intense. They went out on the guns blazing, calling it hostile and political. But actually, it was informative. And Amazon is in a tough position. Like a lot of places, they're going to have to raise prices, and they're not happy about it. And then the raising prices goes to the tariffs.

So on one hand, they have to be in lockstep with the president. On the other hand, that's hurting their business. So what's the point of going along with him totally if it's hurting your business anyway? So I think they stuck a toe in the water saying, you know, gee, maybe we can inform our customers. They got slapped back. But I think other places might, you know, there are smaller places that,

aren't wrapped up in antitrust suits. Amazon copped to it. The team that runs our ultra low cost Amazon haul store considered the idea of listing import charges. But I think there's a different, the reason I bring this up is I feel like there's, first of all,

The original Punchbowl story, and I like Jake Sherman, but the original Punchbowl story said it was across the board, said that they were doing this across all of Amazon and that they didn't specify that and that they were doing this. But they were doing it across the board. They were considering it. They were doing it.

and that this was for all of Amazon. I can't believe we thought it was a good idea. Okay. Amazon haul is a tiny, tiny, tiny part of the business that competes with Sheen and Temu.

And those apps, by the way, if you actually look at them, do a very good job of trying to create as much transparency around each. That's because they're the TikToks. They're the TikToks. Because they're the cheapest. They're controlled by Chinese. Well, because they're the cheapest. Their whole game is to be cheap. And they're trying to show you basically all of their costs. And they're Chinese apps.

and their chinese app so if you were going to compete against them though that's something that you would think about that's totally different than the idea that all of amazon was ever going to do this so the idea that they bent the kneel or even walked it back

I think is crazy, except for the fact that I think that the president and what the White House did has now effectively put every company in America on notice that transparency around tariff pricing is bad, which is ironic because I remember when Kid Rock showed up at the White House with President Trump and they wanted to put in all sorts of

transparency rules around scalping tickets and all sorts of other things. I would think that every retailer would want to do this. And you'd want to be able to do this. So that they don't get accused of price gouging. And the president historically has been coming out in favor of transparency in almost every other regard. But when it comes to his own transparency...

We don't have it. But Amazon. We're in the very beginning of this. The prices increases haven't even started yet. So, you know, and look at the tension. As you say, Andrew, it's just one little possible step that they were going to take. There was a call to Bezos. I know. And not a very friendly one, I don't think. Are they going to call everyone for identifying correctly why the prices are going up? And then.

And are the retailers going to say, OK, you're right and not do it? And the public isn't going to realize this. I mean, I think, you know, the bigger picture is that, you know, they said, oh, you know, you're misinforming the public. Well, as you say, it's transparency. People are going to catch on. I think this is just a little scuffle that's portending bigger problems.

Scuffles to come. OK, the other thing we were going to talk about, Stephen, is the a lot of the bent of the previous bending of the knee to try to I don't know, to try to get around some of the litigation and some of the Justice Department actions that we're seeing that there's no sign that that they're being rewarded for that, at least at this point.

Yeah, it's really interesting. People wondered whether, you know, Trump would come and end these antitrust actions. Someone started by Lena Kahn and the Biden Justice Department. And they're holding. I think that the reason why they're holding is to keep leverage on the companies.

you know, keep the foot on the neck of these companies, you know, to make them comply in things like this. You know, there's a standing antitrust suit against Amazon. So I think the reason why we're seeing that isn't particularly because of any antitrust theory, but leverage. Right. Well,

President thinks Jeff's a good guy. So that that's the takeaway. I think we're a guy, too. Yeah, exactly. All right. Stephen Levy. Thank you. Wired. You're not wired. The magazine's OK. Wired. I got it. You're not the wired editor of wire. OK. Yeah, I guess.

First quarter, advanced GDP and employment cost index data hitting the wires as we speak. Steve Leisman is back at the table. Rick Santelli is in Chicago at the CME, and he's got the numbers.

Yes, first quarter, our first look at GDP, expected to be down a couple of tenths, and what we end up with is down three-tenths of a percent. Down three-tenths of a percent. We haven't had a negative number since minus 1%. That was in the first quarter of 22. That's what we're comping to. On consumption, better than expected, 1.8%, better than the 1.2, 1.3 we were looking for, but

less than half of the 4% in the rearview mirror. And 1.8 would be the lightest going back to the second quarter of 23. Here's the thing is that it looks like imports lopped off. I don't have a precise number. It's about five percentage points off of GDP. So you get rid of the front running of the imports.

add that back and you could have a huge. Now, of course, you also had lackluster exports. Government spending took away from GDP a big investment number. I'm not quite sure about the detail behind that, but that's a good sign is that companies were investing in the first quarter. And then we get to this other show. Let me say the real

final domestic purchases that's business and consumers together that was up a pretty strong three percent and then rick told you earlier he was right to make a point of this consumer up 1.8 that's a good number that's the number we expect to flip next month so that number might be weaker i'm sorry next quarter or the current quarter we're in right now and the import number won't be such a drag so we'll have to wait and see to look at the true sense of whether or not there is

emerging weakness in the economy. That's going to be watching the retail sales numbers we have, as well as watching what happens to business investment and try to sort of look through all this trade stuff and what the impact ultimately is going to be. With unemployment low the way it is, people have the wherewithal to spend. It's whether or not they're in the mood to spend that we're watching here. And we don't know how much sentiment really plays a role here. I think there's a certain...

frozenness, if I may, to the economy right now. There's not a lot of hiring necessarily going on. We'll get that number Friday. But we're not seeing the firing either. It's been interesting with earnings because everybody is suspending their guidance for the full year. They don't know what's going to happen the rest of the year. I've never seen anything like this. What...

To me, what's most amazing, though, is you hear most companies, I think, saying that they've been okay even recently, that things are still hanging in there. The companies that don't are the ones that are getting punished in the stock market. If you say things have been weak in the first few weeks of this quarter, if you say things were getting worse at the end of the last quarter, those are the stocks that are getting punished. And we want to be careful. I would say the majority of them are saying things are still okay right now.

We want to be careful too because like if the companies are not clear about their outlook,

How good are the economic forecasts right now? We showed you that they have come down quite a bit. They were right in terms of their tracking forecast, but that has data in it. But we don't know. Like a second quarter is probably a pretty good idea that there'll be some kind of bounce back from this number. But it's the third and fourth quarter that are the ones that are questioned. I think that's why companies are withholding that guidance right now, because they don't have that visibility on their books for the next beyond, say, several months. Steve, thank you. Thanks, guys. Thank you.

That's Squawk Pod for today. Thanks for listening. A programming note for you. Saturday, May 3rd, is the Berkshire Hathaway Annual Shareholder Meeting. Woodstock for capitalists. Weekend at Warren Buffett's. Coverage will be live all day on CNBC and streaming on CNBC.com and CNBC+.

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All right, clear. Thanks, guys.