White House Economic Advisor Kevin Hassett: Uncertainty Until April 2 3/17/25
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Hi, I'm CNBC producer Katie Kramer. Here's what's coming up today on Squawk Pod. Markets up, markets down, and down some more. How much can nervous investors take when it comes to the back and forth of tariff policy? President Trump's economic advisor Kevin Hassett joins us. There should be clarity, absolute clarity. Do we have it? Are we going to get it now? Well, yeah. April 2nd, you're going to see the reciprocal tariffs.

And is the Doge brand of Elon Musk takes Washington putting a dent in Tesla? Wall Street Journal reporter Tim Higgins on the future of that company. While he's making the bet on robots, the near term, it's not clear that there's a huge product lineup. That's what some investors are very much worried about.

Plus the latest on messaging about the economy, the astronauts one step closer to home, and yeah, Friday seems like a long time ago. The government shutdown averted. But

The Journal calls it Chuck Schumer's finest hour. But not without political repercussions. The Democrats just don't have any good answers on this because they can't figure out what to do. It's Monday, March 17th, 2025. You're such a grouch. Well, wouldn't you be? If I were you, yeah. Squawk Pod begins right now. Stand back your by in three, two, one. Cue, please.

Good morning, everybody. Welcome to Squawk Box right here on CNBC. We're live from the Nasdaq market site in Times Square. I'm Becky Quick, along with Joe Kernan. Andrew is off. Happy St. Paddy's Day. I forgot.

How close can you get to this? 'Cause I have green. It's teeny tiny inside blue boxes. No, no, no, no, it's green. Can we? It's there, it's just- In the middle. Green within the blue. Here's the thing. I knew it was St. Patrick's Day, like yesterday. I do too, I'm cooking corned beef at night. I know, I had like Irish stew. Yeah, I've got everything ready to go. And then you get up and you're like groggy, it's Monday.

Here's what I'm thankful for. Weird thing is we're still on the same mindset. We're both in pink. One year I wore orange by accident. Oh, yeah. Bad. I could not believe. I mean, do not do that. No. Do not ever do that. And at least I dodged that. Protestant. Yeah. What?

What is that? The worst thing in the world. I know my family is some kind of weird hybrid between Catholic and Episcopalian, which is just Catholic light. Yeah. It's just, you know, you basically get to go to heaven without really doing much. You know what I mean? Catholics, oh my God, can't do anything. Well, we just feel guilty about everything.

You do do something. That's how you're... You know you're doing it right if it's against the Catholic religion. Exactly. And Treasury Secretary Scott Besson says the Trump administration's focused on preventing a financial crisis stemming from too much government spending. This is on NBC's Meet the Press. Treasury Secretary said he could guarantee...

the country had been heading for a financial crisis under the policies of previous administrations. He called President Trump's economic moves a reset. We've had that word, recalibration. He was also asked about the recent market drop and whether he was worried.

Not at all. I've been in the investment business for 35 years, and I can tell you that corrections are healthy. They're normal. What's not healthy is straight up that you get these euphoric markets. That's how you get a financial crisis. It would have been much healthier if someone had put the brakes on in 06, 07. We wouldn't have had the problems in 08. So I'm not worried about the markets.

Besant also quoted Warren Buffett, saying, over the short term, the market is a voting machine. Over the long term, it's a weighing machine. Interesting.

Yeah, he's made a lot of comments. We've got Ed Yardeni. He's actually bringing down his S&P targets for the year, in large part because of the tariff policies that are coming out of the Trump administration. He likes some of the things they're doing, kind of wishes they were doing it in a different order and maybe implementing things a little differently than they are. But we'll get to talk to him a little later today about that, too.

We're also getting a new look at how Americans feel about President Trump and economic issues. The latest NBC News poll shows that 44% of people approve of Trump's early job performance on the economy, while 54% disapprove. Trump is much more underwater on the economy than at the start of his first term, but his numbers are still substantially better than former President Biden's were during most of his term.

On reducing prices, 43% of people are very or somewhat satisfied with what Trump is doing, that he's doing enough to deal with inflation. 55% are unsatisfied. That poll surveyed 1,000 registered voters from March 7th to 11th and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points. So I saw this over the weekend in...

I heard it on Worldwide Exchange and I just saw what you said and I thought it was actually a different NBC poll than what I saw on my Twitter. Here's the things that I saw.

uh trump's approval rating has reached 47 percent highest ever on an nbc poll highest ever economic concerns 44 percent now say that the economy is on the right track that's the highest number since 2004. far be it from us to mention that though um that that would be no we don't want to do that um at the end of the body administration i think we were in the

Yeah, it was very low. The partisan divide, 90 percent of Republicans approve, 4 percent of those Dems, 4 percent approve. I think it shows you the divided divided 90 to 4. 94 is pretty good. And how can we forget to mention that the Democratic Party's favorability has hit a historic low,

with just 27% of voters viewing it positively. So I will bring you the actual numbers instead of what we decide to show. I don't know who wrote the piece. Actually, I have an idea. But anyway, happy St. Patrick's Day. Sure, and it's your read. Let me go. Oh. Oh.

President Trump over the weekend signing a bill to fund the government for six months. That measure passed the Senate 54 to 46 and with Trump's signature avoids a threatened government shutdown. Two Democrats joined all Republicans, save one in the Senate, to pass that bill. Earlier on Friday, the key the bill cleared a key procedural hurdle with more Democratic support, including from Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.

He had come under pressure from other Democrats to block the bill, but said that a shutdown would be far worse than passing the House's GOP funding plan. In a post on his social network, President Trump thanked Schumer, saying that it took guts and courage to vote to advance the funding bill, but it has created a big schism within the Democratic Party. Hakeem Jeffries from the House wouldn't specifically say whether he was supporting Schumer at this point after...

what happened over the weekend. I have seen pictures of me arm in arm dancing with Chuck. I have one. I do remember. So, you know, sometimes I like him. Zaslav's was that? Well, I didn't know you were going to say that. Yes, it was at Zaslav's party. But the journal calls it Chuck Schumer's finest hour.

Democrats are furious because he saved them from a futile shutdown, but they are... I don't understand for a party that in the past has been so strident and self-righteous about keeping the government open. About keeping the government open. Yeah. I don't know what's in it that's so scary. Schumer's argument made sense. Well, he said that Elon would do more if he... Yeah, if you're going to shut down the government, you're going to show them that these aren't essential jobs. You're still shutting the same federal employees with all the crocodile tears and pearl clutching that they're talking about with wages...

being cut off during a government shutdown. Why are they worried about that? The government, I mean, the Democrats just don't have any good answers on this because they can't figure out what to do in terms of putting up some fight to the Republicans that now control all three of the houses. I saw. The House, the Senate and the presidency. I wish I had it, but I don't probably don't have it. But Chris Murray. Oh, I do.

Kristen Welker on Meet the Press asked Murphy of Connecticut, the Democratic Party approval numbers are at historic lows. Why? Oh, that sounded like Brian Gumbel. Why? Murphy.

The American senator, the American people just want us to fight Donald Trump harder because if we don't, we're going to lose our democracy. So that was his answer. So they're going to, it's their story and they're sticking to it. It's the inter-party, the inter-mural fighting that's taking place. Well, it's getting a 27%, you're getting 20%, 27% approval. Yeah. Go back to the drawing board. They don't have a clear leader. What's Carville saying? He's whacked out. Well, Carville's been saying for a long time that they did this for themselves. Right. This is, we shall see. ♪

Two astronauts stuck in space for months are getting closer to coming home to Earth. A new four-person crew arriving to the International Space Station yesterday. NASA saying in a press release that the current space station occupants, Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, as well as two others, will undock in the SpaceX Dragon capsule early tomorrow morning. A splashdown is targeted for tomorrow evening around 6 p.m. Eastern time.

Williams and Wilmore were originally slated to spend about a week in space after going up in Boeing's Starliner craft last June, but they were left stranded because of technical problems. They've been there nine months, and I started thinking about that. You pack for a week trip.

i'm a heavy packer they don't let you pack as many things when you go up in space anyway like the number of pairs of underwear you're allowed to bring that you wind up there for nine months there's i don't think there's a washer and dryer up there maybe i'm wrong but did they have enough toothpaste to the stuff that was going on it's like uh just reading this now too so is this elon musk doing this

Yeah. Dragon. We didn't see fit to mention that, I guess. We did. It's the SpaceX dragon. It doesn't say it anywhere. Yeah, it does. It says, we'll undock in the SpaceX dragon capsule early tomorrow morning. This is a private citizen doing what the government is unable to do. Yeah, and there were some...

There's some reports out that he offered to do this with the Biden administration and they didn't know. Right, right. I just think I would have. The word, the four letters M-U-S came. All right, here's an idea. Why don't you read ahead and decide what you'd change instead of doing it live on the air? I'm going to do that. Fair point to do it. Let me see. Let me see. But I mean.

Please. The field is ahead. The field is set. Let me see what we're doing here. The field is set for the NCAA College Basketball Championship. The Auburn Tigers were chosen as the number one overall seed. I don't know about that. The overall, I think maybe, have you been watching? Yeah. Auburn lost four out of five or something. I know. Duke looks amazing. Duke does. UConn's been great lately. Cooper Flagg's got to get it. Cooper Flagg, yeah.

Got to get back. Houston, Florida looks really good recently. I'm excited for St. John's. Yeah. That's cool. They look like they could, you never know, anybody could be in the Final Four. The Southeastern Conference made tournament history with 14 teams making the field. Only South Carolina and LSU were left out, and Duke star Cooper Flagg, who

So we were talking sprained an ankle in Thursday's game. He's expected to return for the team's first round game on Friday. The first four playing games are set for Tuesday and Wednesday, and the first round games are Thursday and Friday. You going to do a bracket? I haven't done one yet. There is no bracket. Because you've got to play. There is a CBS bracket, but not what we used to do. There's actually a squawk bracket that you can get involved in. Right, but it used to be all of our...

People in this business would do it on that one. You could probably do one for Berkshire. I've been invited to do one.

I'm still mad about, you know, he can't go above a million dollars on that yet. No, I think I think there is. It should be a billion dollars because it's never going to happen. If you get everyone right. Coming up. I've been invited in the past to sit in a bracket. You haven't. I'm not going to. Coming up. Major asset. Major asset. Grouch. Well, when you be. If I were you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Man. Yeah. Other people are thrilled with the way we cover things.

Teas will be next. Coming up on Squawk Pod, taxing times for economic messaging from the White House. If I charge a tax to Joe, then Joe pays the tax. If I charge a tax to a Chinese exporter, then maybe there's a price effect on Joe. But you know, the Chinese exporter is going to pay some tax, too.

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Welcome back to SquawkPod.

Tariff uncertainty, when and how much will goods from other countries be levied, has roiled the U.S. markets in this month of March. And it's led many to question how much of the chaotic messaging of the policy from the Trump administration is actually part of the negotiation. Wall Street veteran Ed Yardeni joined our TV broadcast this morning to discuss a prediction he's making based on this three-week market route, a lowered target for the S&P 500.

That is the broadest index of America's largest companies. He's lowering his target by almost 9%. And Yardeni warns this correction of recent weeks could turn into a bear market. But I think by the second half of the year, a lot of the uncertainties about tariffs, I think there'll be negotiations going on. Some of them will lead to lower tariffs instead of higher tariffs.

And I think by the second half of the year, we'll see the economy continue to prove its resilience. Earnings hanging in there pretty well. And so I think the second half is when the market moves ahead. Let's get back to Joe Kernan, who posed questions about the resilience of the markets to tariff policy, to the president's top economic advisor, Kevin Hassett. President Trump signed a funding bill to keep the government running for the next six months. So

We got that going for us. Joining us now with more on the budget, tariffs, and taxes, White House National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett. Little did they know back in 1980 that we'd still be using. We got that going for us, which is nice. It's a Caddyshack reference. I still use it a lot.

Let's talk about tariffs, and I'm going to tell you how to do it. Do you want to know the proper way to do it? Are you open to suggestions, Kevin? You know, from you always, I think the president has a pretty good idea what he's going to do. We've been talking about it all week, but I'd love to hear your advice. Go for it, Jeff.

USMCA compliance stuff, don't do it. I don't think we are right now. If we can determine that it's going to be counterproductive to some of our great companies here and we don't really know what the end site is, for example, fentanyl in Canada and the effect it would have on the automakers.

If we know that it's going to cost them billions of dollars to comply with something based on something that's not related at all to the trade, then don't do it. There are a lot of places out there that have non-tariff barriers and large tariffs that make it hard for American workers

to sell stuff to foreign countries and earn a good living. And that's exactly what the president's been talking about, especially over the last week. You know, we've got a hard deadline that's coming up that's going to, I think, be great news for markets once they see the clarity about how reasonable it is to have reciprocal tariffs.

There are a heck of a lot of countries that play by the rules where we have big trade surpluses with the country because they're played by the rules and don't tariff our products. And then there are a few, just a few really, where the trade deficits are huge, they're persistent, they last for years. They're doing things like sending autos into the US but not letting our autos go to their countries.

and doing it in a way that harms American workers. And so there's a lot of work to be done. But the bottom line for me, Joe, is that I was just looking at the Customs and Border Patrol data for March, for the first week of March. And do you realize that if you run it out over 10 years, the amount of tariff revenue that we've already collected for the actions that we've taken, including some that you just mentioned, adds up to about a trillion dollars over 10 years.

a trillion dollars that we could use to say give everybody a tax cut or reduce the deficit. And so that trillion dollars is part of the story. Right. So what you're seeing right now is when people are naysayers and get all upset about, oh, market this, market that, tax hikes, they're thinking that the trillion dollars is just going to go away. But President Trump's plan is to use the tariff revenue to balance the budget and to reduce taxes. That's from us.

- Let's say China goes down half or some people, let's say they respond, but the other half is gonna be people here raising prices for Americans, right? So that's okay? - If I charge a tax to Joe, then Joe pays the tax mostly. If I charge a tax to a Chinese exporter, then maybe there's a price effect on Joe, but you know the Chinese exporter is gonna pay some tax too. So on that logically, you gotta be better off

if you're running the tax through inelastically supplying foreign national. And so the president's vision is just let's use the tariff revenue by making tariffs free or fair and reciprocal and use that revenue to lower taxes on ordinary Americans and balance the budget.

Kevin, this is a really important point. I don't know if you just heard Ed Yardeni was with us. He's actually taking his. Yeah, he's taking down his S&P target for the year because of tariffs entirely. He's bringing it down to by about 9 percent from 7000 to 6400. Now, 6400 is still a long way higher from where we are today at 56 and change.

But he said without the tariffs, markets would be at new highs right now. And the last thing he said before he left the set just now is that if tariffs are here as a negotiation to try and make sure that we are getting fairer trade, that's one thing. But if the administration is looking at this as a way of raising revenue, as you just laid out, to replace personal and corporate taxes, he said that that he does not agree with at all. And he thinks we'll have...

more negative impacts on the markets. What would you say to him? Because what you just laid out sounds like this is a long-term structural change where you're planning on getting revenue from this. And that's going to be something for not just the markets, but for businesses to try and contend with. Right. Right. You know, there's a lot to unpack, but look at it this way. Ed, I'm sure you're still listening, that we've got

persistent trade deficits with Europe and with China and with South Korea that have been there for year after year after year. And if you look at why those trade deficits exist, it's because they have non-tariff barriers and high tariffs that make it hard for U.S. firms to compete. Now, if you think that they're going to reduce all those barriers right away, then you think that this is a negotiation that's going to end, I guess Ed thinks ends well.

Our expectation is there are going to be a lot of countries that do respond favorably to President Trump's negotiation. President Trump is very flexible. He said that over and over. But my guess is there are going to be a lot of countries that don't, that they're stuck in their ways. And the countries that don't are going to have to pay the tariffs. Right. That's the way it is. And so I think there will be revenue. And we're already seeing it. If you think about it, the increase in the tariff on China, the 20 percent, has produced an enormous increase.

a revenue burst for the U.S. over the last month. And it doesn't feel like China is really going to change very much. And the China deficit is what, about a third or 40 percent of the overall deficit. And so that right there is revenue that we could use to cut taxes on ordinary Americans. You know, Kevin, as for bringing a lot of manufacturing back here, that's just, you know, Americans are

are so we like instant gratification so i mean isn't there anything faster than a microwave i mean i'm waiting and waiting like oh my god 30 seconds you know to cook that that was from home that was from homer he's like don't there anything faster than a mic but when i mean i don't think you'd see the effects of this in terms of you know suddenly michigan or ohio or any of those uh those great states that lost so many uh so many industries

That won't be back for years, even if you do try to do these things.

You know, I thought that too, Joe, but then I was fiddling with the data as we're getting ready to meet with the president and vice president last week. And one of the things I noticed was that the capacity utilization rate for autos in the U.S. was around 80% pre-COVID under President Trump, and it's around 60% now. And so one reason why we had 9,000 auto jobs created in the last jobs report is that we've got all this excess capacity in auto manufacturing in the U.S. And so as we go towards reciprocal

trade, I really expect that there are going to be tens of thousands of auto jobs created this year. And you already saw it in the last month because capacity utilization is so low. So Joe Biden let, like many other things, the auto industry get out of control and President Trump is out there fixing it. So as far as the reciprocal tariffs are one thing, is there any softening on some of the positions on tariffs that don't seem to have a clear answer?

rationale and that critics, and there are many across the board, you see it, Kevin, that say it's, you know, we're not really sure what it's going to be. It changes by the hour. Ed Yardeni said the market seems to go up on days when, you know, we haven't heard new utterances about tariffs.

I think there should be clarity, absolute clarity. Do we have it? Are we getting it now? Well, yeah. I mean, April 2nd, you're going to see the reciprocal tariffs. Between now and then, we've been in a negotiation with flexibility with Mexico and Canada, and we've got the border under control, and we're making a huge amount of progress on fentanyl. Those have both been very positive developments that were related to the tariff policy.

but yeah absolutely between now and april second will be so much certainty but as april comes along markets will see that the reciprocal trade policy makes a great deal of sense and that for a lot of countries they play by the rules they're not going to be very upset all of the way that the u_s_ moves which countries are best uh... position do you think go mono we might not have probably can't go person to person uh... with the united states and i mean china

probably doesn't need to fear us as much as maybe, I don't know, some countries that don't have, aren't economic powerhouses. But even China, I would think, doesn't need to be picked, you know, doesn't need to exacerbate the situation, especially if they know there's certain things that they're doing that, you know, an objective person would say is unfair.

Right. Well, I think that what's going on right is that China is subsidizing production and selling stuff to U.S. consumers in order to create political stability at home, even if they lose money on that subsidized production. And so China is doing that. I think that Europe for sure does that. And after that, we could go down the list. But I think that there are a couple of countries that are basically addicted to subsidized jobs. They subsidize, you know, on the back of the U.S. consumer.

I think there are a heck of a lot of countries that just play by the rules, that don't have tariffs, that don't have non-tariff barriers, that have trade surpluses with the U.S. And I think that if you're trying to think, we don't have to go through the list. We'll wait. We'll have a list for you on the 2nd of April. But if you go through the list, you're going to see there are a heck of a lot of countries that are performing very, very well. They respect the rules. They're great allies. And they're not playing favorites.

Even China, though, I would think, like I said, I don't know who can really decide to make this protracted. And I think we should see some movement. Maybe that's what the president is counting on. Maybe then it won't be such a long process. We've got 15 seconds. I've got to go. Thanks, Kevin Hassett. Thanks a lot, Joe. Thanks, man. You're welcome.

Next on Squawk Pod, Tesla stock is under pressure these days while CEO Elon Musk's time is split between running his companies and running Doge in D.C. Wall Street Journal reporter Tim Higgins on the political toll of Musk's play in politics. He is making the bet that autonomous vehicles

that robots will be the future. That's a huge bet. That's a bet that I think investors were excited about a couple years ago when he was clearly running the company on a more engaged basis. - How Tesla's weathering some protests, vandalism, and how Musk is reassuring investors. - Now the question is how much involvement is he having?

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This is Squawk Pod.

Hop on, Becky. Thank you. You're watching Squawk Box right here on CNBC. I'm Becky Quick, along with Joe Kernan. Andrew is off today. Check out the shares of Tesla this morning. Off a little bit. The stock...

On the one hand, is up more than 50% in the last year. Sort of see an indication of that. We don't go all the way back, but has declined nearly 50% from its all-time high. Reached back just in December. Joining us now is more on Elon Musk and the Tesla brand. Tim Higgins, Wall Street Journal reporter and a CNBC contributor. Tim, good morning. Good morning. My mind races. Over the weekend, I did happen to drive by

a Tesla dealership, you know what I was on my way to? - What? - Taco Bell. But I did drive, and there were a lot of people, Tim, with signs, not a lot, I'd say 10 or 12, and one of them said, "No dogues allowed," which I thought was kind of funny. No D-O-G-E-S. - Oh, doges. - And then he said a dog. So I get it, and,

what Mark Kelly is getting rid of his and there's Molotov cocktails. So I get it. Why do you think Elon Musk seems to be less than concerned about the effect on his brand than you would think? - Yeah, you would think he'd be freaking out, right? But, you know, traditionally, if you look kind of that long arc of time with Elon Musk,

Marketing is a thing, but he tends to argue that the product will overcome, that the product will sell itself, that if it's such a great product, people will just buy it, that it'll spread. You don't have to have television advertising because word of mouth will help it. And it seems to be a bet that

that Tesla is, at least on the cusp, if not in the near term, over the long term, will have technology that will just bring people to it. He is making the bet that autonomous vehicles, that robots will be the future. That's a huge bet. That's a bet that I think investors were excited about a couple of years ago.

When he was clearly running the company on a more engaged basis. Now the question is, you know, how much involvement is he having? And also, how willing are they willing to go with this kind of bet? That could be much more important, I think, Tim, that they need maybe they need more of his time. Maybe they don't. I don't know.

But the brand thing, it's exactly the conclusion that I came to. If I was going to buy an EV, I'd still buy a Tesla. That's all I see driving around. Every once in a while, I might see a, what are those other ones, Polaris? I very rarely see that many other EVs other than Tesla. And what you said, think about what he's staking Tesla's future on in terms of automation and robo-taxis and all those. If those come through...

None of this is really gonna matter. And you remember a couple years ago when he was, he had bought Tesla and the advertisers were leaving and he was asked, what about that? And he said, they can go F themselves or something. I mean, just said it in front of like a bunch of people. And then I think he said, if you didn't hear me, I think he said it again. And he didn't care then either.

Yeah, absolutely. It was when he bought Twitter. It was go F yourself to those advertisers who didn't want to be there. He seems to be doing the same play here. But I think the stakes are a little bit different. The car business is a cash-eating machine. Yes, he's got a bunch of cash, but that's cash to get the company to the future. Heading into potential recession concerns, that's not a good place when you're a car company.

And then the other thing is that while he's making the bet on robots, the near term, it's not clear that there's a huge product lineup. Maybe perhaps a decontent vehicles here in the near term. Is that really going to move the needle? That's what some investors are very much worried about. But to your point, yeah, it's a long-term play in his mind, but the market is not that long-term. Well, I was going to follow up with that. I guess at some point...

Tim, you would think maybe that you're going to

Have him go back to the company and maybe you think he gets tired of this? How long do you think? Well, you know, it's interesting. You look at the mandate for Doge. It's into the next summer of 2026 for him. He seemed to suggest that he's going to be there for the next year. In his mind, at least when he's talked about it as a an assignment, it's not the rest of his life. And he seems to be making the kind of the argument that the world or the U.S. needs him now.

One of the interesting things about Tesla, though, as a brand story, one of its successes is that it got beyond the idea of an electric car company. If you look at third-party consumer data from the likes of Strategic Vision, those people that poll or take surveys of people who buy their car, they were talking in the past about why they were buying it. It was because of its performance, because of its looks, not because necessarily it was a green car. And that's really where electric car makers want to get. They want to get past the idea of being a green car. Now,

if it's seen as being political, that's some baggage that he's going to be dealing with when he goes back to the day-to-day at Tesla. That was a point they made. I mean, in this administration, any of those EV mandates that you were counting on to hasten the transition, those may or may not hold up.

I mean, the whole climate change, you know, that narrative, that orthodoxy is challenged even by the new secretary of energy to some extent. The one thing I would say, Tim, I have criticized so many times when companies get too woke and I always bring up Michael Jackson or Michael Jordan, you know, Republicans buy sneakers, too. He would never engage in that.

And now it's on, now it's sort of the other way. Democrats buy Teslas, boy, do they ever. And so that is a strategic, if all he cared about

was maximizing sales, that would be a strategic mistake. Right. Traditionally, Republicans haven't bought a lot of electric cars. Now, perhaps they will buy Teslas. But Democrats seem to be shying away from it. It's almost like a Bud Light moment. And we saw what happened there. Exactly. And other places as well. I don't know what's going to happen with Snow White. I'm reading about that. Are they...

what do they have? Are they mythical tall, eight foot tall mythical creatures now? Or are we back to, what are they, like AI dwarfs? Is that even, can I say that word? Do you know where we stand on the whole Snow White thing? Do you know? I'm going to do it next. I'm going to look into it. I don't think you are. All right. Thank you. Thank you.

Mizuho is cutting its price target on Tesla to $430 from $515. It is, however, keeping an outperform rating on that stock. By the way, the stock's only at $247, so its new price target is still well above of that. The downgrade, though, is because of a softer demand for, not downgrade, but lower price target is because of the softer demand for EVs in the United States and Europe. Also, they mentioned specific headwinds for the company in China.

Make sure you join us tomorrow. Maybe I'll wear a green tie tomorrow. Is that? Stay late and a dollar short. Sure. Exactly. Happy St. Patrick's Day. And that's the pod for today. Thanks for starting your week with us. Squawk Box is hosted by Joe Kernan, Becky Quick, and Andrew Ross Sorkin. Tune in weekday mornings on CNBC at 6 Eastern. Get the very best of our TV show right into your ears when you follow Squawk Pod wherever you get your podcasts. That's it. Have a great Monday, and we'll meet you right back here tomorrow.

Clear. Thanks, guys.