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Morning Brew Daily
Trump's Exec Actions Impact Energy and Inflation & TikTok is Very Back
00:29:51
Trump wants to start quick & TikTok banned, and unbanned real quick
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- [00:01]
Sponsor
This episode is brought to you by Indeed. We're driven by the search for better. But when it comes to hiring, the best way to search for a candidate isn't to search at all. Don't search match with Indeed. Use Indeed for scheduling, screening and messaging so you can connect with candidates faster. Listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility@ Indeed.com SBO terms and conditions apply.
- [00:30]
Neal Freyman
Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neal Freyman.
- [00:34]
Toby Howell
And I'm Toby Howell.
- [00:35]
Neal Freyman
Today there were more billionaires at Donald Trump's inauguration than the St. Barts Marina. But which tech titans got a front row seat then?
- [00:42]
Toby Howell
TikTok's ban lasted all of 12 hours as Donald Trump intervened to save the app, though its long term future a little Murkier. It's Tuesday, January 21st. Let's ride.
- [00:57]
Neal Freyman
Welcome back. Hope you had a great, great long weekend. It's so cold. My Phone currently says 9 degrees here in Manhattan. However, I do have some good news in New York. At least today is the first time the sun will set at 5pm in months and we won't have another pre 5pm sunset until November. So the days are getting longer even if you can't go outside to enjoy it.
- [01:22]
Toby Howell
I'm going sun tanning. Neil Spring is basically sprung. Yeah, the high is 10 degrees, but the sun is so back. I'm actually fine dealing with the cold. I've gotten used to it, but the lack of sunlight has affected me. So maybe we move this pot a little closer to the south, do a couple of Florida shows. Sounds good to me. You know what this really affects though, is golf on the weekend. Course it does two PMT times become a little bit more valuable. So to me, spring has sprung. Now a word from our sponsor, Yahoo. Finance. Neil so much going on in the news right now.
- [01:57]
Neal Freyman
I don't want to jinx it, but I'm calling the Monday we just had the newsiest Monday we'll get all year.
- [02:02]
Toby Howell
Well, now you definitely jinx it. But the only way to stay on top of a news day like that is to have a site like Yahoo. Finance at your disposal.
- [02:09]
Neal Freyman
When you have meme coins dropping and polar vortexes, vortexing and executive orders getting signed left and right, Yahoo. Finance is there to aggregate the headlines and show you how the market is reacting.
- [02:20]
Toby Howell
So much of what you might see on social media or hear from your friends is noise. Yahoo. Finance cuts through all that to serve you the information you need to make informed decisions about your investments.
- [02:30]
Neal Freyman
If you want to get valuable insights to navigate this period of newsiness, head to yahoo.finance.com today.
- [02:37]
Toby Howell
Well, it is official Donald Trump is the 47th president of the United States. The president elect dropped the elect yesterday and wasted no time after his inauguration, busting out his ballpoint pen to sign dozens of executive actions to reshape the economy, immigration and the government to implement his America first policies. Here's a rundown of the most important Trump signed 10 executive orders related to immigration yesterday as he follows through on his campaign promises to end illegal immigration and conduct mass deportations. He also moved to end birthright citizenship and designated drug cartels as foreign terrorist terrorist organizations. On the topic of energy, Trump is set to remove the US from the Paris climate accords for the second time as he aims to boost domestic fossil fuel production. In a speech, he also promised to drill, baby, drill. Trump also announced on Monday that he is withdrawing the US from the World Health Organization, citing the organization's mishandling of the COVID 19 pandemic. Trade was another hot button campaign issue from Trump, but he's taking things a little slower when it comes to enacting tariffs. He declined to issue new tariffs through an executive order and instead asked federal agencies to conduct a thorough examination of the US Trade practices with countries like China, Canada and Mexico. In his speech yesterday, he also pledged to create an External Revenue Service to collect duties from other countries. Finally, DOGE appears to be a go. Trump signed an executive order to establish the Department of Government Efficiency to identify areas of government waste. The new agency will be led by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, though the latter will soon leave to run for governor of Ohio. According to reports, Neil Trump's hand has to be cramping after all that signing, right?
- [04:24]
Neal Freyman
Solid rundown, Toby. Let's start with trade, because that is what investors Wall street is watching the most closely. Trump did not institute any new tariffs on day one. It was this more broad executive order. So you had Wall street breathing a little sigh of relief. Okay, maybe this is just a kickoff to a negotiating period, but as he's signing this order about, you know, this broad order to review trade practices, he's gabbing it up with reporters and he goes, you know what? I think we'll do tariffs on Canada and Mexico, 25%. I think it's going to start on February 1st. So maybe they're not going to come yesterday. But it appears that Trump is going to move forward with tariffs. We know how disruptive 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico. The US's two largest trading partners is going to be. And now there's a deadline of February 1st. We're back on this roller coaster of will he, won't he, and the global economy really hangs in the balance. So it was a two part day, whereas a little relief and then, oh no, here we go again.
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Toby Howell
And then also energy is a big focus of Trump. He immediately pulled the US out of the Paris climate accord, something he did in his first term as well. The US now joins Iran, Libya and Yemen as the only countries outside of this global agreement meant to lower fossil fuel emissions. He also has pledged to reverse Biden's, you know, efforts to grow the US's green energy, pull out some of those EV credits that has been kind of propping up that industry as well. He also promised to drill, baby drill, which is a little bit ironic because there's US oil output hit an all time high under Biden. Last year, the Biden administration issued a record 758 oil and gas drilling licenses. So a lot of people are looking like there's not that many more places to drill. We've been drilling, baby drilling. So that is one of his campaign promises. He said it in his inauguration speech. But already the US is at all time high. US oil output.
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Neal Freyman
Okay, and then moving on to doge, this Department of Government Efficiency, which is this, I don't know, task force outside of the government led by Musk and Ramaswamy, that's supposed to look at federal spending and find areas to cut. Yeah, it lost one of its leaders already. Ramaswamy essentially confirmed on X yesterday that he's going to leave this task force and run for governor of Ohio. And that's not, you know, the only turmoil that DOGE is facing in its first 12 hours of existence. Minutes after this executive order was created, DOGE was hit with three different lawsuits accusing this Department of Government Efficiency of violating federal transparency rules. It's not constitutional according to these lawsuits. So now it's locked in a legal fight. And I should add, this is going to be a huge issue for a lot of these executive orders. They're going to face legal challenges. The one around birthright citizenship, which says that, no, this is long standing constitutional enshrinement practice where anyone, nearly anyone who is born on US soil, it doesn't matter who your parents are, you can become a US citizen. Trump wants to end that. That was already hit with a lawsuit. So when you do something by executive orders, when you file almost 100, as Trump did yesterday, you open yourself up to Legal challenges. So Doge, birthright citizenship and we'll see a number other, number of these other executive orders, orders, you know, get, get stop, get stopped in their tracks and move to the courts.
- [08:02]
Toby Howell
And then finally, you couldn't have watched the inauguration yesterday without looking up and seeing some of the most valuable companies, the leaders of some of the most valuable companies sitting courtside. You had Alphabet's Sundar Pichai there, Elon Musk was obviously there, obviously there. Apple's Tim Cook showed up. And then you have the triumvirate of Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg and then Sam Altman from opening it was also there as well. A lot of them people were noting had better seats, a front row seat, even better seats than people from Trump's cabinet. So that just goes to show how kind of tethered together the billionaire classes with this upcoming Trump administration. Wall Street Journal kind of did a little bit of back of napkin math, found that the, the market cap for the companies that had their CEOs attend was over $12 trillion and that their individual wealth was, was over $1 trillion. So a lot of money on display in front row seats at this inauguration. Well, it finally happened. TikTok went dark in the US over the weekend, but its time offline ended up being shorter than Kim Kardashian's marriage to Kris humphries. On Saturday, TikTok took itself offline for about an hour and a half before midnight, disrupting everyone's pre bedtime scrolling routines. But then Trump got involved. He posted on True Social that he would sign an executive order to bring TikTok back, most likely in the form of a 90 day extension. TikTok followed that up a few hours later with a pop up served to 170 million Americans that read, as a result of President Trump's efforts, TikTok is back in the US a mere 12 hours later. It was good as new, though it's currently unavailable to download on the Google and Apple app stores. Last night Trump did follow through on his word, signing an executive order instructing the internal attorney general to not enforce the ban for a period of 75 days to allow his administration to take a crack at finding an appropriate course of action going forward. Neil Trump has mentioned that his long term solution to saving TikTok includes the US taking a 50% ownership position in the app. But so far ByteDance has been pretty adamant it's not selling. So now it's time for an unstoppable force to meet an immovable object.
- [10:16]
Neal Freyman
This is total legal legal Limbo right now because TikTok is ostensibly alive. But at the same time, there is still a law on the books that says Apple, Google, Oracle, all these US Companies that host it, distribute. It can't do that. That's Congress saying that. And then you have Trump coming in with the executive order saying, no, I'm not going to enforce it. Don't worry. So you have multiple parts of the government saying multiple different things to these companies, and so much money is on the line. The law states that you will be fined $5,000 per user. You just mentioned that TikTok has 170 million US users. So it's unclear whether Apple and Google are going to say, well, Trump's not going to prosecute me, so that's okay. I will still host TikTok. But it seems like they're not doing that because you checked this morning and it looks like TikTok is not on those major app stores. So it's existing in this liminal space right now where it is alive, but it's not alive. It's like when you wake up in the morning and you're ostensibly awake, but you're definitely not getting out of bed. So that is where TikTok is right now. Well, it's not sustainable. We'll see if anything can get done in the next 75 days, but it's not even sure that Trump is able to do this. The law that was passed allows for a 90 day extension if there is, quote, significant progress on a deal to sell TikTok. But that only kicks in before the law kicked in. And the law has already kicked in. So this is perhaps not legal, what Trump is doing. We're all kind of throwing our hands up in the air about what is the future of TikTok as we have been for the last couple of months.
- [11:56]
Toby Howell
It does look like TikTok is this political football too, because everyone remembers that in Trump's first administration, he was very gung ho about blocking it, about banning it. He led the charge here initially, but then totally flipped his tune as he realized that it could be advantageous to him to come across as a savior of TikTok to a lot of young people who use the app. And a lot of people are criticizing TikTok for basically posting a Trump ad saying that, hey, Donald Trump is going to save this app. That was what the language that was written in the pop up that everyone was served. So Trump comes away with this major political victory where he looks like he did save the app to the 170American 170 million Americans who, you know, still want to send meme videos to their friends that they probably won't watch. Zooming out, though, it looks like the only truly permanent solutions to keep TikTok online appear to be one. You have to pass a law that supersedes or reverses that initial law, which is not going to be easy considering the widespread bipartisan support of that initial law. Or you force a sale to an acceptable buyer. And there are these groups that are putting forth perplexity in AI app that has a, has a market cap about a tenth of the size of ByteDance that, hey, we'll put our name up there. And then there's also this group led by Kevin O'Leary who says, like where we have the funds together to, you know, make something happen. So still you use the term liminal space a lot. I think that's a perfect encapsulation of where we are right now with TikTok.
- [13:24]
Neal Freyman
Meanwhile, other apps aren't waiting to see what's going to happen to TikTok to pounce. Instagram made a couple of moves on Sunday, which was the day that Tik Tok went dark for about 12 hours. It released a video editing app similar to Cap Cut, which is TikTok sister app that allows you to do video editing and that's been super popular. It also extended the length of reels from 90 minutes to three minutes. So they think 90 seconds.
- [13:49]
Toby Howell
Three minutes? No, 90 minute reels, yeah.
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Neal Freyman
When was the last time you watched a 90 minute reel? That's, that's what I do. So yes, 90 seconds to three minutes. So Instagram thinks this is a golden opportunity to bring users over who are, who don't know what's going on with TikTok to them. So we'll see how that boosts Instagram's user base.
- [14:07]
Toby Howell
Up next, Trump launched a meme coin.
- [14:12]
Neal Freyman
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- [15:02]
Toby Howell
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- [15:33]
Neal Freyman
History, President elects usually spend the months leading up to their inauguration divesting from any business dealings in order to fend off conflicts of interest. Not Donald Trump. Quite the opposite. On Friday night, days before being sworn in, Trump shockingly launched his own meme linked cryptocurrency Trump coin, which spiked 600% overnight and made him billions of dollars on paper. As of Sunday morning, the coin represented the longtime real estate developers 89% of his total net worth, as much as $58 billion. On paper, that would make him one of the world's 25 richest people. And remember, this coin didn't even exist two days prior. The Trumps weren't done milking the meme cow. Sunday night, Trump's wife Melania launched her own coin called Melania, which shot up to a market cap of $5 billion and actually sent Trump coin prices trending down. These developments have flabbergasted both the crypto industry and presidential ethics watchdogs for different reasons. For crypto execs who had high hopes that Trump would remove barriers to growth, they're worried that his meme coin ploy could hurt the sector's credibility. For people who study government ethics, the coin represents an unprecedented scheme to profit off of elected office. We're in uncharted territory, absolutely.
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Toby Howell
And initially the reaction is to just laugh at it or just say that wow, this is just another thing that Trump is doing. Like I can't believe he launched a meme coin, but it does really open up a Pandora box of legal and ethical considerations because this is a potential money faucet for the Trump administration. On average, if you look at kind of the mechanics of this coin, Trump's various entities that he control can sell about 24 million coins per month back into the market. Right now, 80% of the coins liquidity is locked up by Trump controlled entities. And if you Kind of use a proxy of the prices. As of Sunday, that would amount to an income stream of over $1 billion per month, which adds up to, you know, 12 to $15 billion per year. So the implications of that are pretty far reaching. He basically has this money faucet that he can tap into to do what he wants with. And what, what does that mean? Does that mean that a potential foreign government or a foreign actor could funnel money into Trump coin to ask for, you know, favors? It does open up some of those ethical minefields that a lot of people were saying, well, this is not necessarily something you want the President, United States doing.
- [18:03]
Neal Freyman
Yeah. Anthony Scaramucci, who briefly worked for Trump the first time around, he's a crypto investor. Certain criticized decision, this decision a lot. He, this was a quote that he posted on X. Now anyone in the world can essentially deposit money into the bank account of President of the USA with a couple clicks. Every favor, geopolitical, corporate or personal, is now on sale right out in the open. Now let's talk about the crypto industry's reaction because there were really high hopes Trump was going to come in and deregulate the sector and get rid of Gary Gensler, who is the SEC chair, who is cracking down. And now he launches the Meme Coin. And I think they are feeling a little bit of whiplash because, you know, who else launches Meme Coin, you know, like people like Hawk to do what's called a rug pull. They, they all the prices go up and then they sell everything and they make off the, make off with the money. And the regular investors don't make, they lose at all because typically Meme coins trade on attention. And when that attention goes away, they go down to zero, leading regular folks who invested holding the bag. So there was a lot of criticism from crypto leaders, former Coinbase execs, venture capitalists in the crypto industry saying, get, man, this is not a good look for our industry. We, we finally, we want it to be taken seriously. We funneled $10 million into your inauguration fund. We're hoping for a lot of serious policy moves that, you know, give us credibility as an industry. And this undercuts all of that. So there was a chorus of crypto execs saying, this is not what we're looking for, dude.
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Toby Howell
One thing that did happen though, is a lot of people got very rich off this coin because it went nuclear after it launched. If you just kind of scan the blockchain and see some of the trades.
- [19:50]
Neal Freyman
That were issued, I always scan the.
- [19:51]
Toby Howell
Blockchain you saw, I mean it was, it was based on Solana. So it is all out there in the open to see. And the holder who saw the highest gain gained almost 19,000%. They had a position worth $270,000. Although you did see a lot of the biggest holders start to sell. Investors who saw over 10,000 returns were some of the most frequent. 10,000% returns were some of the most frequent sellers. Which, you know, makes sense. I mean, these are insane numbers that we're talking about. So there was a lot of money being passed around. It was a very frothy time for the crypto market. It has since come down a little bit. Prices were a lot below the peak during the inauguration. It was funny too that Milani coin ended up taking some of the, you know, the trading fear around Trump coin and putting it towards Melania Coin. So maybe there's some, you know, spousal rivalry right now. But yeah, it is pretty crazy that suddenly you can, in the crypto industry you can wake up and have nothing and then turn that into a something worth $50 billion in the span of 24 hours. It literally did not exist 48 hours ago and now it is one of the biggest meme coins in the world.
- [20:59]
Neal Freyman
You think this week has already been wild? Well, we're just getting started, baby. Here's what you need to know about the biggest events in the week ahead. A potentially historic winter storm is about to smack parts of the south with levels of snow and ice they haven't seen in decades or perhaps ever. New Orleans could get 10 inches of snow today, the city's biggest snowfall on record. Florida issued a winter storm watch for the first time in 11 years. And Houston suspended all flights from both its airports at midnight Monday. Travel could be nonexistent because these cities are simply not prepared for this kind of weather. Houston, for instance, has zero snowplows, zero. They typically pre treat roads for winter weather using brine, but there's not enough of the mixture for 16,000 lane miles of roads the city handles.
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Toby Howell
That is a crazy stat. So congrats on the snow day, Houston, but you might be snowed in for longer than you're expecting. The National Weather Service says that this is basically the coldest air we've seen in many years. Nearly all of the lower 48 states except for south Florida are seeing freezing temperatures. So northern Florida, even the kind of my neck of the woods Tampa area are seeing freezing temperatures. So pretty crazy that nearly 300 million Americans are about to experience below average, close to freezing.
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Neal Freyman
Temperature. Everyone is staying warm and safe. Speaking of snow, the World Economic Forum has begun in the swanky resort town of Davos, Switzerland. It's the annual gathering of business, business and political leaders who say they want to tackle climate change but also arrive there on private jets. This year, though, the pretense of corporations saying they want to help make the world a better place may be tossed aside because there has been a vibe shift since Trump's election. Terms like ESG D that had dominated Davos for the past decade have been replaced by more explicit business concerns like dealmaking and deregulation.
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Toby Howell
Yeah, and a number of world leaders are not even attending the event this time around. India Prime Minister Modi isn't showing up either is Chinese President Xi Jinping. Handful of European leaders aren't coming either, President elect or no. Now President Donald Trump is not expected to attend, though he is expected to address the event via video. So it is losing a little bit of its sheen here as they're trying to figure out how to, you know, what is its place now in the kind of the global and business worlds.
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Neal Freyman
Earnings season picks up the pace after big banks kicked off proceedings with blowout numbers last week. In the coming days we'll hear from Verizon, American Express, 3M and more, but the highlight is later this afternoon when Netflix drops its Q4 financials. The company is firing on all cylinders right now as the undisputed king of streaming, with shares up more than 75% in the past 12 months, and I.
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Toby Howell
Don'T see why it would give up its throne anytime soon. It's coming off the release of Squid Games too, although I am fully Apple TV pilled now after bingeing all of severance over the weekend. So I'm back on the premier TV bandwagon.
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Neal Freyman
The Oscar nominations will be released on Thursday after multiple delays due to the wildfires in Los Angeles. In the category of best picture, the Brutalist is the favorite, but oddsmakers have Conclave and Nora and Amelia Perez not that far behind. Best Actor is going to be intriguing. Adrien Brody will likely get a chance for his second best actor win for the Brutalist, while Timothee Chalamet will try to become the youngest winner of that award for his portrayal of Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown.
- [24:27]
Toby Howell
So I did see Conclave over the weekend and it was incredible. Turns out that Oscar nominated movies are pretty good so I'm tripling down not.
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Neal Freyman
Yet on it has oh that's true, that's true. I manifest.
- [24:39]
Toby Howell
I'm manifesting that it was Great. Also, the Brutalist is a favorite to win a lot of awards, a lot of nominations as well. But it did get some heat over the weekend because it emerged that the film used AI to enhance Adrien Brody's Hungarian accent for some scenes. Apparently, Hungarian is one of the hardest languages to perfect the, you know, nuances of pronunciation. The director came out and said, hey, we were on a tight budget, $10 million here. We were trying to make stretch it. So we use this, you know, Ukrainian re speecher startup that finesses delivery. So I don't have a huge problem with it. Although some film bus said that it should be disqualified from from nominations due to its use of AI in sports.
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Neal Freyman
Can we just fast forward to Sunday already? It's championship weekend in the NFL with two spots in the super bowl on the line. In the early game, the Eagles take on the Washington Commanders, followed by the Buffalo Bills playing the Kansas City Chiefs. And the refs.
- [25:36]
Toby Howell
I can't believe how much I've become anti Chiefs in the last few days. But, Neal, I know you included this segment because you went to an Eagles game. The Eagles win. Actually, it is big news, but sure. Give us a little quick rundown about how you and actually our executive producer Emily went to the game. How was it?
- [25:56]
Neal Freyman
Yeah, Emily and I went to the game separately, but we were there on Sunday in Philadelphia. If you saw it on tv, it was snowing really hard towards the second half. So much fun. It was a great win. Very much a nail biter. A lot, A lot of nerves going on. People would go to the bathroom and different, you know, quarter commercial breaks, and we'd all be like, oh, my God, are we going to win or not? But the Eagles came through much, much thanks to Saquon Barkley, who is just a God among men. So it was just. It was a lot of fun. I'm really glad I had a chance to go.
- [26:29]
Toby Howell
And you never sat down the entire time you stood up?
- [26:32]
Neal Freyman
No, I mean, the seat was, like, completely wet. There was snow piling up. Everyone around for four straight hours, we just stood up and it went by in a blink of an eye. So I really want to go to the next game. That's. That's what this made me think of. But I have to prep for the podcast on Monday, so I can't go to the next game. But yeah. Fly, Eagles, fly. Let's wrap it up there. Thanks for starting your morning with us and have a wonderful Tuesday. For any questions, comments, or feedback, send an email to Morning Brew daily at Morning Broadcom and if you're enjoying the show, spread the word. Share it with a friend, family member or co worker who's always asking for podcast directs. Or instead of scrolling through your contacts, just take Toby's recommendation.
- [27:12]
Toby Howell
I want you to share today's episode with a fellow cinephile. As someone who saw one potentially Oscar nominated film this weekend, I just can't go back to those big commercial box office hits anymore. So share the pod with someone with similarly elevated moviegoing tastes.
- [27:28]
Neal Freyman
Let's roll the credits. Emily Milian is our executive producer. Raymond Lu is our producer. Olivia Graham is our our associate producer. Uchenawa Ogu is our technical director. Garrett Peck is on audio hair and makeup is chugging hot cocoa. Toby, marshmallows are no marshmallows.
- [27:43]
Toby Howell
Marshmallows all the way of course.
- [27:44]
Neal Freyman
Dan Emery is our Chief Content Officer and our show is a production of Morning Brew.
- [27:49]
Toby Howell
Great show today Neal. Let's run it back tomorrow.