Morning Brew Daily - AI Energy Gets $90B Boost & HBO Max Dominates Emmy Noms

Episode Date: July 16, 2025

Episode 627: Neal and Toby dive into June’s inflation report where it underscores some of the risks of tariffs as prices ticked up ever so slightly. Then, Trump joins a big AI energy summit in Pennsylvania where Big Tech pledges big money to make the commonwealth state an AI hub. Also, the Emmy’s nominations are out, which gives a heat check on who is winning the streaming wars in TV land. Meanwhile, the MLB All-Star Game rolls out robo umpires for the first time in a prime time debut.  Meet your local home loan expert at ⁠⁠https://mortgagematchup.com/?utm_source=morning_brew&utm_medium=podcast  Subscribe to Morning Brew Daily for more of the news you need to start your day. Share the show with a friend, and leave us a review on your favorite podcast app. Listen to Morning Brew Daily Here:⁠ ⁠⁠https://www.swap.fm/l/mbd-note⁠⁠⁠  Watch Morning Brew Daily Here:⁠ ⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@MorningBrewDailyShow⁠ 00:00 - Would you go to this type of party? 3:10 - Inflation slightly rises 7:45 - AI hub in Pennsylvania? 11:15 - HBO Max and Apple doms Emmy’s noms 17:30 - Robo umpires make MLB All-Star debut 22:10 - Sprint Finish! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Good morning, Brew, Daily Show. I'm Neil Fryman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, the inflation report showed that tariffs are starting to bite. Then Robo umpires who made some bad calls at Wimbledon are coming to Major League Baseball. It's Wednesday, July 16th. Let's ride. There's a new kind of party theme going viral I know you'll have strong opinions about.

One ex-user said he was attending a, quote, forcing party where friends get together and force each other to do all the small but annoying tasks they've been putting off, like finally making that personal website, applying for a passport, and zeroing out that inbox. Toby, we learned last week that young Americans are hanging out with each other 70% less than they used to. Is the remedy just to rebrand work sessions as parties? Because I think that's what this guy is doing. All right, I thought I would hate this idea, Neil, but I kind of love it. As long as you take the party part seriously, finally write that email you've been putting off. Rage for five minutes. Apply for the job that you've been putting off. Shotgun something. I'm telling you,

I really, really wanted to dislike this idea, but I'm afraid it would totally work on me as well. If any of you listeners try this, please let us know in an email how it goes. I want to see if this is actually a fun time or if it's literally the most boring party you've ever attended. Maybe it's somewhere in between. But first, a word from our sponsor, Mortgage Matchup. Neil, do you know any local experts? Oh yeah, my cheese guy is incredible. What are you in the market for? Because he's got some real funky stuff in the trunk of his car. I was more thinking about a local home loan expert, but please do not buy trunk cheese. Number one, you can't stop me. And number two, for that, there's mortgage matchup powered by United Wholesale Mortgage. They connect you with mortgage brokers

who are local home loan experts who live in work near you. They can help recommend trusted home loan partners, such as an experienced real estate agent. They're licensed. professionals can shop on your behalf and give you access to more home loan options like conventional 1% down purchase, VA loans, jumbo, and more. They've saved borrowers thousands of dollars. So check out mortgage matchup.com to speak to a real home loan expert from the comfort of your own home. That's mortgage matchup.com. Disclaimer, United Wholesale Mortgage LLC, Equal Housing Lender, NMLS, number 3038,

licensed in all 50 states in the District of Columbia. Yesterday's inflation report was like sitting down at a dinner party and being served a well-cooked salmon with a single strand of hair laying on top a little bit disturbing, but not enough to ruin your overall experience. The Consumer Price Index report showed that inflation increased 0.2% in June from the previous month and 2.7% over the past year, which was hotter than in May. However, the data came in mostly as expected and core inflation, which strips out the most volatile categories, undershot projections for the fifth month in a row. So overall, it was not an alarming inflation report. You're probably wondering about that hair. Tariffs.

So far this year, much higher tariffs have not yet resulted in companies jacking up prices for consumers, but that seems to have changed somewhat in the June report. Sectors that are most vulnerable to tariffs, I'm talking apparel, toys, electronics. appliances, furniture, they all got more expensive last month, indicating that elevated tariffs are perhaps beginning to bite or at the very least nibble. Big picture, this inflation report was key, not just because of the micro consequences, how it affects your wallet, but also because of the macro implications. Will it spur the Fed to finally cut interest rates earlier, delay the cut even longer? The answer seems to be neither. With June inflation coming in mostly as expected,

that is to say, still above target, but not extremely so. Jerome Powell can justify keeping rates steady at the Fed's next meeting and maybe begin lowering them in the fall. Stocks ended up mixed on the day. The Dow and S&P fell, but the NASDAQ hit a record high. You know, I'm still kind of shaking from this salmon and hair analogy that you were rocking with. Gross.

I would send the salmon back. I don't care how good the salmon underneath is. But yes, there are a lot of different ways to look at this data. I mean, just look at some of the ways news outlets covered it. One Bloomberg headline read, U.S.S. CPI comes in below forecasts for a fifth month. Woo! A CNBC headline read, inflation picks up again in June, rising at a 2.7% annual rate. Both are technically correct.

Overall, CPI did rise. It is technically going in the wrong direction, but is also accelerating at a forecasted rate. So it's not doing anything out of the ordinary that people didn't see it coming. But you're right, the problem areas, those areas that tear. are becoming visible, are something that people are getting a little uneasy about. You mentioned household furnishings. They were up 1%. That was the biggest rise since January of 2022. Video and audio products are up 1.1. That's the most since February of last year. And then toy prices, another problem child area, up nearly 2% on the month. That is the biggest rise

since April of 2021. So again, it doesn't sound like much, but we are creeping into uncomfortable territory in a lot of categories. And if you want to look at some areas where inflation went down because let's always look at the bright side here. Air fares are 3.5% lower from the year before. Car insurance posted its smallest rise since June 2022 and eggs fell another 7.4% in June from May. Meanwhile, housing prices, which account for the bulk of the CPI report, rose just 0.2% on a monthly basis, which is very tame. So the general analysis of this report was that underlying inflation seems to be holding in check. There are a few problem areas. There are few hairs on the fish that economists are looking at to see how much tariffs

are impacting prices. And the problem is we know that this is not the full impact of tariffs. There are more coming down the pipeline. Companies had a lot of inventory stacked up that weren't tariffed when they came into the United States, which just clouds, continues to cloud. the overall picture from the Fed, for the Fed, we don't know the full impact of tariffs until a few more months over the summer. And then there are more tariffs coming on August 1st, which makes this picture even murkier. And if you looked at the market yesterday, you probably would say that, oh, it digested it pretty well because the NASDAQ 100 closed at a record high. The S&P 500 closed very close to one. So you're probably thinking that it just shrugged off this inflation data.

But it was a little bit clouded by the fact that Invidia, which is, the biggest company in the world, rose 4% because it got permission to sell AI chips in China once more, which kind of buoyed everything up. So the market is becoming a little lopsided, propped up by big tech, not necessarily because they really loved and really digested this inflation report very well, because it's got a hair on the fish, as you like to say. A hallmark of Trump's second term has been his attempt to return manufacturing might to places like Pittsburgh.

But yesterday in the steel town, it was AI that took center-sterns. stage. At an AI and Energy Summit at Carnegie Mellon, a series of investments were laid out by the president geared to turn Pennsylvania into a tech and energy hub. First, there was Google pledging to sink $25 billion into data centers and infrastructure in the surrounding region over the next two years. Then PE firm Blackstone followed that up with a promise of another $25 billion investment. Newly public, Corweaves said it planned to chip in $6 billion. And the event came right on the heels of Amazon's $20 billion commitment to build data centers across the state. and the $14 billion deal between Nippon Steel and U.S. deal aimed at strengthening domestic steel production.

In total, around $70 billion in AI and energy investments were announced. So why are big tech and energy executives flocking to Pittsburgh? Outside a hankering for Wawa's, Pennsylvania has very strong power infrastructure already, plus a high-end university in Carnegie Mellon. If Trump wants to make increasing power generation a cornerstone of his plan to lead the world in AI, Pennsylvania is a good place to start. Neil, the sheer amount of money pouring into the state, more, most important investment since the Saquan extension. I mean, at this rate, there's going to be more data centers in Western Pennsylvania than sheets. And, you know, overall,

I wasn't there, of course, but this feels a little bit like textile mills going up all over New England in the early 1800s, because if you believe the most bullish forecast, the most bullish AI leaders, we are looking at the next industrial revolution. here. That's what Senator David McCormick said yesterday at the announcement. You need to build the infrastructure required for what people are calling the AI revolution instead of textile mills back then. It is now data centers and not only data centers, but power sources in conjunction with those data centers because data centers are huge, huge energy guzzlers going to put unprecedented strain on the power grid. Department of Energy found that data centers consumed about 4.4%

of total U.S. electricity in 2003. By 2028, that could surge to 12% of total U.S. electricity. So a lot of these announcements were for data centers and then for natural gas plants or nuclear power plants

in conjunction with them because these data centers are so power hungry. You simply can't build them without finding another power source to feed it. Yeah, if you look at what the administration is doing right now,

obviously they want to keep the U.S. ahead of China when it comes to the AI race. How do you do that? You need the power. And the way that they're going about it is, you know, turning to traditional oil and gas power sources rather than going the renewables route. But so you can see how this is just a core tenant of let's raise electricity, let's raise energy production in the United States in order not to lose the AI race. And that's why you saw Pennsylvania as kind of the center point of that plan. It did have kind of, it reminded me of earlier this year when this $100 billion investment in AI,

Data Centers was announced by SoftBank, Open AI, and Oracle. This was $70 billion. It remains to be seen how much that money actually ends up going to the places that are announced because that is something that has been kind of a hallmark of the administration in the past. You put these big numbers out there. Does the investment actually come? We'll have to wait and see.

But just the sheer and staggering amount, we were sending links in our Slack yesterday going everyone is announcing something right now because there's clearly a concerted effort around this right now. The Emmy nominations were released yesterday, honoring the best of television. And if you're wondering where we're at as a society, a show about getting surgery so you don't have to remember going to work scored the most nominations. Apple TV Plus's Severance, which aired its second season in the spring, picked up 27 Emmy Noms the most of any show this year. It's an early favorite in the best drama field that's loaded with heavyweight competitors, including HBO Max's The Pit and White Lotus and Door on Disney Plus, the diplomat, The Last of Us, Slow Horses, and Pear. Paradise. Other notable nominations are the Pitts Noah Weil, the former ER star who will be up for an Emmy for the first time in 26 years in the best actor in a drama category. Kathy Bates at age 77 became the oldest actress to get a nomination for Best Actress for a drama for her role in CBS's Matlock. And Netflix's acclaimed adolescence seemed destined to clean up Best Limited series one year after Baby Rainier, also from Netflix, won the category and a whole lot more. Zuming out, the Emmy nominations offers a heat.

check on the streaming wars, or which streaming service is getting the most bang for the billions of bucks they're spending on content. That severance was the top dog is a hopeful sign that Apple is finally making up some ground against the much bigger Disney, HBO Max, and Netflix, not to mention it's Seth Rogen Comedy, the studio, also scored 23 nominations. Still, HBO Max, or whatever its name is these days, ultimately came out on top, bringing home the most nominations of any streaming service or network with a record 142. thanks to White Lotus, The Last of Us, and Hacks and The Penguin, which had the second most nombs overall. You've got a couple months to discuss the snubs because the award ceremony is taking place in September with Nate Bargatsy as host.

There's a lot of TV watching to do before then, Toby. I haven't seen any of these shows. No, I'm kidding. I've seen a couple. I do want to talk a little bit about the studio which set a record, receiving 23 nominations. That's the most ever for a comedy series in its first season, passing Ted Lasso. Also, one of the funny aspects of this is that the studio is about, you know, a fictional movie studio. But four of the six nominees for guest actor in a comedy series played themselves in the studio.

So Dave Franco got a nomination for playing Dave Franco. Ron Howard got one for playing Ron Howard. Anthony Mackey got one for playing Anthony Mackey. And Martin Scorsese got one for playing himself as well. So just a weird quirk as well. Go down the supporting actress in a drama series category two. And it's just White Lotus from top to bottom. Carrie Coon, White Lotus, Parker Posey White Lotus,

Natasha Rothwell, White Lotus, Amy Lee Wood, the White Lotus. So it really did seem like a couple shows just absolutely cleaned up certain categories with, you know, the White Lotus being one of them. Huge ensemble cast. And it's still a crime that you haven't seen that. Let's talk about Apple because Severin's got the most nominations of any show. The studio got 23. It's flexing a little bit right now.

It just is coming off its first Blockbuster with F. which has made Blockbuster movie, which has made nearly $400 million at the box office. It's going after F1, the actual racing sport with a $150 million a year rights package. So it feels a little like it has the momentum behind its back right now. It only still has 45 million subscribers to Apple TV Plus, which is very small compared to Netflix's over 300 million. HBO Max is around $120. million, Disney plus 125 million. So there's been so many swirling questions around why Apple is making this huge splash into the TV and movie industry. It's losing a billion dollars a year on this thing.

For the first time, we're starting to see it have a little success that it can show in terms of commercial success with F1 and also critical success with severance, the studio, and other shows. I have a really useless Apple TV fact that I want to share with you that I saw on X. Apple has made or is about to make 16 original shows that are one-word titles that start with the letter S. I will go down a few of them, but it's C, servant, swagger, suspicion, severance, surface, shantrum, silo, sugar, smoke, shimageddon, shrinking, sunny, stick, sheepdog, and stowaways. What is going on over there? Make a show with multiple words, Apple.

Not every show has to be a single word, and not every show has to start with the letter S. And what is its AI assistant? Yeah, exactly. That's definitely Apple intelligence right there, Siri. Up next, we're going to talk about robot umpires. Last night was Major League Baseball's All-Star game, but the biggest change-up didn't come from Paul Skeings's right hands. It came via the introduction of the automated ball strike system for the first time in a major league setting. After being tested in the minors since 2019 and in spring training games, the robots calling balls and strikes got their prime time debut last night. each team received two challenges that they would retain it successful, and it didn't take long for the system to be put to the test.

During the bottom of the first inning, American League starter, Tarek Scooball, threw a pitch that was ruled a ball by the home plate umpire. Scooball disagreed, tapped his head twice to signal a challenge, and was right. The system handled the situation with good accuracy, and the batter was sent packing. It was a small moment, one that required a long and controversial path to get to, with the chief roadblock being a powerful MLB,

umpires union who understandably want to preserve their presence in the game. Despite their qualms and technology the ABS system runs on, aims to be more precise than its human overseers. Right now, the correct call percentage through the start of this season is sitting at 88.2%, which is actually the most accurate rate in the last 10 years, but Sony's hawk-eye computer vision system, which generates the pitch's trajectory based on footage from cameras mounted around the stadium, and then feeds it to home plate umpires who make the final call, wants to raise that correct percentage.

Its presence at the All-Star game sets the stage for a wider rolled-out come next year. Neil automated ball strike calling has been a long time coming in baseball, but as some controversies at Wimbledon this year showed, sometimes the robots still have their own kinks that need to be worked out. Yeah, Wimbledon debuted its electronic line calling system this year, which put its line judges who had been there for over a century out to pastor. had a few malfunctions, some high-profile malfunctions in some key matches. Overall, it was a success, and it's going to stay because the Australian Open has it,

the U.S. Open has it, and the only holdout remaining in tennis is the French Open. Meanwhile, baseball is moving to this challenge system and automated balls and strikes. It's part of a broader push by the commissioner Rob Manfred to innovate this game and push it forward that is so tied up in history. and tradition. And that's why so many people love baseball. But in the past decade, there had been a slump in viewership and attendance and scoring in baseball. He's really taken a lot of initiative to bring more tech into the game to improve the product on the field and on our TVs. He instituted a pitch clock. We got bigger bases, eliminated the shift. And now there are going to be automated

balls and strikes come 2026 as we saw get their debut last night. A big question here, though, is how do you set this automated strike zone? Because, you know, Aaron Judge is a lot bigger than, say, Jose Altuve, there's almost like a foot of difference in height between those two. And the way that this system goes about it is that the automated strike zone is set at 53.5% of the batter's height. And at the bottom of the zone, it's 27% of their height. So it's based off percentages, not necessarily a fixed zone, which does make a lot of sense. That was something pitchers were very concerned with. And it also bases the calls on when the ball crosses the middle. point of the plate, which is actually different from the way the strike zone is currently built.

By the rulebook, it is a 3D cube that the ball passes through. This just looks at a fixed point. So that's a little bit of a twist there as well. How good are teams at challenging calls? We've seen it tested in the minor leagues. We've seen it tested in spring season. And they're not very good. Teams won 52.2% of their challenges during the spring training test.

Batters won exactly 50% of their challenge. challenges. Catchers were successful 56% in time. Pitchers were by far the worst at 41%. So a lot of pitchers were saying, I think everything is a strike. So I'm just going to recuse myself, let my catcher do it, let someone else do it, because clearly I'm emotionally invested at this being a strike or a ball. So it will be fascinating to see if this is rolled out wider, if those percentages go up or down based off the wider adoption.

And I'm just excited for the second half of baseball season because it seems like so many more people are talking about it and watching it. Fox has, uh, its viewership is up 10% compared to last year. ESPN is up 22% uh, from last year. It's having its best baseball, biggest baseball audience since 2017. And a lot more of you are going to stadiums at the ballpark fourth of July attendance on that day was the highest since 2015. So it seems like these innovations are paying off. Let's sprint to the finish with some final headlines. Remember MP Materials, the American rare earth miner that got a huge investment from the Pentagon last week? Well, it's on a Tiger Woods, circa 2000-level hot streak, inking a major new deal

with Apple. Yesterday, Apple announced a $500 million agreement with MP materials to buy rare earth magnets from its facility in Texas and start a recycling line in California. Apple, like all other tech companies, uses rare earth magnets in its hardware, and MP Materials operates the only rare earth mine in the U.S. The two are teams. seeming up to establish a more made in the USA supply chain as momentum grows to reduce dependency on China, which dominates the production of these critical raw materials. Thanks to the Apple deal, MP stock continued its meteoric rise, jumping another 20% after a 50% gain last week.

Yeah, I mean, this market, this company's market cap is now over $10 billion. It's nearly doubled over the last month. It has just been a string of good news after good news for MP materials. and zooming out, you probably could have seen this coming because, you know, these rare earth mines and minerals have been such a focal point of this trade war. Of course, the only operational U.S. mine in the United States was going to get some love from, you know, the Department of Defense, but also, as we're seeing with Apple tech companies as well, everyone needs these rare earth elements. So MP Materials is, you know, the bell of the ball right now.

A lot of major banks reported earnings yesterday, and the second Trump era is looking mighty profitable for Wall Street. J.P. Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo, and City all reported strong numbers with JP Morgan beating expectation thanks in part to rising dealmaking activity from corporate America, thanks to tariff delays, extension of corporate tax breaks, and what CEO Jamie Diamond called a resilient economy. Wells Fargo posted a 12% profit jump after being free from the onerous asset cap constraint it's been subjected to for the last seven years. But part of the reason why everyone locks in on big bank earnings is one, they kick off earnings season, but too, they gave a window into consumer spending. And the consumer looks to be doing all right.

At JP Morgan, card spending rose 7%, while City said spending on its branded cars rose 4%. Still, City, which also beat expectations, did say that consumers were in a worse macroeconomic environment compared to last year. But Neil J.P. Morgan's CFO, Jeremy Barnum, told analysts, it's hard to imagine a set of conditions that would be any better for us. So it would appear that big banks are doing just fine. fine and look at their trading divisions. J.P. Morgan stock traders had their best second quarter ever. Cities had trading division had its best second quarter in five years. All of this volatility that's happened as a result of Liberation Day tariffs, rollbacks and putting tariffs back on

has just been an absolute boon to anyone trading on the stock market. And that's exactly what banks are doing. They are really enjoying life right now. Finally, we are saying goodbye to a racing legend who inspired so many around the globe, Fowja Singh, believed to be the oldest marathoner in the world, died at age 114 after being hit by a car near his native village in India. Nicknamed the Turban Torpedo, Singh didn't even start running until he was 89 as a way to overcome depression following the deaths of his wife and son. But once he started, he didn't stop. In 2000, Singh completed his first London marathon, the first of nine full marathons he ran. 11 years later in 2011, at age 100, he became the oldest man, reportedly, to run a full marathon in Toronto.

And he got even faster as he got older. His best time over the nine marathons was five hours and 40 minutes in 2003, over an hour improvement from his previous marathon. As he became more famous, Singh used his platform to help others. He founded a running club and charity with the incredible name, Seeks in the city. This dude is incredible from top to bottom. I do feel bad though because Guinness World Records wanted to certify and recognize him as the oldest marathon runner, but he did not have a birth certificate dating back to 1911, which is just wild to think about.

This guy lived through multiple world wars and through it all became a 2012 London Olympics torch bearer. He lived just an incredible life. In his youth, he said, I didn't even know the word marathon existed, but it just shows you you can reinvent yourself at a very late age. You probably have seen his face before because in 2004, Adidas kind of made him a focal point of their 2004, of their impossible-is-nothing advertising campaign. So he has attracted a lot of marketing dollars over the year

because, I mean, his story is incredible. So the Turbent Torpedo, absolute legend. That is all the time we have. Thanks so much for starting your morning with us and have a wonderful Wednesday. You'll never believe this. It's going to be hot and humid again. If you have any thoughts on today's episode, send an email with questions, comments, or feedback to Morning Brew Daily at Morningbrew.com.

Let's roll the credits. Emily Milliron is our executive producer. Raymond Liu is our producer. Our associate producers are Olivia Graham and Olivia Lake. Hair and makeup enjoyed meeting everyone at our trivia event last night. Thanks so much for coming. Devin Emery is our president and our show is a production of Morning Brew. Great show today, Neil. Let's run it back tomorrow.