Morning Brew Daily - Dell Donates $6 Billion to Kids & Costco Sues Trump Over Tariffs

Episode Date: December 3, 2025

Episode 727: Neal and Toby talk about the funding of ‘Trump accounts’ that will deposit $250 into investment accounts for 25 million children, thanks to Michael and Susan Dell. Then, Costco is standing up to the Trump administration by seeking a refund of tariffs. Meanwhile, companies are looking for various incentives to have their workers cozy up to AI, even if it means it may replace them in the end. Also, since the end of the year is barreling down, many platforms are unveiling their own version of Spotify’s ‘Wrapped’, including YouTube, Apple, and Wikipedia.  Check out https://www.linkedIn.com/mbd for more. Get your MBD live show tickets here! https://www.tinyurl.com/MBD-HOLIDAY  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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Many employees can't afford a hefty medical bill that pops up out of the blue, but it happens. And employees who are financially stressed are, understandably, more likely to be distracted at work, costing their employers greatly in lost productivity. Luckily, AFLAQ plans help with out-of-pocket expenses not covered by health insurance and can be offered at no direct cost to businesses. Learn more at aflac.com slash morningbrewerdaily. That's aflac.com slash morning brewdaily. Good morning, Brew Daily show. I'm Neil Fryman.

And I'm Toby Howell. Today, Michael Dell's record-breaking donation to America's kids. Then Costco is suing the Trump administration because it wants its tariff money back. It's Wednesday, December 3rd. Let's ride. The era of the Slop Bowl may have run its course. A bad year for bowl slinger, Chipotle, Sweet Green, and Kava has gotten even worse this fall, with the three companies cutting financial targets and losing 40.

$38 billion in market value combined, a drop of roughly 50%. Even Slop Bowl pioneers are seeking something more substantial. Steve Ells, the founder of Chipotle, has a new restaurant concept that literally has a sign of a lunch bowl with a slash running through it, indicating that textureless slop is not allowed on the premises. So Toby, if yuppies are shifting away from the sad desk salad, what are they eating for lunch? Are you ready for this, Neil? Sandwiches. according to this Bloomberg article, things with textures and various mouth feel are in like sandwiches and tacos.

And it shows up in the data too. Shake shack serves burgers and chicken sandwiches. Sales growth was up 5% last quarter. Pop belly, delicious sandwich chain grew sales by nearly 7% in September. It got me thinking if I just invested in every place I ate lunch every day, would I be up or down? And Neil, the Toby's lunch index is hurting right now because unfortunately I do love. Slop bowls. Maybe I need to up my sandwich game though, because right now, too much bowl slop. And now a word from our sponsor, LinkedIn ads. Toby, have you ever tried to find the best version

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collectively over $6 billion in one of the biggest single charitable donations in American history. Dell, the billionaire CEO and co-founder of the computer company, announced that he and his wife Susan will pledge $6.25 billion to 25 million American children aged 10 and under, amounting to $250 per child. The unprecedented gift is modeled on and expands upon the so-called Trump accounts that were established by the one big beautiful bill earlier this year. Under that measure, the Treasury will deposit $1,000 into tax-advantaged investment accounts for children born between January 1st, 2025 through the end of 28. The Dells are aiming to reach kids born before that cutoff, handing out $250 to children up to age 10 in zip codes with a median income of $150,000 or less. The donation is not only unusual for its size, over $6 billion in one fell swoop, but for its structure.

The Dells are writing checks directly to people, which contrasts with the typical model of giving money to an institution like a university or a nonprofit. Dell thinks his system is better telling the New York Times, there's been lots of studies that show that even relatively modest sums with accounts like this, children are more likely to graduate from high school and college. They're more likely to buy a home to start a business. He's hoping to inspire others to copy his direct giving strategy. Let's dive into the idea behind a account like a Trump account.

When children in a wealthy household leave the nest, they usually have a little nest egg provided by their parents. But what if all children could get the same financial boost? That is the idea behind funding a Trump account. If you give $1,000 to every newborn so long as your parents open the account, by the time they reach 18, if you max out your contribution limits, they could have the same sort of advantage that, you know, a wealthier family have. So that's the general idea behind the program in general. the Dell component is fascinating as well. One, because you are right, it is just another instance of a private donation, kind of skirting by congressional deadlocks and just directly injecting money into a program that is supported by the current administration. And then it's also very symbolic for Michael Dell himself. He said that he started Dell computers in his dorm room in college with an initial investment of just $1,000. Just for inflation, it's actually closer to $3,500. today, but he kind of made a big spiel about how if every child had that same advantage, what could they create? So that is why there's some symbolism behind this specific donation.

And Trump actually credits Dell with bringing the idea of the Trump accounts to him. Back in 2021, Dell was at this meeting with the hedge fund manager, Brad Gersner, who founded this nonprofit called Invest America, which advocated for these accounts, these investment accounts for America's youth. And then Dell heard that idea and had a pipeline into the president, so brought that idea to him. So Trump says Dell was the reason that I created Trump accounts in the first place. So this didn't really come out of nowhere. Dell had been a supporter of this concept of investment accounts for kids for a long time.

And then he's putting his money where his mouth is with this huge donation. What can you do to actually take the money out of the account? What can you use it for? You have penalty fee withdrawals before your age 60, actually 59 and a half. If you want to use it for higher education, if you want to use it for higher education, if you want to use it for buying a home. But there's not broad discretionary use. So that is why some, you know,

HR professionals are comparing and contrasting a Trump account versus something like a 529 plan. They are saying that this has a little bit of a narrower use case. So there is going to be some shakeout now. Our employer is going to start contributing and matching funds to accounts like this or is it going to not necessarily become a staple of what parents are contributing towards. So it is just an interesting new tax-free vehicle for people to grow their money in. And so how it shakes out in terms of where people are allocating your money, that remains to be

seen. And we'll see how it shakes up the unequal playing field of people investing in the stock market. So 58% of U.S. household held stocks or bonds back in 2022. That's the most recent data we have available. But when you dive a little deeper, the wealthiest 1% own almost half the value of stocks in that year. The bottom 50% own about 1% of stocks. It's unclear whether the Trump accounts or now we can call them the Dell accounts are going to move the needle in that regard. But it seems like most Americans are investing in the stock market, but the top 10% hold the vast majority of all the value of the stocks. The bottom 50% hold a very narrow slice. And we'll see whether Dell and Trump's accounts can close the gap. You can find pretty much anything at Costco these

days including a lawsuit against Trump's tariffs. Costco has filed a lawsuit seeking to recover tariffs. It has already paid on goods it's imported should the Supreme Court ultimately decide the tariffs are illegal. Remember, the case before the court right now revolves around whether President Trump has the power to impose tariffs under a specific emergency powers law. But as the court deliberates before issuing a ruling in the spring, businesses aren't just sitting idly by. If the justices do find Trump lacks the authority to impose the tariffs, the question then turns to refunds, namely who gets them and how much. Customs only finalizes the total amount of tariffs a company owes 314 days after the goods entered the country. But once those

tariffs are finalized in a process referred to as liquidation, it becomes a lot tougher to get your money back. So Costco is getting its rotissary chickens in a row and filing this lawsuit to preserve their place in line for a potential refund. Neil, other retailers have been quietly doing this in the background, including the cosmetics group, Revlon, and a motorcycle maker Kawasaki. But Costco is Costco. It's the biggest company yet to cook up a lawsuit like this, and the first company who sells $1.50 hot dogs to file a lawsuit like this. Let's go back to the oral arguments of this case at the Supreme Court. The justice is broadly, both conservative and liberal, we're very skeptical that Trump has the power to levy these tariffs, which

amount to almost $90 billion. They've collected almost $90,000. billion in tariff revenues through this particular Emergency Powers Act that is in question at the Supreme Court. So they were skeptical of this and it seemed poised to perhaps strike it down. The problem is they even acknowledge that it would be so chaotic to get these refunds back to the companies that paid the tariffs. Justice Amy Coney-Berry even called it, quote, a mess. And so all these companies are looking at the Supreme Court casing. Okay, well, it looks like maybe they'll rule against the tariffs, but I have no idea whether I'm to get these refunds because I'm seeing these justices say they don't want to shake up the

system. The Trump administration has also said that the economy would collapse should they need to refund tens of billions of dollars to these companies. So Costco is, like you said, trying to reserve its place at the front of the line to ensure that it gets these refunds. They didn't say how much they paid in tariffs in any of these court filings, but it should, you know, based on other companies that have expressed how much they have paid in tariffs, it could be hundreds of millions of dollars, even into the billions. And Costco is you not. uniquely exposed to terrorists because this is kind of a move that you wouldn't necessarily expect them to make because it ruffles the feathers in the administration and big box retailers do not want

to do that but one third of its u.s sales come from imported goods nearly half of those imports come from china mexico and Canada and given the fact that Costco's margins are so slim i mean it's a reason we all love Costco it's because they only mark products up usually around 13 percent so they're playing with a lot less margin than maybe an other retailer would so they're saying we have to do something about these tariffs. And if the chance comes to get our money back, we want to jump on that. But it really all comes down to this idea of liquidation. When those tariffs become final, it becomes a lot harder to claw that money back.

And so Costco wants the CPB to halt liquidation of finalizing our tariff bills until this whole thing can shake out, as well as hopefully the Supreme Court ruling the tariffs are illegal. That's what this whole thing hinges on. They do need the court to rule in their favor. Are you hesitant to use AI at work? Maybe a big, fat bonus will help. Companies large and small have rolled out juicy perks, including cash bonuses, merch, and redeemable points to incentivize employees to use artificial intelligence in their workflows. Bloomberg reports.

For instance, the UK-based law firm Shoesmith, side note, if I just said Shoesmith, you could probably figure out what it is, has created a $1.3 million bonus pool contingent on one million uses of Microsoft co-pilot this fiscal year. The company estimates that if each employee fired up co-pilot four times a day on average, then they'd hit the goal, initiating a $1,000 payout to each worker. The fintech giant Brex is also handing out cash in the form of spot bonuses to employees who develop innovative AI projects ranging from $150 to thousands of dollars. Companies across industries have been investing in generative AI these past few years,

betting that increased automation will boost worker productivity and build boost their bottom lines. But an enterprise co-pilot or anthropic subscription doesn't come cheap, and they're feeling some heat to show a return on their AI investments. And while some employees are embracing the technology, many others aren't, whether they fear it could eventually take their jobs or they just don't see the use of it. So they're dangling a bunch of carrots to get these reluctant workers to come around. So you're a company. You just spend a ton of money on, you know, enterprise AI, bringing it into, you're going to revolutionize your company that everyone is supposed to be doing right now. Then all your employees go, I don't really know about this,

whether it's because of what you mentioned, hey, I don't want to get good at this thing that can potentially take my job. Or there's another aspect to this. If you find a great way to use AI, you kind of hoard that technique. If you found something that just magically makes your job better, you don't necessarily want to go to your boss and say, hey, I'm only working a fifth as much as, you know, Jerry over there. It just doesn't necessarily, the incentives don't align there. So companies are saying, how do we dangle these carrots? We don't necessarily want to use a stick. We want to dangle carrots in front of people. How do we accelerate this adoption curve? Hence, all these very creative solutions. The other solution that another Bloomberg article highlighted

was the fact that it's much easier to get people to listen to their coworkers rather than any top-down training. So they're trying to incentivize these employee training programs where if Neil finds a way that he's been using AI to dramatically increase his productivity, have Neil teach the rest of people because people are more open to listening to Neil at ECHO at our company versus, you know, a boss man. So it's just interesting to find that you've invested all this money, but how do you get over that final mile of actually getting people to adopt this technology? Yeah, big companies like Morgan Stanley Service Now HubSpot, Yelp, they are all cultivating AI influencers to tell their peers how they're using AI and also offering incentives

in that regard. So you see companies trying to do. to dangle these carrots instead of sticks because there are sticks out there. Just look at Shopify. Earlier this year, Shopify CEO Toby Lukie wrote this memo that was circulated all around Silicon Valley. And he said, using AI effectively is now a fundamental expectation of everyone at Shopify. I don't think it's feasible to opt out of learning the skill. You're welcome to try. But I cannot see this working out today and definitely not tomorrow. There's all these AI trainings that maybe you at your employer have gone through and it's been torture. Moderna, PWC, S&P Global, Dell,

these are huge companies that have rolled out AI trainings from the top down. You see a different tack from these other companies saying, well, maybe actually, if Neil, I learned from Toby about how he's using AI and it's making his life easier because you are an AI influencer here at Morning Brew, then maybe I will be more amenable to use AI at work.

I just called you the AI influencer. Are we influencing each other right now? Someone has to be influenced me when it comes to AI for sure. It definitely comes down to just behavioral economics in general. This happens in other aspects of an employer's, you know, incentivize program, wellness programs. You pay workers to walk to be a little healthier. There's, you know, credit card reward ecosystems where you pay consumers to keep using it in a certain retailer. So this is not necessarily a new concept whatsoever. How can you just apply it to

this new technology of AI? All right. We're going to take a quick break and start wrapping up the year. As we come zooming up on the end of the year, how the heck is it already December already, everyone in their mother is getting their end of year list together, starting with Wikipedia. Every year the internet's encyclopedia puts out a list of its most viewed articles. In the past, it's been things like the COVID-19 pandemic or chat GPT. But for 2025, the Wikipedia page for Charlie Kirk was the most read article on its site. Over 45 million people read the page after a surge of traffic following his assassination on September 10th. Interestingly enough, 40% of those views came from users outside the U.S., according to the Wikimedia Foundation. Joining Kirk in the top

10 were Donald Trump and Zoran Mamdani, racking up 25 and 20 million views respectively. Pope Leo also features on the list, as does Ed Gein, a serial killer active in the 1950s who drew more views than Trump and Mom Doni. How is that possible? Gein was featured in a Netflix series this year, called monsters. Neil, any surprises on 2025's edition? Not a ton of surprises. I mean, you skipped over number two, which is deaths in 2025. And this deaths in X year is pretty much the most reliable Wikipedia page to exist. It has never, since they started doing these roundup of the top, top viewed articles a couple decades ago, there has never been a time where deaths in X year has been below number three.

Because this is constantly updated. People are dying. over the world. Notable people are dying all over the world every day. So this page is being updated. So you constantly go, I mean, I haven't been to this page, but some people who are very interested in this kind of thing do go to that page every single day. So it racks up a ton of views. Let's talk about the pop culture entrance here. We had severance coming in as the top TV series at number 12 sinners at number eight, which was a movie weapons, another movie, Thunderbolts, Superman, adolescence, which is another Netflix series. And when I'm thinking about the particular types of movies and TV shows that people are going to Wikipedia for.

Wikipedia calls it the second screen effect. So you're watching something and you're like, what the heck is going on? I think I need a plot summary. I think that is certain. And then you open up Wikipedia while you're watching that particular show. And I think that's certainly the case with severance, which you do need perhaps some summaries to tell you what the heck is going on. I think that's why that may, that particular show may punch above its weight because not

that many people have Apple TV or watching severance. It's a relatively small show in the grand scheme of things. of complexity and figure out what's going on, certainly lends itself to a very highly viewed Wikipedia article. We were saying, where the heck is K-pop demon hunters, which was, you know, the most, it was the biggest story, biggest entertainment product of the year, but not that hard to understand necessarily,

so you don't necessarily have to go to Wikipedia like that. So yeah, Severin's absolutely punching above its weight. Just in some other people news, Elon Musk jumped five spots to number six. Mr. Beas entered the list for the first time ever at number 18, hopefully because parents are Googling, what the heck is my kid watching? And then Taylor Swift actually dropped out of the top 20,

which is interesting because she got engaged, she released another album, but maybe it was just a little too late in the year for her to rack up the Wikipedia views. Morning Brew Daily did not make the list again, which come on, people. We're on the cuss. We're on the cuss.

Joining everyone in the raps game was YouTube who introduced a version of Spotify RAPT for the videos you watch and a new experience that lets you dive into your viewing habits over the last year, you'll get to tap through 12 cards that highlighted the top channels you liked, what your interests were, and how your taste in videos has changed over time, according to the Verge. Recap launched yesterday for U.S. users, and you can find it on mobile and desktop by heading to the dedicated button on the YouTube page.

Notably, for any YouTube music users out there, this is different. You'll still get a separate recap experience for your listening habits. And yes, this is definitely a knockoff of Spotify RAPT, but I don't care because I have to see how many golf swing tip videos and Katan highlights I watched over the past year. Okay, so tell us your recap because I went to my recap this morning. It's not there yet, so people are going to their YouTube and they don't see it. I am with you, so I don't know what kind of videos I watched this year. I assume most were recipes, but Toby, what was your top, top viewed videos? Yeah, so I did look through my top viewed videos.

And I wrote this before I actually saw my recap. It quite literally, number one was golf swing videos. Number two was weirdly basketball strategy videos, which I can't even remember. First of all, I've never heard it framed as basketball strategy, but that's how YouTube framed it. And the number three was, in fact, Catan tips and Catan viewing. My top channel was a Catan YouTuber who goes by the name of Dandy Drew. So I kind of had a good sense because unlike music where things are just kind of shuffling in, you're usually being pretty intentional about what you choose to watch on YouTube. So I don't think

this recap is going to be as widely shared as Spotify because Spotify, you just listen to so many songs. You know what you're watching on a YouTube. I can remember most of the videos I watch. So maybe it's not going to be quite as viral, but it was interesting to peek into the mind of myself and realize, yeah, I do know myself pretty dang well. Also, for any Apple music lovers out there, your replay is now available. Apple got ahead of Spotify rap this year to launch its yearly recap. On a macro front, Apple announced the top song of 2025 was Rose and Bruno Mars's A Pete, or APT. Kendrick Lamar and Siza followed in second place with Luther, Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars rounded out the top three with Die with a Smile. If you're looking for the first song with only one artist to make the list, that would be Kendrick Lamar's Not Like Us, followed by Billy Eilish in fifth place with Burge of a Feather.

Neil, any of those make your listening list. Well, if you're looking for any song that was released in 2025, in the top five, you won't find it. All of the top Apple Music songs from 2025 were actually released in 2024, which kind of tells you a lot about the year in music we had. We did have a lot of good music, getting killed geese, shout out. But that is not going to make the top list here. And it was just kind of striking that all of the top music of this year was actually released last year.

The top artist, I don't know if you've ever heard of this guy on Apple Music was, it was Drake, actually. Can you believe that? What an upset. All right. So we're looking, so we got Apple Music, got YouTube, and they're trying to front run Spotify Rapped, which should come out any day, perhaps today, perhaps tomorrow. So keep your eye out for that.

Okay, let's sprint to the finish with some final headlines. Although it's a tech town now, San Francisco isn't giving up on its crunchy granola soul. The city sued 10 food giants, including Coca-Cola, Kraft Heinz, Nestle, Kellogg, and Oreo Maker Mondaliz over their ultra-process products. The first government lawsuit of its kind anywhere around the country. country. San Francisco is accusing these manufacturers of saddling local governments with the

cost of treating people whose health was harmed from consuming ultra-processed food, food that now comprises about 70% of the country's total supply. It's unclear whether SF will prevail, but it has had lots of success taking on companies in the past in the name of public health through lawsuits the city has secured $539 million from tobacco companies, 21 million from lead paint manufacturers, and hundreds of millions more in opioid settlements. This is a rare moment where there's political crossover on this particular issues. There's a broad bipartisan shift towards trying to attack ultra-processed food companies. California passed a bill defining ultra-process foods, which was important, kind of laying the

groundwork for maybe an eventual school ban. States like California, Arizona, West Virginia have banned certain dyes and additives in schools. You know, this state's all the way back to Michael Bloomberg trying to ban oversized sodas in at New York City. So it's kind of been, no matter what your political affiliation is, no matter which side of the aisle you fall on, all of a sudden people are rallying around this idea that these are very harmful substances on par with something like the tobacco industry, we should be cracking down on it,

especially when it comes to, you know, kids and children in schools that are eating this. Finally, the TV show Mad Men just got re-released on HBO Max in a higher 4K resolution, which has led to some interesting mistakes being observed in ultra-high death. First off, multiple episodes were released out of order. If you sat down to watch the sixth episode of the show, you'd be missing a few key plot points since the seventh episode actually airs under the label of the six. In total, The Guardian found three mislabeled episodes in the first season alone, but that has nothing on the production staff views that viewers notice.

And one scene, two crew members are fully visible crouching nearby and operating a fake vomit machine during a part where the character played by John Slattery, throws up after a boozy, oyster-filled lunch. Neil, how does something like this even happen? I don't know. First of all, I didn't know there was such a thing as a barf machine in movies and TV shows.

I thought they just kind of took some gross stuff in their mouth and then spit it out. But you can see this guy with a little machine and a tube standing in the background. It's great. You have to look this up. And, you know, just kind of having barf come out of his mouth from the side where you can't see it in the camera. They got that

all out in post-production. But when Mad Men sent the tapes to HBO, something got, some wires got crossed there. And there was all these sort of production snafus that happened. And it's also adding insult to injury for HBO because Matthew Weiner, the creator of Madman, was developing Mad Men with alongside David Chase of the Sopranos for HBO. And HBO actually passed on the series. It was picked up by AMC and turned into the one most successful popular TV series of all time and one of my favorites.

And now it's coming to HBO, and it's got all these mess-ups again. A lot of people also were quick to point out, this is not the first time HBO has dealt with some post-production errors. The famous one is the fact that a coffee cup made it into the final season of Game of Thrones. So that one goes down in history. Fans were saying that it has something to do with the aspect ratio switching. When it comes to a 4K, you know, retread,

you have certain tweaks in the aspect ratio. And then clearly, when you expanded the frame here, you can see, you know, Jerry and Doug back there doing the barf machine. So probably just something that slipped through the cracks. But it is very funny. Please go to social media and just type in Madman because you'll see these guys doing a great job operating that barf machine. That barf is coming out.

So good on them. HBO, if you need anybody to watch your TV series before they actually hit your streaming service, Toby and I will volunteer. That is all the time we have. Thanks for starting your morning with us and have a wonderful Wednesday. If you want to get in touch with us, send a note to Morning Brew Daily at Morningbrew.com or DM us on Instagram at MB Daily Show. Let's roll the credits. Emily Milliron is our executive producer. Raymond Lue is our producer. Our associate producers are Olivia Graham and Olivia Lake.

Hair and makeup is staying home because of how embarrassing their Spotify raps is going to be. Devin Emery is our president and our show is a production of Morning Brew. Great show today, Neil. Let's run it back tomorrow.