Morning Brew Daily - Judge Blocks $30B Credit Swipe Fee Deal & Rivian's $5B Lifeline From Volkswagen

Episode Date: June 26, 2024

Episode 352: Neal and Toby recap the credit card swipe battle between credit card networks, merchants, and customers. The $30B meant to take a step forward in resolving high swipe fees was blocked by a judge. Then, Volkswagen invests $5 billion into Rivian, giving it new life that may pave the way for the top of the EV market. Next, the tragic lithium battery fire in South Korea highlights another problem with the batteries that are found in almost all of our daily devices. Also, Denmark will charge farmers for every cow, making it the first carbon tax in the world. Meanwhile, money-market funds reach all-time highs…and that might not be a good thing. Lastly, it’s been 50 years since the very first product was scanned by barcode. How did a simple design transform the economy? Download the Yahoo Finance App (on the Play and App store) for real-time alerts on news and insights tailored to your portfolio and stock watchlists. 00:00 - Toys R Us AI commercial 2:50 - Swipe fee battle continues 7:10 - Rivian gets new life 11:45 - Lithium battery hazards 15:15 - World’s first carbon tax 19:00 - Avoid the cash trap 22:15 - 50th anni of the first barcode scan Get your Morning Brew Daily Mug HERE: https://shop.morningbrew.com/products/morning-brew-daily-mug?utm_medium=youtube&utm_source=mbd&utm_campaign=mug Listen to Morning Brew Daily Here: https://link.chtbl.com/MBD Watch Morning Brew Daily Here: https://www.youtube.com/@MorningBrewDailyShow Options are not suitable for all investors and carry significant risk. Option investors can rapidly lose the value of their investment in a short period of time and incur permanent loss by expiration date. Certain complex options strategies carry additional risk.  Investors must review the Options Disclosure Document (ODD): public.com/ODD. See Fee Schedule and Options Rebate & Referral T&Cs: public.com/disclosures. Brokerage services for US-listed securities and options offered through Public Investing, member FINRA & SIPC.  See terms of the Options Rebate Program. Rebate rates vary from $0.06-$0.18 and may depend on time of enrollment and number of referrals. Rates are subject to change at any time. All investing involves the risk of loss, including loss of principal. Brokerage services for US-listed, registered securities, options and bonds in a self-directed account are offered by Public Investing., member FINRA & SIPC. See public.com/#disclosures-main for more information. 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 Howe. Today, Cyber Truck is recalled yet again. Wait till you hear what this one's about. Then Denmark is passing attacks on cows passing gas. It's Wednesday, June 26th. Let's ride.

Well, mark it down in the history books. 2024 is the year we saw our first AI-generated commercial. Yesterday, Toys R Us released a short promo film that was created almost entirely using OpenAIs SORA, a text to video tool. The company says it's the first brand to debut a film using the technology. If you want to watch it, by all means, but if not, the synopsis is that it follows a young Toys R Us founder, Charles Lazarus, who has a vision to transform toy stores with the help of Jeffrey the giraffe, who came to him in a dream. Toby, I know you have a lot of strong feelings about this and you're shaking your head.

It's just so fine. If you get a chance to watch it, which you should, we posted it on our Morning Brew Twitter account. A general feeling that a lot of people said that it got from it was unease because AI still has a little bit of that uncanny valley in it. You get this sense that something is off. You're supposed to be embracing this warm childhood memory, but instead you're looking at the kids' face and you're going, I know something is not quite right here. Probably in a few years, it might be indistinguishable from real ads. But currently, I think if you put it toe to toe with another ad, it just gets, the floor gets wiped with it right now. Now, I'd love to see the costs associated with it, though.

That's what really comes down to. If you were to hire an agency, go on site film versus just do it with AI. That's probably what Toys R Us are looking at. So all of that being said, go watch it. I think it's just pretty meh. Now let's hear a word from our sponsor, Yahoo Finance. You know, every once in a while you see a stat about investing. That kind of blows your mind.

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that in March, after nearly 20 years of litigation, they agreed to a $30 billion settlement, which would cap the fees that banks could charge merchants. It was one of the most significant antitrust settlements ever. But the deal faced a lot of pushback from retailers, who called it a drop in the bucket compared to the harm they've been caused. And now, thanks to the judge, it is no more. And we're back to the drawing board. We're back to the drawing board.

Visa and MasterCard are one of the more famous duopolys we have in the business world right now. both of them combine control 80% of the credit card network. So yeah, in March, they said, finally, we're going to limit some of those interchange fees and that they charge retailers who are accepting their cards. And yeah, they were going to roll back these fees at least four basis points for at least three years, cap the fees by 2023 levels over the next five years. They made concessions, but it just wasn't quite enough to satisfy the retailers, especially retailers kind of fell into two camps here, smaller businesses and then bigger

businesses. Bigger businesses did not like this at all. Walmart was saying those caps on fees, that's fine for us. But what bigger businesses really didn't like and they really wanted to ditch was this honor all card stipulation, which basically means if you accept one type of credit card under the Visa or Master Card umbrella, you have to accept all the cards under that umbrella. That was the big sticking point. That in the settlement didn't address that. This has been such a pain point for retailers for so long. I mean, last year, swipe fees totaled more than $172 billion. You're basically having to pay a 2 to 3% surcharge on all of the revenue you make.

So they are so upset about this. And it's why when you walk into a store, you might see a different price for cash and for credit cards. And especially if you have an American Express, they are known for charging higher interchange fees or transaction fees than any other credit card network, which is why a lot of retailers do not accept, well, I guess a few retailers do not. accept American Express. So they're paying so much money. It's why these settlements are so big because this 30 billion is how much the retailers think they could recoup over five years

from ditching, from capping these swipe fees. Right. So Visa and MasterCard aren't all car rules have just been very controversial for a long time in the payments industry because from their perspective of the merchants, they feel like they allow the banks to collude in setting these terms. So without allowing merchants to pick and choose which credit cards that they do want to accept and the ones that they find more attractive, then it feels like they're getting the raw end of the deal here. That's why, again, this settlement got hung up on the honor all cards rule, even though the reduction of fees are like, sure, this is great, but even $30 billion over the X amount of years wasn't enough to satisfy them. And the undercurrent here is during

the pandemic, a lot of people stopped using cash and switched over to cards, which only cost the retailers more, all these credit card companies. whipped out all these rewards and travel perks. And why would you ever use cash when you can use your card and accrue points? And a lot of the banks use the interchange fees that they get from your swipes to funnel back into reward. So there's just been a surge in credit card use, which has led to more swipe fees, more revenue. J.P. Morgan got $30 billion in revenue from swipe feeds alone with a shovel back into

the reserve card from Chase. So you can go to the lounge. So that's just the larger big picture here, which is people turning away from cash. using credit cards so these swipe fees has only become even more of a paramount issue. And just to zoom out here, remember, this case hasn't gone to trial, even though it's been under litigation since 2005. This was a settlement being negotiated outside of court. So it's either back to the drawing board with a settlement or it will finally go to court. You know in college, when you had a paper due the next day, you were definitely not going to

produce anything of quality in time. But then, miraculously, your teacher sends an email saying the deadline has been extended. That's just what happened to the struggling EV startup Rivian. Yesterday, the night and shining armor Volkswagen said it would invest $5 billion to form a joint venture with Rivian, throwing it a key financial lifeline as it was losing cash hand over fist. The two companies will work together to produce battery-powered vehicles and software and will roll out new cars by the second half of the decade. Of course, Volkswagen isn't spending billions on Rivian because it felt bad. VW's electric vehicle technology has been buggy and its lag behind competitors and producing worthy EVs.

So, it thinks gaining access to Rivian Software Suite will help it catch up in the race. Rivian, meanwhile, was desperate for capital to pad its dwindling bank account. The company lost $5.4 billion last year, including $39,000 on every vehicle it's sold. Ramping up production has been a major issue. So thanks to Volkswagen, it has a much longer runway to play with. Toby, I dare say this deal has a lot of synergy. It definitely does have some synergies. Rivian stockholders were absolutely ecstatic at that this deal happened.

Their shares were up more than 50% in after-hours trading. Now, if you zoom out a little bit, Rivian stock is still down roughly 50% in 2024 so far. But you're right. This cash is just a huge lifeline for them. Their capital is expected to help them with the production ramp up in its current factory in normal Illinois, get those R2 SUVs that they just announced at us. an event earlier this year into production, but also they've had this plant in Georgia that

they've been trying to get done. A lot of these things just take a lot of money. And so Rivian has been actually taking investment from most of corporate America for a while now. Remember, Ford took a big stake in it. They eventually exited that stake. Amazon has been a major shareholder as well. And now they can add Volkswagen to the mix. Yeah, for what this means broadly is that Rivian is not going into the EV graveyard, like so many of its peers. They all, this class, this roughly, rookie class has not performed as well as WMBA rookie class at all. They all went public via SPAC in 2021.

Fisker, Lourdestown, Rivian, Lucid. They all in public. And at one point, Rivian was worth more than GM and four. There was so much hype. And then three years later, the sheen has definitely worn off. All the companies I've mentioned are struggling. Fisker and Lordstown have both gone bankrupt. Rivian was, you know, maybe produced a better vehicle.

It's better reviewed. People seemed to enjoy these vehicles. but still it was losing a ton of money. And so this partnership with VW definitely extends the runway. Some analysts are saying there's a bit of a culture issue here, though, because if you're trying to combine Rivian's flexible software approach with Volkswagen's less flexible approach, more traditional approach, working with multiple suppliers,

Rivians very vertically integrated as well. So even though the cash makes sense on paper, who knows how fruitful the actual deal will be. Okay, while we're on the EV space, Let's talk about Tesla, which issued the fourth recall of its cyber truck in seven months. This one is about its windshield wiper, and they said that an excessive electrical current can cause the front windshield wiper motor controller to fail. So they're asking everyone who owns a cyber truck. That's more than 11,000 of them to bring it into the shop and help them fix this wiper.

And you got to look at this wipe. It is huge. I mean, this is the mythical part of the cyber truck that everyone was talking about when it came out. The windshield wiper is almost four feet long. It's the largest windshield wiper on the market, and it covers this pane of glass on the windshield, which is the largest piece of automotive glass also on the market. So this is a hilariously large windshield wiper that doesn't seem to be functioning as it should. It was such a headache for Elon Musk throughout the cyber truck development.

He kept tweeting about this dang windshield wiper. Part of the issue was it's so big that it causes an. aerodynamic obstacle. So what they needed to do, they actually gave the wiper arm a spoiler in order to make sure that the air pressure moving over the vehicle actually presses the wiper into place because if not, this thing would be flopping all around. But yes, fourth recall, previous recalls were, remember we spoke about it. It was very dangerous. The accelerator pedal was becoming stuck in the down position. This one seems to be a little less dangerous than that. But yeah, four recalls. Cybertrucks off to a bit of a rocky start. Lithium is one of the

lightest and most energy-efficient metals in nature, which makes it perfect for powering the devices that are pushing us towards a greener world, smartphones, EVs, and power grids wouldn't be the same without it. But the same characteristics that make lithium so good for those tax also make it very dangerous when things go wrong, as they did in a factory in South Korea earlier this week. A lithium battery fire caused by around 35,000 battery cells stored on site caused the deaths of at least 23 workers, making it one of the country's worst industrial accidents ever. The problem was the sheer heat of the fire which can burn at roughly 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit, about five times hotter than your typical house fire. And this factory

was so, this factory fire was so intense that the fire department made the call to let it burn itself out rather than risk the lives of firefighters. This latest strategy has called into question the safety tradeoffs that come with moving over so much of our power needs to lithium-based batteries. In the past, we've seen issues with Tesla batteries catching on fire, some smartphone batteries as well. Lithium is only going to be used more and more as it powers a greener world, but this accident shows the danger that comes along with that. Yeah, I mean, maybe the first time we all saw the dangers or the combustibility of lithium ion batteries was in 2016 when Samsung released this Galaxy Note 7 phones and then very shortly later had to take them back

because they started all these fires. And so the lithium ion battery, which really is powering all of our gadgets that are taking us into the future. It contains so much energy in such a light space, and this one makes it so good. But when things go wrong, they go terribly wrong. You said that they just kind of let it burn itself out. That seems to be the best case scenario because water doesn't do anything. It sometimes even leads to more toxic fumes. It is so hot that really fire departments all around the world are just ripping up their

playbooks about what we know about fires because lithium ion batteries, when they burn, they burn so hot and they burn so toxic that it's nothing like we've ever seen before. Yeah, the coolant that you really need to put out a battery fire, a lithium battery fire, is liquid nitrogen, which it's just not very accessible. And pretty much no fire department on Earth is equipped with enough liquid nitrogen to be prepared, especially on a wide-scale fire like the one that we saw at this factory. Firefires are saying it literally burns so hot, it cuts through their protective clothing. So it's just an entirely different beast.

And it is just an unintended consequences of moving so much of our power needs over to lithium batteries because once things go wrong, they go very, very wrong. And really, where we're sitting here, New York, is kind of the epicenter of lithium ion battery fires because many of the delivery workers and people getting around this city use e-bikes, which rely on lithium ion batteries. And those have the potential to burn very quickly in dense populated areas. Last year, there were 268 lithium ion batteries, which led to 18 deaths, and that was up from just 104 fires and 4 deaths in 2021. So just the proliferation of these e-bikes, and especially when you use bootleg batteries and not ones that are manufacturing sealed, those are the ones that could lead to fires. And so we've seen the Mayor Eric Adams release a bunch of different regulations that tried to put some guidelines around fires because it has become one of the, if not the top leading causes. of major fatal fires here in New York City. Up next, what's the deal with this Denmark gas tax?

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In other words, it's taxing cow burps and yes, cow flattulants. The agreed upon tax rate is going to be around $17 per ton of carbon dioxide emissions from livestock. And given the average Danish cow can produce six tons of CO2 a year, that comes out to a route of, $106 in tax per animal. The measure has been controversial to say the least. Farmers say the tax is just going to hurt technological investment in the industry, especially considering Denmark is already one of the world's greenest agricultural producers. But the country's climate minister pointed out that agriculture was Denmark's largest greenhouse gas emitter,

so the industry must be limited to meet the country's aggressive climate goals. Globally, livestock accounts for 11% of all emissions, so the world will be closely watching to see, if this measure actually makes a dent in emissions, even though other countries, I've already tried and failed to institute a tax like this. Yeah, first of all, I did not know that Denmark was a big exporter of pork and dairy, but I got to get myself some of this Danish cheese. Maybe it'll cost more now that there's this tax, though.

No, but you said it was other countries have tried and failed. And Denmark really took inspiration from New Zealand, which in 2022 made a lot of headlines by announcing a tax on cow fart. and I'll say fart. You didn't say it. But so they took inspiration from New Zealand. Just a few weeks ago, New Zealand said it was scrapping this tax after a huge revolt by farmers.

So New Zealand couldn't get it done. But Denmark, after taking inspiration from New Zealand, did get it done to become the first country to tax livestock, which is just, I mean, 11% of global emissions. You don't really think about it. You see climate activists say, we need to stop eating less meat. We need to stop beef production. But then when you look at how much of our emissions, share that it accounts for. It's kind of striking.

It is striking. Why do cows pass so much gas? I had to know for myself because it is just a striking figure. You said, they're called ruminant animals. Sheeps fall in that category as well. And they just produce methane naturally through their digestive system. And methane is one of the more highly effective greenhouse gases. It's just a byproduct of how their bodies digest food. But Denmark is on this very, very aggressive track to limit emissions. They have to reach a legally binding 2030 target of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 70% from 1990 levels. So if they're going through where they're actually producing greenhouse gases and they see agriculture as the largest, of course, they're going to try to do something that limits

the greenhouse gas emissions of that sector. But the farmers are just certainly not happy at all. They're saying we need innovation in this sector. We don't need taxes because if you tax this sector, then no one will want to come into agriculture, then no innovations will happen. So they're saying that this is not the way forward. But some farmers were saying, hey, we do see you are offering us some subsidies initially. So maybe this is feasible. But it is very interesting to see the farmer reaction in Denmark versus the rest of the world. There is innovation happening, though.

Bill Gates is very much intense on this issue. And he's invested in an Australian startup that is feeding cows seaweed to decrease their methane emissions. So you start at what they're eating. and hopefully that can reduce methane emissions by their farts by, you know, 80%. So there is innovation happening. They're trying to feed cows different things. So this in tandem with attacks, I don't know how feasible attacks will be anywhere else around the world that they're hoping to reduce livestock emissions this way, besides just eating less meat. Now for a segment on personal finance because you got money, you want to turn into more money, and there are certain strategies and pitfalls you might want to know about.

today's edition is about the cash trap. Now, the cash trap, which is coined by the vests at J.P. Morgan, is pretty self-explanatory. It's getting trapped by the siren call of cash and missing out on better returns you could get on other assets. And the cash trap is especially alluring these days. Because the Fed has jacked up interest rates, cash-like investments such as money market funds, CDs, and savings accounts are offering upwards of 5% yields and the most they have in decades. Five percent in free money, risk-free, everyone is signing up for that. But think back to

Econ 101. Any investment comes with an opportunity cost. And when you park your money in cash, it means that money could have been more productive elsewhere, like in stocks. And as attractive as cash is, it's being trounced by stocks. Since the end of 2021, Vanguard's Money Market Fund returned 9.1% while the S&P 500 rose 15.1% over the same period. Toby, are you buying the concept of the cash trap? I'm definitely buying the concept because you're sitting here. You think rates have peaked. You're left with a little bit of a choice right now.

Do you just leave the money in that nice 5% or potentially diminishing returns if rates do fall? Or do you redeploy that money into somewhere else? The issue is here, I mean, we spoke about it almost in this Yahoo finance app. If you try to time the market, no one really knows if rates have peaked or not. That's the age-old questions. Wall Street gets it wrong all the time. Remember earlier this year, investors were betting that the Fed would cut rates as many as six times in 2024. We haven't even gotten one yet.

So this is why cash has seemed so attractive. But again, when you try to time it perfectly to get your money out of like a money market fund right as the Fed decides to lower interest rates, that's just kind of a fool's errand. And you might be better off just diversifying putting more of that money in stocks and not missing out on some of the major market gains that have happened. We're just in a very interesting era in cash because since the financial crisis in 2009 through 2022, you're basically earning 0% on your cash. Interest rates were near zero. Banks just kept these funds at a very low yield because they just track what the Fed is doing.

But now the Fed federal markets rate is up to 5.5% the highest in 22 years. And all of these investment funds have raised their yields to a cost. company that. And now we're seeing record inflows into money market accounts. Earlier this month, they topped $6.1 trillion, which was the most ever. And I realized as we're talking about this, people might be in different places in their careers and their portfolio management, their savings. And they're like, sure, cash is, sure, you know, like I know maybe I'm not earning as much as they could in potentially stocks, but I'm near the end of my career. I'm about to retire. Might as well just get 5% now. But it is interesting to hear what J.P. Morgan says

about the cash trap, something just to think about as you deploy your cash around the market. Yeah, just to put a bow tie on it, even when cash performs well, other assets typically perform better throughout history. So even if that 5% feels good, which it does feel good. I mean, we're- It feels great. I'm feeling very happy with what I'm getting, but just remember that there are other options out there. Yesterday was half Christmas. Today is an even more special holiday. It's the 50th anniversary since the first barcode on the back of a pack of gum was scanned at a Marcia's supermarket in Troy, Ohio back in 1974. The humble black and white barcode

has stood the test of time and underpins more of the global economy than you might think. Take a moment and consider the billions of products that move through the global supply chain at any one moment without a way to quickly ID an object, scan its location, place it in time and space, the globalization we enjoyed today simply would not be possible. For years, people have predicted that the humble barcode would eventually be usurped by superior technology. But here we are 50 years later, and the champ is still here. I mean, just think about how you would buy something at the grocery store before barcode. There were stickers on all of the products that employees had to put on every single day or every single time.

A price change, you would go to the cashier. They would look at the item and then key in the price every single time. And this was such a skill that they would have checker competitions. then the winner would get a flight out to Hawaii. So this was just the world we were living in before barcodes. In 1973, these grocery executives got together and said, look, we need a universal language for this. And so they got together.

They chose from seven different possible barcode designs. One of the most popular ones was actually a bullseye, a circle, but that was rejected in favor of an IBM one. That was just this simple rectangle, and that's how we got the barcode. It was very interesting, too. I was digging into the history of the barcode. and it was a little bit weaponized in some context. Actually, in 1992, there was this big, I mean, the election was happening,

and President Bush visited a grocery store and was shown with a barcode and scanner. And that got totally twisted in the media to show that he was out of touch with ordinary Americans because even in 1992, barcodes still were seen as maybe very technologically forward. And that was, it's obviously not the lone reason that he ended up losing to Bill Clinton, but that's just a part of barcode history that it made President Bush's, stream out of touch at the time. Now, can you imagine someone doing a self-stander checkout? It's just such a everyday part, a normal part of everyday life. But it is interesting how if you think back to some of the most humble technologies that we see every day, they used to not be so humble.

And here's the thing. We don't even see it every day. It's just so ubiquitous that it almost is invisible, but really is the underpinning of modern capitalism, modern shopping. It really just defines the way we buy things. The problem is, I don't. know how much longer the barcode has left. They're being somewhat replaced by QR codes, which can contain a lot more information, a lot more detail than the barcode. And then you have companies like Amazon, which probably scan more things than any other company on the planet. They want to get rid of the barcode entirely, and what they say will probably happen because they're using their computer vision or AI just to be able to assess and look at what a product is just

by looking at it without having to scan everything, which is much easier for their robots to handle. So I don't know if we'll be able to say, hey, this is the 100th anniversary of the barcode and anyone will have anybody, have any idea of what we're talking about. People have been saying that for the last 50 years, Neil, and yet here we are still with barcode. So maybe we will be saying it in it, 50 more. Okay, let's wrap it up there. Thanks so much for listening and have a wonderful Wednesday halfway there. You used to call me on my cell phone, but now we'd prefer if you emailed us to get in contact. Don't hesitate to send any questions or comments to Morning Brew Daily at MorningBrew.com.

Let's roll the credits. Emily Milliron is our executive producer. Raymond Lou is our producer. Olivia Graham is our associate producer. Eugenwa Ogu is our technical director. Billy Minino is on audio. Hair and makeup doesn't fall for cash traps. Devin Emery is our chief content officer and our show is a production of Morning Brew. Great show today, Neil. Let's run it back tomorrow. Spring just slid into your DMs.

Grab that boho look for that rooftop dinner. Those sandals that can keep up with you. and hang some string lights to give your patio a glow up. Springs Calling. Ross, work your magic.