Morning Brew Daily - Trump Raises Tariffs On Canada Over Ad Spat & Nike Wants Motorized Walking

Episode Date: October 27, 2025

Episode 700: Neal and Toby talk about Trump’s tariff retaliation on Canada after it aired a misleading ad on TV. Then, Argentina’s Javier Milei’s free-market revolution hangs in the balance of the country’s elections. Also, a restaurant’s take on New York-style bagels may have upset bagel purists but it’s catching the attention of investors as it hopes to expand nationwide. Meanwhile, Nike unveils a new project to bring a new meaning of ‘power walk’ to the average commuter. Finally, what you need to know in the week ahead.  Learn more at disneycampaignmanager.com  Can you climb the MBD Ladder? https://forms.gle/VQEAuctf696J9uzn9 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

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Good morning brew. Daily Show. I'm Neil Fryman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, why the U.S. bailout of Argentina looks a lot better this morning. Ben, Nike wants to make an e-bike for your feet. It's Monday, October 27. Let's ride. Happy Monday and welcome back to the week. Now, don't tell your boss, but Toby and I want to help you procrastinate from work. So we're going to give you a puzzle to play over the next few days that could get you a prize when you submit the correct answer. Many of you remember password from over the summer. This one's a little different.

It's called The Ladder. The Ladder, which was created by our puzzle mastermind. Jack Murtaugh works like this. We're going to give you five things in a specific order based on one metric. You have to figure out the metric we use to order them. For instance, if I gave you a list of Eiffel Tower, Shaq, Danny DeVito, the metric would be height. All right, here's the list.

And remember, the order matters. Number one, salt. Two, sunscreen, three, cereal, four, the Moderna COVID vaccine, and five avocados. One more time, salt, sunscreen, cereal, the moderna COVID vaccine, and avocados. Why are these ranked the way they are? If you figure it out or think you have a guess, head to the Google Forms link in the show notes and enter your answer. You have until Wednesday at midnight to submit, then we will randomly select someone

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Trump slapped an additional 10% duty on imports from Canada on Saturday in retaliation for what he considered a misleading TV ad, featuring former President Ronald Reagan criticizing tariffs. The ad campaign produced by the Canadian province of Ontario features audio from a 1987 radio address by Reagan, where he says tariffs may seem patriotic, but warned over the long run, trade barriers hurt every American worker and consumer, fueling fierce trade wars and ultimately costing jobs. With the Supreme Court about to hear a challenge to his tariff agenda, Trump considered the ad to be a hostile act, and first suspended trade talks with Canada, then announced the additional

10% tariffs on all Canadian goods. Neil, a lot of subplots here, starting with the economic side of things. The U.S. is Canada's largest trading partner in Canada is the second largest for the U.S. with bilateral trade reaching $762 billion last year. probably less important, but still relevant. The LA Dodgers are playing the Toronto Blue Jays who are located in Ontario in the World Series and the ad ran during

their games on Friday and Saturday. So you can toss in some tension on the diamond as well. No, that's actually a key point because the ad was intended to run during the World Series because Ontario was actually paid $53 million for a huge TV ad buy to get this message

in front of Americans to, in order to put pressure on Trump to rescind tariffs that are pretty high on Canada right now. Let's go over the ad specific. So it is from a 1987 radio address delivered by Reagan in which he's actually talking about why he put tariffs on semiconductors from Japan. He said this was just essentially a necessary evil and overall that he was against tariffs. Then on Thursday, the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation said on social media that the ad misrepresented Reagan's address. And then Trump hopped on that and said, this misrepresents Reagan, I'm going to put an extra 10% tariffs on Canada.

Now, when asked about why this ad was misleading, the Reagan Foundation didn't explain what was inaccurate or misleading about the ad, but the train had already left the station at that point. And if I am Prime Minister Mark Carney right now, I'm a little bit annoyed at Ontario Premier Doug Ford. Remember, Doug Ford has kind of beefed with Trump throughout his tenure. and Mark Carney has tried to distance himself from Doug Ford saying that, hey, we are the only ones actually responsible for negotiating trade with the U.S. Don't actually look into the actions of one premier who has a little bit of beef with Trump going forward. And you're right.

Ford had this very grand plan for it. He wanted to put a lot of money behind it and spark a conversation, which clearly it did. But it seemed like throughout the week it kind of started to escalate. In the beginning of the week, Trump kind of laughed the ad off saying, like, I would run that if I was Canada too. But then as the week progressed and as maybe the World Series started to gear up, that's when things started to reach a boiling point. So this is, if I am Mark Carney and saying, I'm trying to negotiate this deal with Trump right now. This is probably not what we necessarily wanted because it just complicates things further. Now, looking ahead, November 5th is the huge day on the calendar because that's when the Supreme Court is going to hear a case challenging.

Trump, many of Trump's quote unquote reciprocal tariffs. And if I'm trying, if I'm the team trying to challenge Trump's tariffs, then I'm going to use this probably as an example to try to justify why I am right. Because under a 1977 law that Trump has invoked to apply all of these tariffs, he is saying that there is an unusual and extraordinary threat to the United States. And that's why he's justifying these tariffs. Now, if I'm trying to win this case, I'm saying, well, does it an ad, you know, critique, bringing up Ronald Reagan's hatred of tariff amount to an emergency and an unusual and extraordinary threat against the United States. That is sort of the battle lines that are being drawn ahead of this huge date on November 5th. Because if these tariffs are revoked,

there's going to be a huge amount of reimbursements coming to the American companies that have had to pay tariffs. And it's going to royal markets should these tariffs be struck down by the court. And remember, too, that when we're talking about trade agreements with Canada, a lot of the bilateral trade that happens is covered under the USMCA, which is actually a trade agreement that Trump put in place during his last term. So that covers about $650 billion of the $762 billion in goods that are exchanged between U.S. and Canada. So every time you see like, oh, Trump is slapping an additional 10% of tariffs on all Canadian goods, it is goods that fall outside of that agreement. So it's just the 20% of non-USMCA goods. So it's not necessarily as economically

damaging as it may initially sound when you talk about two of the biggest trading partners in the Western Hemisphere. Yeah, there are 50% tariffs on steel and aluminum from Canada to the United States, which is the center of the trade talks that are ongoing. Okay, moving on. Unlike Toby throughout most of college, Javier Miele passed a crucial test. The Argentinian president's party secured a decisive 41% of votes in a legislative election that was seen as a key referendum on his free market transformation of the country's economy. That means Miele's party, called Freedom Advances, could double its representation in Congress and give him a mandate to continue pursuing his aggressive austerity measures.

You're right, Morning Brudelie doesn't typically cover Argentina's midterm elections, but this vote was headline news across the globe, given its role as a critical litmus test of Miele's makeover experiment, which had taken some serious stumbles lately. Even President Trump last month called it, quote, a very big election being watched by the world. It was certainly being watched closely in the United States. The White House recently unveiled a $40 billion bailout of Argentina to prop up the following peso. A controversial move criticizes Trump helping out his friend and ideological ally, Miele, using American taxpayer money. And this $40 billion was directly tied to the outcome of the election, according to

Trump. The president said that if Miele didn't perform well in the vote, quote, we're gone. Well, the bailout looks much better now. Argentinian stocks and bonds are are expected to rally when the market opens this morning. As Trump said, this election made a lot of money for the United States. First of all, I was an English major, so I didn't take all that many tests in college. So there weren't even tests to fail. But you are right. Wall Street was looking at this with a baited breath right now. And there was kind of a couple of scenarios that it was prepared for that if Miele's party secured less than 33% of the vote, that's seen as a full-on rejection of the Miele product. That risks, the peso devaluing.

sell-off of Argentina bonds would occur. 35 to 39% was sort of seen as the base case. A lot of people were saying this is where we probably think it's going to come in. And that just he keeps veto power, but it doesn't necessarily say that, hey, this big reform momentum is underway. But over 40% share, which is what we got actually with 99% of votes counted, he is at 41% of the national vote right now. That is a all, all lights are green right now.

it does look like he will be able to carry out these reforms and is making this bet that, you know, Trump made on Argentina look a little bit more enticing for investors right now. So it was, we're talking small percentages here, but this was probably the best case scenario if you are bullish on the Argentina trade. So how is Miele's project going? So he came into the presidency in 2023 wielding a chainsaw and he said, I'm going to give Argentina shock therapy with very drastic free market reforms because this is a country that has had soaring inflation and huge amount of debt and it just hasn't been able to get going in the past few decades. So he's done some drastic things. He repealed 10,000 regulations and essentially cut a lot of public sector jobs. And that

really has stabilized their finances and inflation. The inflation rate a few years ago when he came into office was 200%. Now it is just 32%. He also generated the first fiscal surplus for Argentina in 16 years. But with all those drastic cuts have created a semi-job crisis, about one in three people still live in poverty. And the average real income for Argentinians is still down 6% below pre-Mile level. So there's still a lot of economic hardship despite all of the cuts. Milay says, I need to move to phase two to get our economy back on track. I've cut a lot of red tape so far. You just need to give me the mandate to do that, and they got that yesterday. Yeah, a lot of growing anger that the inflation progress hasn't actually led to the improving

of daily lives of Argentinian citizens. So that is one thing that was kind of up on the voting block over the past few days. But yeah, this win just buys Miele time with some investors. He's got the IMF breathing down his neck. He had, you know, Trump breathing down his deck, basically saying like, hey, if you do not win, our support is gone. So this is something that you will see. Just look at Argentina bonds. They're probably doing quite well in these early morning trading hours. Let's move to our winners of the weekend segment where Neil and I pick two things that had

a better weekend than tight ends on National Tight End Day yesterday. I won the pre-show game of Mahjong, so I'm up first. My winner of the weekend is Nike for showing some shades of the old Nike again. The shoe company has been short on innovation recently and got caught. doubling, then tripling down on older lifestyle models like Jordans and Dunks. But now under new CEO, Elliot Hill, it's putting more money into innovation, unveiling a variety of high-tech releases over the past few days that will put a spring in your step, literally.

The busiest new prototype it rolled out is a sneaker with a detachable mechanized arm that wraps around your mid-calf and ever so slightly propels you forward with each step that hits shelves in 2028. It's designed for 10 to 12 minute milers, anyone who wants to run or walk a little easier, or people who just really like a back-to-the-future aesthetic. The other eye-catching release that should intrigue any sore-footed athletes out there

is a new neuroscience back shoe, which includes a slipper that has 22 foam nubs on the soul that Nike claims will stimulate the feet and the brain. Neil, some pretty fun innovations for your dogs coming out of Nike these days. Well, I guess this would be cool for everyone who still doesn't have their helies. Of course, I'm still zipping around past everyone. No, Nike is going full Willy Wonka, going back to its roots as an innovation center. And it needs to do that because its business is really not in a good place. The company lost $5 billion in revenue, replaced its CEO last year.

Revenue has declined for six straight quarters. Shares are still down 9% this year. It needs to go back into the lab to release some new buzzy stuff that gets people excited and move from that lifestyle angle that they've really hammered for the past few years into a more innovation angle that's focused more on athletes and where they really cut their teeth in the 80s and 90s. Yeah, they have a new chief innovation design and product officer who is really emphasizing two things. One is speed. He wants things to get to market quicker. And the other thing is innovation. His new internal mono for the company is create epic, beep, create epic stuff right there. He wants Nike to become the leader in the clubhouse once more when it comes to

to innovation. And one of the things that they're doing is adopting something from Silicon Valley, which is you should spend 20% 150 year time working on moonshot ideas. And clearly, these two ideas that I put forth were our moonshot ideas. Like, who knows if we're going to be walking around with electric bikes or, you know, these things that propel you forward on your feet. It is an interesting concept because, you know, we've come through the carbon plate area, which technically is propelling you forward. Now, are we going to get electronics involved? I I could see, you know, maybe the world athletics rolling their eyes going, come on Nike, you keep putting us in these awkward scenarios.

What do you mean you're going to start giving people boosts as they run? But you can see that Nike is just kind of planning its bag in innovation once more as it's been sort of lapped by competitors like on and Hoka in recent years when it comes to innovation. So do you think people will go for this? I don't know. I mean, if you are having trouble, you know, running or walking a certain pace, I do think it's for maybe some of those, they're just called back of the pack runners who, who just want to get out there and start moving,

I could see it being adopted by that crowd, which is, you know, a large majority of athletes. So it's intriguing. It's a little maybe too futuristic for early adoption or for like widespread adoption, but I could see it maybe finding a niche audience in those back of the pack runners. All right, we're going to take a quick break

and come back with Neal's winner of the weekend. Hey, honey, it's mom. Did you know if we switched to Verizon we can get four phones for $0,000, plus four lines for $25 a line? Call me back. Me again. That's just $100 a month for four lines on unlimited welcome. Plus four phones, no trade in needed.

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few bagel shops have gone before nationwide. Pop-up bagel has 16 stores now, seven of them in New York, but as Bloomberg reported, the company has embarked on an ambitious plan to open 300 locations across the country, which would give it more stores than Sweet Green. It might have the money to pull it off. Pop-up bagel is profitable, valued at $60 million, and majority owned by a private equity firm that's also invested in bougie food names like Erroon and Levine Bakery. It also has a bunch of celebrity backers, including JJ Watt, Michael Phelps, and Paul Rudd. If you're unfamiliar with pop-up bagels, congrats on not being addicted to social media. These bagels have become a viral sensation for their grip, rip, and dip approach. You can't get a bagel sandwich there. These bagels come in

orders of 3, 6, and 12, and you're supposed to dunk them into a tub of cream cheese, chips and salsa style. But don't call it a flash in the pan. Pop-up bagels likes to say it's, quote, not famous, but known. It's unclear whether being known is a enough to conquer the United States. Unlike other food categories, bagel stores face major hurdles in expanding. Maybe the only one that's earned chain status is Einstein Bros, with more than 700 locations, while the rest are mostly hyper-local mom and pop shops. Toby, does Papa Bagels have staying power? I don't know. I do think they are quite delicious, mainly just because I usually get them when they're warm, and that's the basic elements of a great bagels if it comes out warm. But yeah,

This started out of a Connecticut backyard during the pandemic. It was self-taught trial-on-aero bagel maker, Adam Goldberg, kind of harness a lot of grassroots energy and just literally started selling these from his house. And then eventually they had a store in this back alley next to a bike shop. And it did just become a viral sensation one because it is different. I mean, the bagels come unslice. They don't really have a traditional hole in the middle that you see. You tear them and then dip them in the smear.

So it just already had a built-in layer of novelty to it, and then it just quickly started to spread from there. The fact that it can break from normal bagel orthodoxy in New York and still attract an audience is one of the reasons why you start to see private equity circling a little bit, start to see maybe this does have staying power outside of the northeast area. So I do think, too, that it is easily franchisable. These stores are small. Their average store sizes, 700 to 1,200 square feet, not. big at all. Their opening cost is 300k to 900k, which is a lot cheaper than Einstein bagels, which can cost you a million bucks. So I do think maybe that can also play a role in making this a franchisable opportunity, the fact that it's just such a small footprint.

It's just fascinating to think about why I know very few bagel stores have gone national. And you mentioned Einstein Bros. I don't think anyone would say that's a particularly good bagel. It's just so hard to maintain consistency for your bagel into more than a dozen shops, the logistics are very hard. It's very labor intensive, but it's also at the same time, low margin business. A lot of people don't really get bagels after one or two p.m. So the sales window is extremely tight. There's a lot of challenges facing pop-up bagels as it wants to expand. But every time it does expand, there's a new store opening. It's kind of like there's new Buckees or a new in-and-out that opens somewhere off the beaten path because there's huge events.

They just opened one in Harvard Square in Cambridge, and they threw a huge block party. They're coming to Atlanta. So they're clearly running a pretty successful playbook when they do open a new store. The trouble and challenge is going to be maintaining consistency when they open a new store. And I think the big question here is, is this a viral social media trend? Or is this a brand with staying power? Because, I mean, go back through the annals of food trends. There are things that peak really high.

I mean, the cronut, for instance, this was going to take over the. entire world, but then it just kind of slowly fades away from relevance. Is this a gimmick, the fact that you tear it and the fact that it's not a normal bagel? Or is this a new paradigm in, you know, bagel making that people actually are going to stick with? I think that is the big question as they try it to scale. So I've had one experience with pop-up bagels last year. I went because I just wanted to try it, right? Like it was people were talking about it. So I went and I was like, can I get a bagel? And they said, no, you need to get three bagels. And that kind of rubbed me the wrong way. So I have a little.

little personal beef with pop-up bagels. Yeah, I guess you just got to bring your friends. But I was just, you know, a normal person wanting to get a bagel and I had to, you know, pay for three bagels. Plus this huge tub of cream cheese. They say it's to create a social experience. So I wish them the best. I'm just sharing, you know, the one personal experience that I had where I had to get three bagels when I just wanted one. Okay, it's Monday. So here's what you need to know to stay ahead in the week ahead. President Trump is in Asia for his first trip to the region in his second term, hitting Malaysia, Japan, and South Korea. before capping things off with a face-to-face meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Hopes for a trade truce with China rose yesterday after officials from both countries said they agreed to an initial framework that could be finalized when Trump and G chat on Tuesday. Yeah, all this talk about Canada when this Asia tour is probably the news of the week when it comes to trade. No World Series matchup, though, so probably not as a fuzzy. But yeah, Mark Carney is actually over in Asia as well. So all the trade worlds are colliding right now. I said Tuesday, but I meant Thursday when they're going to meet. And stock futures are rising this morning on that initial framework that was agreed upon. Two days from now, the Federal Reserve is expected to lower interest rates for the second time this year following a first cut in September.

Their decision was signed, sealed and delivered on Friday when a delayed inflation report showed prices grew less than expected last month. The cool-ish inflation report also raised hopes that the Fed will reduce rates once more this year at its meeting in December. but don't expect Jay Powell to commit to anything in his closely watched press conference on Wednesday. All this gave a huge boost to stocks on Friday, which shot up to record highs and the Dow closed above 47,000 points for the first time in history. Yeah, we didn't get to talk about that reflation report, but it did keep the Fed on track. Consumer prices rose. Point 3% for the month, 3% year over year. That's below what economists expected.

But also, there were some hot spots that came in. Coffee and beef prices rose 19% and 15% deli meat saw a record price bump as well. So if you have a particularly meat-based breakfast to go along with your coffee, you're feeling a little bit of the inflation to pinch right now. Still, inflation remains above the Fed's 2% annual goal, but relatively speaking, it wasn't a bad report, hence the big jump in the market. Meanwhile, this is it, folks. This is why we wake up in the morning. And earnings feast is in store that rivals Thanksgiving. The entree, as always, is big tech.

Meta, Microsoft, and Alphabet will be served on Wednesday, followed by a second course of Amazon and Apple on Thursday. And don't forget about the side dishes. Also set to report are Boeing, UPS, Comcast, Coinbase, Reddit, Eli, Lili, Exxon, Starbucks, Chipotle, Roblox, and lots more.

Toby, hope you turkey trotted this morning to create some room for all the financial data you're about to ingest. I mean, don't tempt me with a good time. I don't think you're allowed to do Thanksgiving references when we haven't reached Halloween yet. So I'll let you have that one. But what am I looking forward to here? Maybe Coinbase. I want to see if the AWS outage and the fallout from that, maybe some cloud diversification talks is a storyline for the crypto exchange. But

yeah, pick your poison here. There's a lot of earnings on a deck. So excited to see what everyone has to say. I still got a Halloween reference in me. And we do have Halloween on this Friday. Halloween falls on a weekend. It's going to be an absolute madhouse out there. So make sure you spend the next five days watching scary movies, loading up on candy, and exercising all the demons in your life. Toby, you got a costume picked out? My costume is dedicated fiancé because my fiance Celia is running the marathon on Sunday, two days after Halloween. So I will be cheering her on and not doing anything too crazy on Friday in moral support of her. That is very kind of. Okay, that is all the time we have.

Thanks for starting your morning with us and have a great start to the week. And now for a little switchup, if you want to get in touch with us for episode feedback or anything else, yes, you can send us a note at our email address, Morning Brew Daily at MorningBrew.com. But it's probably better to DM us on Instagram at MB Daily Show. We'll likely be more responsive that way since this is 2025 after all and we are on social media all the time. Once again, that's at MB Daily Show on Instagram. Let's roll the credits. Emily Milliron is our executive producer. Raymond Lute is our producer.

Our associate producers are Olivia Graham and Olivia Lake. Hair and makeup would love a bailout. Devin Emery is our president and our show is a production of Morning Brew. Great show, Danielle. Let's run it back tomorrow.