The Rundown - Stocks Soar on Hopes for Tariff Deals, Apple Pivots to India for iPhone Sourcing

Episode Date: April 8, 2025

Stock market update for April 8, 2025.

Public.com presents the rundown. Your daily market update in five minutes. My name is Zaid Admani, and today is Tuesday, April 8th. In today's episode, we'll tell you about Trump's plans to hit China with even more tariffs and China's warning to the U.S. We also dive into Apple's plans to sidestep tariffs and open-A-I's plans to compete with the iPhone. Then stick around to the end of the show to find out how big the Minecraft movie was and how much Microsoft paid for the game over 11 years ago.

Got a great show for you today. Let's go. The volatility in the market was turned up to start this week. Stocks shot up on Monday morning because of a rumor that Trump would put a 90-day pause on tariffs. Turns out that was fake news and the market sank right after. Then to add to the drama, Trump threatened China with an additional 50% retaliatory tariffs because China hit the U.S. with retaliatory tariffs last week in response to our reciprocal tariffs that Trump initially announced on Liberation Day.

That was a mouthful. Hopefully that made sense. So the U.S. and China are just hitting each other with tariffs, and that's how you get a trade war. If Trump does move forward with the additional 50% tariffs, that means that all Chinese imports would be tariffed at over 100%. But despite all that, the markets had a pretty flat day. The S&B was down only 0.2%. and the NASDAQ actually squeezed out a 0.1% game.

So, absolutely wild day of trading. Honestly, I'm not sure what's more shocking the fact that the NASDAQ finished in the green yesterday or the way the University of Houston basketball team choked away the national championship last night. Sorry to all my Kug fans out there. That was brutal. Overall, I think investors are just so desperate

for some good news about tariffs that any sign of a potential delay in tariffs or a whisper of negotiations, even if it's fake news, is causing the markets to rally. But ultimately, though, nothing really has changed so far when it comes to Trump's tariff policy. Trump is still moving forward with tariffs for now. In fact, I feel like tensions are heating up because China's commerce ministry said they plan to fight to the end if Trump moves forward with the additional 50% tariffs that he threatened yesterday. That is some pretty heated words right there.

So despite the market's taking a break from the big selling from last week, I don't think that we're out of the woods just yet. I'm going to be interesting to see how the rest of the week goes. We are going to be locked in and we're going to keep you guys in the loop. So if you guys haven't already, make sure you guys are subscribed to the podcast. And consider hitting that notification bell on Spotify or Apple. So you're notified as soon as an episode goes up every morning. Let's run through some headlines. And let's start by talking about Apple.

There's a good chance that your next iPhone will be made in India because Apple plans to send more iPhones from India to the U.S. in an effort to sidestep the heavy tariffs on Chinese goods. tariffs on China is about to hit 54%, which is estimated to add about $300 an added cost for an iPhone. And that's if the tariffs stay at 54%, because remember Trump is threatening to add another 50% tariffs on Chinese imports. So Apple is planning to use India as a way to get around that. Now, India is still getting hit with the tariff, but it's at 26%, much less than China. So sending Indian-made iPhones to the U.S. would be less costly to Apple compared to sending a Chinese-made iPhone.

And to Apple's credit, they were already ramping. up iPhone production in India before all the tariffs from Trump. You know, Apple has been working on building out its manufacturing capabilities in India. Since 2017, they're working with their longtime manufacturer of Foxcon to ramp up production in India. According to Bank of America, Apple was on track to build about 25 million iPhones in India this year. That would be enough to meet about half the demand in the U.S.

Bank of America says that normally about 10 million of the Indian-made iPhones are kept in India and sold to Indian consumers, which is the world's fastest growing smartphone market, but now Apple might choose to send all the Indian-made iPhones to the U.S. Apple's goal is to boost its output in India to 50 million iPhones a year. I mean, they're still far from that mark, but the urgency brought on by these trade wars with China could accelerate those plans. Now, don't get me wrong, Apple's supply chain is still very dependent on China, which Apple has invested decades to perfect, and it might be the most overlooked factor in Apple's success

over the past couple decades. We actually did a deep dive episode of the rundown this past weekend about this very topic and Apple's reliance on China. I've got a lot of great feedback from people about that episode. So if you haven't listened to it yet, go check it out and let me know what you think. We give a few reasons on why Apple is so dependent on China, and it's not just about cheap labor. So Apple is still going to need China for manufacturing, at least for the foreseeable future. And that's why their stock has been beaten up over the last week, down more than 17%.

Stock is bouncing back today, though, up more than 4% at the time of this. recording. Now, if the tariff situation wasn't bad enough for Apple, they might have another headache to deal with pretty soon. Competition from OpenAI. The information is reporting that OpenAI is in talks to acquire a startup that is working on a mysterious AI-powered device. The startup is called I.O. Products. And Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, is already a backer of that company. And what makes us even more interesting is that this company is working with former Apple designer Johnny Ive through his design studio Love From. Now, no one really knows what the secret AI devices. Some people think that it might be an AI powered phone. Some people think it'll be a

phone without a screen or an AI powered smart home device like an Alexa or a Google Home. But OpenAI is considering paying more than $500 million for this company. When I first saw this headline, I got pretty excited. But if the product is like a silly little AI pin without a screen or even a smart home device, I'm going to be pretty disappointed. I want this to be a legit phone so it can force Apple to innovate. I'm a big Apple fan boy, but let's be honest. the rollout of Apple intelligence has been really bad. Siri has been a joke for a decade. And innovation around the iPhone has been non-existent

outside of a extra button on the side of the phone. So if Open AI comes out with some groundbreaking device, I would be so pumped to see that. Let's talk about some stocks making moves today. Healthcare stocks are surging across the board as the Trump administration announced a 5% increase in payments to private Medicare plans. That's doubled in what the Biden administration had initially proposed.

So in practical terms, that means that an extra $25 billion going to health care companies that offer these private Medicare plans like Humana, CVS, and United Health Care. On top of that, the Trump administration is not moving forward with the proposal to cover obesity drugs under Medicare, which is also going to save these health care companies a ton of money. As a result, shares of Humana is up more than 15%, CVS is up 10%, and United Healthcare is up 8%. Now on the flip side, shares of Janover are falling this morning after a huge jump yesterday. This little known tech company announced yesterday they're going to be building a crypto reserve focus on the digital asset Solana. Now Janover started off as a financing platform for commercial real estate borrowers and lenders, but now a bunch of ex-cracken employees got together and purchased a majority share of the company

and they're trying to turn it into a crypto thing. The company has raised $42 million and said it will be buying Solana immediately under its new defy development corp. So essentially they're trying to be like a salana version of micro strategy. The markets initially loved this plan. Genover stock was up 800% yesterday, but it's given some of those gains back today. The stock is down around 15% in the pre-market. Honestly, I'm kind of surprised the stock went up 800% yesterday in these type of market conditions. Let's wrap the show with a fun fact. The Minecraft movie was a massive hit at the box office, making over 300,000. million dollars in its opening weekend.

163 million came for the domestic box office. They made it $150 million at the international box office. This was a pretty big win for Warner Brothers Discovery. I'll be honest with you guys, I had no idea how big of a deal Minecraft is to kids these days. You know, I'm 33, so I never played it, and my kids are too young for it. So I was just kind of totally blind to it. But seeing these numbers just goes to show you that it's a really big deal.

In fact, Minecraft now holds the record for largest opening weekend for a video game-based movie overtaking Super Mario Brothers, which came out in 2023. Bonus fun fact, Microsoft bought Minecraft back in 2014 for $2.5 billion. That turned out to be a pretty good move. For my Minecraft fans out there, at what age should I get my kids into Minecraft? My daughter's only six years old, so I feel like it's still a little too young, but she's already brought it up a couple times because her friends play it. So it might be time.

I don't know. Let me know what you guys. Well, all right, guys, that's the rundown for today. I think we're in for another volatile week. We got earnings coming up as well. So make sure you guys are subscribed to the podcast. And if you enjoy the podcast and have like eight extra seconds, consider giving us a five-star rating on Apple or Spotify.

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