The Rundown - Trump Announces Fresh Auto Tariffs, Discord Inches Closer to IPO

Episode Date: March 27, 2025

Stock market update for March 27, 2025.

Public.com presents the rundown. Your daily market update in five minutes. My name is Zaid Admani, and today is Thursday, March 27th. In today's episode, we tell you about Trump's 25% tariffs on cars and what it means for the auto industry. We also discuss the latest tech company planning to IPO. Then stick around to the end of the show to find out who just became the richest man in China and why he might not hold that crown for very long. a great show for you today.

Let's go. Well, guys, the stock market got rocked with some tariff news on Wednesday, putting an end to the three-day win streak. The S&P 500 was down more than 1%. The NASDAG dropped 2% after President Trump announced a 25% tariff on cars made outside of the U.S. We're going to talk more about the details of those tariffs and the impact it's going to have on the car industry in a bit. But this tariff news was a sticker shock to the markets because earlier this week, there was optimism that Trump would back off on major tariffs. Clearly, that's not the case.

And now there's questions about more tariffs on industries like lumber, pharmaceuticals, copper, semiconductors, and then not to mention the reciprocal tariffs that are going into effect on April 2nd. So I thought we were done with the tariff drama. It looks like the president had other plans. So this news sent the markets lower yesterday. Some of the hardest hit stocks were tech stocks, both Nvidia and Tesla. lower down more than 5%. Trump said there's going to be more details coming out about the reciprocal tariffs over the next few days.

We're going to stay on top of all the tariff news, so make sure you guys are subscribed to the podcast to stay in the loop. At this point, we might need to set up a tariff tracker website or something that shows a timeline of all the tariffs because of all the back and forth. Let's run through some headlines. And let's dive into the details of Trump's latest tariffs. Trump signed an executive order yesterday

imposing a 25% tariff on cars, and car parts that are imported to the U.S. These tariffs go into effect on April 3rd. And this is going to have a pretty significant impact on the car industry, especially because car parts are also being tariffed. In 2024, more than 7 million cars were imported to the U.S. That's about half of all cars sold,

and about 60% of car parts are imported. Some car companies are going to be impacted more than others. Like, for example, foreign automakers, like Mercedes and Porsche, are expected to take a 3.7,000. billion hit from these tariffs, according to Bloomberg. So if you were planning on buying a Porsche, you might want to put in a rush order before the tariffs hit next week. But even U.S. automakers like GM, they make a ton of cars in Mexico and Canada. Those are now going to be hit with tariffs. In fact, GM stock is down more than 6% at the time of this recording.

And even companies that make most of their cars in the U.S. like Tesla will be impacted because the company imports a ton of parts. Elon actually confirmed this himself on X, saying the cost impact of these tariffs will be non-trivial. So I wouldn't be surprised if car prices started going up. We'll have to see if it results in more car manufacturing coming back to the U.S. That's what Trump wants to happen. But that's not going to happen overnight. And in the meantime, I think we'll see higher car prices. Now, if you think that Trump will roll back these tariffs like he has all the other ones, well, he told reporters that these tariffs are permanent. And again, Trump is known to changing his mind. So who knows? We'll see. Let's shift gear.

and talk about Discord. The chat platform is reportedly working with Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan to go public pretty soon. In fact, they can be listed as soon as this year, according to Bloomberg. Discord is a very popular app, especially amongst gamers and programmers. It was founded back in 2015, so it was a relatively new company, and it was most recently valued at roughly $15 billion after a funding round in 2021. Now, Discord actually received a $12 billion takeover offer from Microsoft that same year, but they rejected that offer.

Microsoft doesn't really have a good reputation of being an acquisition company, RIP to Skype. So we'll see if rejecting that offer was a good move depending on how this IPO goes. You know, personally, I thought that Discord was more of like a pandemic darling, similar to Zoom or Peloton. But unlike those two companies, they've seen their revenues quadruples since 2020.

The current revenue is more than $600 million. Now, this might make me a total boomer, but I don't know why. Discord is just so intimidating to me. But hey, more than 200 million people use Discord monthly. So obviously something's wrong with me here. The company's goal is to be the center of the gaming world. In fact, 93% of users use it to play games.

But it's also used for other things. So we'll see how the IPO goes and if some of the Discord users will end up investing in the stock. Maybe we need to start a rundown Discord server just so I can get more comfortable using it, you know? Let me know in the comments if you guys want that. Let's talk about some stocks making moves today. Ali Baba shares are rising after the Chinese e-commerce giant released another AI model called the Quinn 2.5 Omni 7B. Oh my God, that's a mouthful. This new model allows for processing images, audio, text, and video.

You know, Alibaba has been moving fast with the AI models. Quinn 2.5 just came out back in January and they already have a new update. I guess when Deep Seat came out, it really got things cooking over in China. Shares of Alibaba are up nearly 3% today on this news. Now, on the flip side, sticking with the AI theme, Nvidia shares continue to slide after China's largest data server maker H3C raised concerns about a possible shortage of H20 chips in China. This is according to reporting from Reuters.

The H20 is Nvidia's less powerful chip, specifically made for the Chinese market, but geopolitical trade tensions have gotten in the way of supply, according to H3C. Trump administration is considering limiting the same, sales of these H20 chips in China, which would be a major hit to Nvidia's business. Analyst estimates that NVIDIA has shipped more than a million H20 units in 2024, making more than $12 billion in revenue.

So that potentially could be impacted, and as a result, Nvidia's shares are down around 2% on this news. Let's wrap the show with the fun fact. The founder of Bight Dance, Zhang Yi Ming, has become the richest person in China for the first time ever. The 41-year-old is relatively unknown. He doesn't have a huge profile unlike other Chinese tech billionaires, despite having a net worth of over $57 billion. Now, what's interesting is that Zhang doesn't run the day-to-day at ByteDance anymore, despite owning 21% of the company. He stepped down as CEO back in 2021. Now, remember, BiteDance is the parent company of TikTok.

So Zhang's net worth might change in a bit depending on what happens to TikTok in the U.S. Bite dance technically had until January 19th to divest TikTok to a U.S. company or be banned. TikTok actually did go dark for a few hours back in January, but then Trump extended the deadline for the sale by 75 days when he became president. So now the new deadline for the TikTok divestment is April 5th. And I don't know if there's been any movement on the sale. There hasn't been much media attention about it, even though the deadline is like in a week. Trump actually mentioned TikTok yesterday saying that he would consider lowering tariffs on China to get the Chinese government to approve a sale because they have to approve the sale of the

algorithm. So we'll see what happens. Maybe TikTok gets banned again if a deal isn't reached by April 5th. Or I guess Trump could extend the deadline again. But yeah, I'm surprised this is not getting a lot of attention. Well, all right, guys, that's the rundown for today. We'll see if the markets can hang on and close out another positive week. I was just talking about how it was a slow week and then, bam, we just get hit with tariff trauma. the show, consider giving us a five-star rating on Apple or Spotify. If you're listening on Spotify, don't forget to vote in today's Spotify poll. Leave a comment on Spotify.

All that engagement really does help us out, and it helps other people find the show. Thank you guys so much for listening. Shout out to Mike and Connor for all the help behind the scenes, and we'll see you guys back here tomorrow. This is the rundown, your real-time resource for news events and trends in the markets. All views presented in the show reflect the opinions of the guests. You should not take any mention of a publicly traded security as recommendation to buy. sell or hold that security. Run down guests are not financial advisors and are not affiliated with public holdings or

its subsidiaries. You should make your own financial and investment decisions or consult. Respective professionals. Learn more at public.com disclosures. In partnership with Zayidamani, brokerage services for U.S. listed, registered securities are offered by Open to the Public Investing Incorporated, member FINRA and SIPC.