The Rundown - Trump Threatens Apple with 25% Tariffs, Hoka Sneakers Reports Slower Sales Growth

Episode Date: May 23, 2025

Stock market update for May 23, 2025. This video is for informational purposes only and reflects the views of the host and guest, not Public Holdings or its subsidiaries. Mentions of assets are not recommendations. Investing involves risk, including loss. Past performance does not guarantee future results. For full disclosures, visit ⁠Public.com/disclosures⁠.

Public.com presents the rundown, your daily market update in under 10 minutes. My name is Zadadmani, and today is Friday, May 23rd. In today's episode, we'll tell you what Donald Trump said this morning to reignite the trade wars and send the markets into a tailspin. We'll also tell you why nuclear stocks are pumping this morning. Then stick around to the end of the show to find out when the penny is officially going away and how much money it's going to save the U.S. government. We got a great show for you today. Let's go.

We had another blown lead yesterday in New York. This time it wasn't the Nix, but the S&P 500. After spending most of Thursday in the green, the S&P gave it all back in the final hour of trading to finish the day in the red. The NASDAG did manage to hold on, though, and close up 0.3%. Now, the bond market has been the main character all week,

but things started to cool off a bit yesterday, the 10-year treasury yield dip back below 4.5% after hitting 4.6% earlier this week. And the 30-year treasury yield is now back below 5%. But look, if you were hoping for a drama-free Friday to close out the week and head into the long weekend, well, I got some bad news for you. President Trump woke up this morning and fired off some bombshell truth social post that is shaking the markets right now. It looks like the trade war might be back on.

So let's talk about it. Just when we thought the trade war was behind us, President Trump came in from the top rope this morning and reignited tariff tensions in a big way with a couple posts on true social. The first one was aimed at Apple. Trump said that iPhones that were made overseas could soon face a 25% tariff unless Apple moved its manufacturing of the iPhone to the US. Trump even called out Tim Cook directly saying that he's told him that iPhone should be built in America and not India, or any place else. That's a direct quote from his truth social post.

Now, if that wasn't enough drama for a Friday morning, just 24 minutes later, President Trump dropped another bomb posting that he's recommending a 50% tariff on goods imported from the European Union starting June 1st. He said the EU has been very difficult to deal with. So I think that means that trade talks probably aren't going so well. So yeah, in a matter of like 24 minutes, things escalated very quickly this morning.

And the timing of this is brutal because the markets had pretty much moved on from the trade war. In fact, stocks were getting pretty close to all-time highs again, but now investors have to deal with another Trump curveball. We might be doing this tariff dance for the next three and a half years with Trump because Trump seems to love pressing the tariff button at any time. And all that's doing is leading to more uncertainty in the markets. Now, if Trump actually does follow through with the tariffs on the EU, that would be huge. because the EU as a whole is the U.S.'s largest trading partner with nearly a trillion dollars in trade. Now, the U.S. does have a trade deficit with the EU. It's around $250 billion, which means the U.S. imports more than the export to the EU. And as Trump has made very clear in the past, he doesn't like trade deficits.

So we'll have to see if he follows through with his tariff threat or if he backs off like he has the others. I mean, June 1st is only nine days away, so not a lot of time to smooth things over. The EU is already preparing countermeasures to hit over $100 billion worth of U.S. exports with tariffs. So, yeah, things could escalate pretty quickly here. I wonder if Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is going to be spending Memorial Day weekend in the Swiss Alps again. It's not the worst way to spend a long weekend, I guess. Now, let's get back to Apple, because I think the tariff threat on Apple was more shocking to me. Because Tim Cook's superpower has historically been getting trade exceptions and not being hit with tariffs.

He was able to get trade exceptions during Trump's first term. He also got exceptions earlier this year. So I was surprised that Trump called out Apple and Tim Cook directly in his post. Now, clearly Trump wants Apple to build iPhones in the U.S., but I mean, that's almost impossible for Apple to do in a short period of time. And it's not just about labor cost. We've talked about this on previous episodes that China has the expertise, they have the infrastructure, they have the workforce to produce millions of iPhones every year at scale.

If you want to learn more about this, go check out our deep dive episode that we did. back on April 5th. It's one of our most listened to episodes ever. We kind of break down Apple's supply chain and their dependence on China. Apple is trying to diversify their manufacturing outside of China. They recently expanded manufacturing operations in India.

But moving to the U.S., man, that's another level entirely. And if Apple was somehow able to bring iPhone production stateside, analysts at Wedbush say that that could push the price of an iPhone north of $3,500. So realistically speaking, Apple would just end up the tariff costs instead of moving any production to the U.S.

Obviously, Apple stock is taking a hit this morning down nearly 3%. I'm kind of surprised it's not down even more. So yeah, wild Friday morning. Trump had been pretty quiet with the tariff tweets over the last few weeks, but I guess he got that itch this morning and fired them off. I guess on the bright side, the group chat with the boys was starting to get kind of quiet lately, so this might help things get rocking again. I just wish that Trump had waited until next week to do this.

Let us at least enjoy the long weekend without having to wait. worry about our portfolios, you know? As a heads up, the stock market will be closed on Monday for Memorial Day, so no show from us. But we will have a deep dive episode this weekend and be back here on Tuesday. Let's shift gears and talk about Elon Musk. We haven't talked much about him lately. He's been kind of laying low these days, but it looks like he's still making some moves in the background. According to a new reporting from Reuters, Elon is now using his AI chat box grok inside the U.S. government. Specifically, his Doge team, the Department of Government Efficiency, they're deploying GROC to analyze data from various federal agencies.

And that's raising some red flags. Because some of these agencies that GROC is analyzing regulate Elon Musk's companies like Tesla and SpaceX. So that's kind of a conflict of interest here. Now look, I'm all for government officials using AI to boost efficiency. But if GROC is being fed sensitive data, including information on individual Americans, that raises major security concerns. Experts are warning that this could violate privacy law or give Elon an unfair advantage when it comes to government contracting. I think the bigger play here might be that Elon wants GROC to be baked into the U.S. government's workflow.

Like, he probably wants every federal agency and government official to use GROC, so then he can eventually start charging for GROC licenses. And if you guys know anything about government procurement, once they pick a software tool, they're going to probably stick with it forever. So, yeah, the U.S. government workforce could soon be running on GROC. Can't wait for the Uncle Sam GPT chat box to roll out, so I can ask questions about my taxes. Let's talk about some stocks making moves today. Nuclear stocks are soaring this morning on the news that President Trump is expected to sign an executive order for nuclear power today. This order will help approve and speed up the building of nuclear facilities in the U.S. and also boost purchases of uranium and other energy materials needed for nuclear power.

This order will also give the Energy Department the going to go-executive. ahead to provide loans to companies building nuclear reactors. So that's a big boost for nuclear companies. Shares of Aklo, New Scale, and other nuclear power companies are a big this morning on this news. Now, on the flip side, Decker's not doing so hot. The company behind the Hoka running shoes are seeing their shares plummet this morning after not providing guidance for its fiscal year. Sales of Hoka's grew by 10% in Decker's most recent quarter, but that's pretty low, considering in the past year, Hoka sales had been growing between 20 to 30% year over year for each quarter. But now sales aren't grown as fast and as a result, investors are dumping Decker stock.

It's down more than 20% this morning on this news. Let's wrap the show with a fun fact. The penny is officially going away, everybody. The Treasury Department announced they're going to stop producing pennies by early 2026. And honestly, I think it's about time. Because let's be honest, coins in general are pretty annoying. Like, who's carrying around coin these days? It's more clutter than anything.

Actually, it turns out that Americans throw away close to $68 million worth of coins every year. And about 60% of coins in circulation right now, that's roughly $14 billion, are being stored in jars. I wonder what percentage of coins are stuck in between seats in a car. Now, this move is going to save the government some money because it costs nearly $0.4 cents to make one penny. In fact, last year alone, the U.S. Mint lost $85 million making pennies. Now, that's a small number in the grand scheme of the federal budget. But, I mean, at this point, every little bit helps. The Treasury Department said that once pennies do disappear,

businesses will have to round up or down to the nearest nickel for cash transactions. But let's be honest. I mean, how many cash transactions are we even doing these days? Well, all right, guys, that's the rundown for today. That's the rundown for this week. Honestly, it was shape enough to be a pretty boring week. The bond market added some excitement, but then this morning, we just got hit with so much. Now, next week is a short week, but we are getting some pretty major earnings,

like Nvidia reports on Wednesday after the market close. So you definitely want to tune in next week, so you don't miss that. By the way, if you guys enjoy this show and have like 10 extra seconds, consider giving us a five-star rating on Apple or Spotify. And if you're listening on Spotify, don't forget to vote in today's Spotify poll. Leave a comment on Spotify, all of 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 this weekend for the deep dive.