you're watching the president and angela merkel. nasdaq at an all time record high. big move for the nasdaq. >> nasdaq 6,000, not that far off. >> thanks for watching "power lunch." >> if the nasdaq holds in record territory on the "closing bell" right now. hi, everybody. welcome to the closing bell on saint pat trick's day friday. i'm kelly evans. >> and i'm will fred frost in for bill griffeth. cholesterol drugs getting clobbered. >> a rare interview with brave warrior glenn greenberg. the biggest investment mistake of his career. >> pus ken sloane since news of the sales scandal broke. >> we made some mistakes. we made some significant

mistakes. we've owned up to them and we're making a lot of progress. we apologize to a lot of our stakeholders. we let them down. we are making it right. fixing what was broken and building a better bank. >> more from that interview here. hear his response to criticism over last year's pay rise despite the scandal. that's coming up in my exclusive interview. we begin with the big news out of washington. president trump wrapping up a news conference with the german chancellor. eamon javers has more. >> reporter: hi, kelly. so much to chew over in the press briefing that you saw with the president and the chancellor side by side in the east room of the white house. the president equipping about wire tapping that he and lang merkel have something in common now. of course, that a reference to the allegations of the united states itself spied on angela merkel that were revealed by edward snowden. then we saw this remark from the president talking about his tweets saying he very seldom

regrets something that he tweets and he thinks that twitter was the reason that he got elected to the white house in the first place. and then you saw the president really rejecting the label of isolationism. here's what he said. >> we are a very powerful country. we're a very strong, very strong country. we'll soon be at a level that we perhaps have never been before. our military is going to be strengthened. it's been depleted but i am a trader. i am a fair trader. i am a trader that wants 20 see good for everybody worldwide but i am not an isolationist by any stretch of the imagination. >> kelly, if the body language tells you anything i can tell you behind the scenes i was sitting right next to kellyanne conway and steve bannon. when the president delivered that line talking about having something in common with angela merkel for being wire tapped, right after that was delivered and sort of well received in the room kellyanne conway reached forward and tapped steve bannon

on the shoulder. it seems to me, anyway, that that was a prepared line. it might give you a sense of who actually wrote that prepared line. of course, the president writes all of his lines himself if you ask the white house about that. >> subtle fist bump of sorts. >> thank you very much. joining us with more on that meeting today, a fellow in foreign policy. also with us, jeffrey raska, deputy director of the europe program at csis. let me start with you if i may. there's been strong conflict between these two leaders. was today progress or was the tone of that conference still fairly cold? >> hi. thanks for having me on. i should perhaps add i'm in the foreign policy division of the bo brookings institution. i would say this was a successful meeting. they both stayed on script. they made a strong effort to

show that they had been moving towards each other, on trade and security. there were no unfriendly notes. >> jeffrey, the white house a couple of weeks ago with peter navarro accused germany of profiting from the fact that the euro is weak and the economy is among the strongest. we didn't see any talk like that. does that issue still simmer? >> well, thanks, kelly. i think i agree with constanca. this was moderately successful. i think we've set the bar fairly low. and especially on trade. you noticed a big difference between how the president talked and how the chancellor talked. the president talked about german trade negotiators getting the better of the united states when, in fact, as the chancellor pointed out, it's the european union that negotiates trade on behalf of european member states. and also keep in mind that the trade issues have been left for the meeting that followed the press availability.

so i think some of the toughest issues are really left still to be discussed, but the fact that they avoided directly undermining each other and criticizing merkel after donald trump criticized her perhaps more than any other international leader during the campaign i think is a positive outcome. >> let's talk a little bit more about trade. chancellor merkel referenced the eu's trade deal with south korea and said that it ended up being good for both sides, and that type of aim of a deal that benefits both parts of the equation should be the basis of the trades between the eu and us. that's surely wishful thinking, isn't it? >> that sounds about right. i will say that she made a little equip in her customer dry humor when she said suddenly germans who haven't been particularly enamored by the

attempt to made a trade deal between the e.u. and the u.s., germans went demonstrating. clearly germans thought of this differently which i thought was funny. politically not very realistic but with a changed attitude and programmatic attitude there could be something to come. >> jeffrey, one area where perhaps there was progress was nato. would you agree with that? >> well, i think it was -- it was interesting to hear first of all the president was -- he was briefed, you know, well on things like what germany has done in afghanistan as part of the nato mission and that germany remains committed. he was also -- he also praised the chancellor and her government's commitment to raising their defense spending to meet the 2% nato target and the chancellor herself reiterated that so i think that was progress. i have to say there was a strange moment when the

president talked about countries owing us for what they didn't spend in the past. i don't really know what to make of that. i think it's a nonstarter but it also shows that these spending issues and the idea that our allies are somehow paying us directly, it remains a point of confusion that will leave some questions, i think, on the german side. >> final question to jump in. sorry, we've got to go after this question. >> okay. >> we didn't hear much about ukraine, very little about president putin of russia. do you think behind closed doors that would have been a topic where chancellor merkel would have had very strong words for president trump? >> i'm sure she did. what you said isn't quite true. they did both reference and accept the current minsk 2 framework for negotiations with the ukraine which would make it quite difficult for president trump at this point to depart from that at a later point and say, well, we'll cut some kind of deal with the kremlin.

>> all right. thank you both for joining us. talking about the summit we just saw between our president and the german leader. the german dax has out performed the s&p 500 since the election. what impact should this all have on our investment strategy. joining us is jason trenner over there at post nine along with jonathan korpina and rick santelli checks in from the cme in chicago. welcome, everybody. you know, jason, i'll just begin with you. as much as we've focused on the trump rally, markets have been up globally including in germany since november 8th. what does this tell you about what's going on here? >> certainly economic activity has been stronger globally. i think over the last maybe 6 to 9 months and europe is cheap by any stretch of the imagination. it trades at a discount to the u.s., always has. it's probably a little bit deeper now than it has been in the past. there's some give back i would

say as far as the currency is concerned. my own particular feeling or my own particular opinion is that people should be careful about european equities because there's going to be a lot of bites at the apple, if you will, as far as these populist elections. we had one this week which -- in which the nationalists didn't win but you have france next month, germany in the fall and then italy at some point in the next year so that concerns me. >> rick, we've seen quite a rally in the euro this week. to what extent is that down to politics and to what extent is it down between the spreads of government bonds and where do those spreads stand as we end the fed dominated week for the bond market? >> yeah, i'll tell you what. i think it's very important. if we look at the spreads, you know, the curve actually has reversed some of the steepening it had before the meeting a little bit flatter. really most of that was in today. just look at the close, the close, the close tens minus twos. if you look at tens minus twos,

that's starting to go down a little bit. that's very fascinating. that means the pull of our higher interest rate is having maybe less effect. either way, it's a good thing. as far as exactly why the euro's rallied, i think there's a lot of reasons but i think, a, it stopped right at 108 and if you look at the chart going back to early february, early february's last time we closed above 08, 108, very significant level. i think it is part politics but i'm not sure just like our politics, just like when it was, you know, clinton versus trump. the outcome even if people would have known it, they might not have understood how the market responded. i think a lot of that is the bath tax whether it comes to be or not. it put a lot of people along the dollar index at exactly the wrong time. finally, i'll give my tip of the hat to the central bank of the united states of america. i think they waited a little bit. forget all of that. what they're doing is a good

thing. the bullishness has had a bit of a soothing effect. a lot think mario draghi's exit is getting closer but how sloppy that is is going to be huge for the euro. still one thing quickly that jason said. you know, when it comes to politics here, i see the economy there doing better as well. the problem is you have certain economies having sticky banking i shall sues with regards to solvency. there's a lot of moving parts there but above 108 that euro could go to 111. it's the area to pay attention to. >> jonathan korpina back here, we have gotten through key events. where does that leave markets when we're trying to figure out where the dollar is? >> clearly we were waiting for the fed announcement. it was good to hear that the plan in place, the outlook moving forward is somewhat fat. we've all strategized with before. i think as we get to the end of this month, which would be the

end of the quarter, it is going to be quite quiet. portfolio managers are sitting on their profitable returns so far. as we get into april i think we're going to start to see the ipo market really heat up against. once snap came out of the box i think everyone else is going to feel much more comfortable coming to the market. the message was the economy is getting better. i think we're going to see follow suit with that. >> we had a pretty good debut. talk about that in a moment. we'll let you go. like the green ties. >> thank you. >> enjoy st. patrick's day. >> you referenced the ties to show me up, didn't you? i forgot mine today. >> oh, well. >> it's green. it's green behind the paper. >> it's green in the markets. about 45 minutes to go. the dow is up about 15 points. just about accounts for yesterday's declines. the s&ps are up. >> utilities are up. tim sloane, he took criticism

for a 17% pay rise despite wells's fake account scandal. hear what he had to say next in my exclusive interview. also ahead, a rare interview with brave warrior advisers glenn greenberg. he'll tell us what financial stocks have been generating the best payoff for his clients. you're watching cnbc, first in business worldwide. investing approach.olatiy the power of smart beta. power your client's portfolio with powershares. before investing, consider the fund's investment objectives, risks, charges and expenses. call 800-983-0903 for the prospectus containing this information. read it carefully. distributed by invesco distributors inc.

wells fargo gaining 29% since then. earlier i spoke with tim sloane exclusively while addressing the sales practice scandal i asked him about the impact the scandal

had on his underlying business. >> we've been putting out a monthly update as you've seen. what you've seen in that monthly update is that our checking account growth, primary checking account growth, customer is calling us their primary bank is growing at about 1% year over year. pre-crisis we were in an environment we were growing at about 4% so you're absolutely right. we're going to -- we're going to work very hard to get back to those levels. it's not going to happen immediately. >> the credit card numbers are particularly soft would you say? >> they're down, there's no question about that because of the amount of referrals that are coming from our branches are down. having said that, when you look at the fourth quarter credit card results, we still grew in terms of activity and balances in the high single digits, which we're very excited about. >> in terms of the overall impact on sales that this scandal has had for you, you said in the past that you thought things would get worse

before they get better. where are we on that sort of scale of things? is the worse behind new is it improvement in sales numbers in terms of trends from here? >> i think so. we've accomplished all of the business changes that we wanted to accomplish and now it's about execution. >> you're talking about the specific costs of this scandal in terms of the monetary bottom line. you said in the past it would cost, quote, tens of millions of dollars. is that still your estimate, that it's tens of millions or have you now realized there's more systems or whatever you have to put in place and that number could go up? >> the tens of millions number that our cfo and i have talked about is on a quarterly basis, and it's going to cost what it's going to cost. so i don't know what it's going to cost tomorrow morning or the next quarter, but so far that's been the -- that's been the actual cost. >> i then moved onto the topic of his pay. to recap, he received a 17% pay rise from 2015 to 2016 taking his total pay to $12.83 million.

over $10 million of which was a stock bonus. this came just weeks after the board had said he and the rest of the executive committee would not receive a cash bonus. the reason given, in order to increase shareholder accountability as opposed to acting inappropriately. i began this section with the fact that the board had decided to take away his cash bonus for 2016. >> from my perspective i think it was entirely appropriate the senior leadership team took responsibility. i think you need to see that more in corporate america when corporations don't live up to the expectations of their shareholders. and as ceo, a lot of what the board decided was actually recommended by me, and we had a very good discussion about it. i think it's entirely appropriate. >> and the fact that you didn't get a cash bonus last year, although your performance was not improper as we know, was it therefore not sufficient or not satisfactory? >> in terms of why i didn't -- >> why you didn't get the cash? >> the reason i didn't get it is

because we let our shareholders and a number of our stakeholders down, right? and when that happens it should be the responsibility of the executive to own up to that. would i like to get a cash bonus? of course. in that situation was it inappropriate? absolutely not. >> you'll forgive me, tim, for asking whether you can understand if this sounds a little bit rich, this rhetoric you're giving me now, because you did get a net pay increase of 17% of over $2 million. your cash bonus in 2015 was 1 million. your stock bonus this year was 10 million. so it doesn't really sound like much of a punishment when you consider how much in total you got paid and that you got a pay rise. >> sure. so the reason i got a pay increase last year was because i got a new job. promoted. recall in november of 2015 i was made president and chief operating officer and then in october of this year i was made ceo. so i had two job changes that occurred during that period. the board decides whether or not my pay is competitive and that's

their decision and i'll respect that decision. having said that, in addition to the cash bonus impact, the equity that was vesting for me this year that i was granted in 2014 was also cut in half. >> but overall, of course, still a significant amount of pay. >> oh, no question about that. >> and a pay increase. it's mixed messaging. >> i don't think it's mixed messaging because the pay that i get is reflective of my job responsibility. just like everybody. my job is to be ceo of one of the most valuable firms in the world. we have the second highest market cap in the industry today. we have 269,000 employees, team members, right, who are the greatest people on the face of this planet if you ask me. we have 72 million customers and the board decides whether or not my compensation is appropriate and that's fine. >> so that was tim sloan, the ceo of wells fargo there. kelly, clearly making his

defense of his pay rise and saying that he's taken a new job and that was justifying it. there is a mixed message coming out of all of this and there is criticism on it. part of it is that the board decides to -- >> if it was the case that he as ceo was getting 17% more than the past ceo, that would seem more than the past ceo. he's getting 17% more because he's in a ceo job. it's a little more understandable. the reason the ceo left is because they couldn't handle the optics of this crisis and the fact that this comes out with a headline like that is not necessarily indicative if they don't fully understand how big the headline risk is. >> i asked him specifically at another point in terms of the pr expectation of this scandal back in september of last year did they under estimate that? he said yes. it goes to your point of whether things are moving forward. deregulation and loan growth as well. >> or lack thereof. >> or lack thereof exactly. he addressed that.

the fact that you're referring to the fact that the first two months have seen loan growth lower. he did put it down to mainly seasonal factors saying the fourth quarter is very strong and q1 does fall down. refinancing and mortgaging was soft. >> good stuff. >> thank you. >> thanks for bringing it to us. a couple of minutes to go. 38 minutes to go before the close. we are higher. a little bit of green on the screen now. only slight gains. we're set to s&p for the week as a whole. the nasdaq slightly more than that. the dow slightly less. >> the fed made a move that could trigger a wave of mergers and acquisitions. >> tiffany hitting a two-week high thanks to strong sales over seas. we'll tell you which region outperformed the luxury jeweler. that's coming up, too.

welcome back. check out shares of tiffany and co up more than 3%. that's a 52 week high. one of the best performers on the s&p 500. all of this after the jeweler reported better than expected revenues, growth and margins. tiffanys pushed off more affordable and growth in asia, japan and china offset a slowdown in the u.s. which has been taking a hit by weak spending. the flagship store is next to trump headquarters. it's due to the traffic disruptions at the flagship store next to trump tower. brave warrior advisors glenn

greenberg tells us whether it's time to sell financial stocks. we'll tell you what's clogging up cholesterol drug stocks despite data showing a new a.mgen drug lowers risks. that's all still here on "closing bell." dearthere's no other way to say this. it's over. i've found a permanent escape from monotony. together, we are perfectly balanced. our senses awake. our hearts racing as one. i know this is sudden, but they say...if you love something

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welcome back. 30 to go in the session. kenny polcari. a lot of options. >> it is. it's going to get busy in the next half an hour and certainly right at the closing moment there will be big, big prints. at the moment it still feels like it's still high. we could see that change very quickly in the next 15 or 20 minutes. >> there's a fed rate hike. mu plans, the budget. how does this set us up? >> for any people who think janet yellen's comments were dovish. i think she was clear. she was hawkish. next week the market will start to focus on revisions to gdp, revisions to corporate earnings and they're talking about -- >> positive revisions? >> no, revisions we've seen are coming down.

it's 11%. i think now with the revisions so far we're about 9%, a little bit more. so the market's going to have to start to recognize kind of downward revisions, weak gdp and the fact that rates are going up. she's not going up at a slow pace. she made it very clear. there are going to be three rate hikes this year. we've already gotten one. there are at least two more coming. >> kenny, thank you. happy st. patrick's day. >> to you as well. >> stu? >> stu? >> will. >> i like the name. i wasn't expecting it. that's what people call me on the weekend. moving on. it's time for a cnbc news update with sue that we all know, sue herera. >> thank you, will. appreciate it. here's what's happening at this hour. health and human services secretary tom price meeting with house republicans this morning where they talked about the progress being made to overhaul health care. >> thrilled to be here today to congratulate the house on moving

this bill forward. look forward to working with them and our friends on the other side of the capital to make certain that, again, we move in the direction of patient centered health care, not government centered health care. >> syria firing missiles after they struck inside of syria. the aircraft were back in israeli controlled air space when several anti-aircraft missiles were launched. it did say whether its ariel missile defense system stopped one. >> irish eyes are smiling but this one to honor saint patrick's day. catholics are getting special permission to eat corned beef and other meat. timothy dolan granting the dispensation. enjoy, everybody. >> happy st. patty's day. back to you guys. >> we've had this debate about whether my eating chicken qualified because it's not technically a real irish celebration. >> that is true but -- >> i'm taking some flak. >> don't take flak.

you're fine. >> it's my way of celebrating. >> that's right. >> calling me sue, it's a beautiful name, not my name. >> boy named sue. >> yeah. >> sue, thank you very much. >> you've got it. i do hope everyone irish enjoys today, st. patrick's day. >> we're very good at enjoying. >> is this going to be a football thing? >> a rugby thing. i have a bad day tomorrow. big match. >> we'll be watching. >> go green. >> no, white. sue, thank you very much. for about the fifth time. we really mean it though. the federal reserve easing a key bank regulation making it easier for federal banks to merge. they get heavy scrutiny. $100 billion in assets from $25 billion. it announced the rules when it approved people's united financial acquisition of bankcorp yesterday. it would be $43 billion for the combined assets. there haven't been many regional bank mergers as the reason why.

this is pretty significant, i have to say, and i think that the bank industry as a whole will be working a lot. jamie dimon, head of the investors jpmorgan, said there are too many banks, there needs to be more consolidations and mergers. he wasn't talking about his bank but he said there's huge costs coming out. i think this is a significant step. we want to benefit the stocks. it will help the industry and it will help the bottom line. >> a great example of the deregulation we're following. speaking of debates, yesterday i spoke with glenn greenberg in a rare interview for the latest edition of "the spark value edition" in fact. here's what he said about the rallies and the banks into the election. >> we made a big bet that interest raites -- normal interest rates would be there. we have had a lot of financial

stocks in our portfolio for the last couple of years. jpmorgan was our largest position and it's still a very large position. schwab has been a very large position. we had metro bank in the u.k. which is a challenger bank. we had primerica. it's a unique insurance company like no other. we like to find franchises like that. >> how much people look at the financials especially since the election. you know, you might think this is a great time to sell if you've been holding these things for a while. how much more value do you think can be realized with a company like jpmorgan? >> that's a very good question. i think our view and in the company kind of gives you the numbers is that they should be earning 8 or $9 in a couple of years if rates track at the moderate increases that are in the dot plot, which takes fed funds up to a couple percent by the end of '18 and 3% which by the way we haven't had inflation in a long time. you've never seen inflation. i have seen inflation.

people don't see it until it begins to creep up. i don't know what's going to happen in the macro economy, but rates could go a lot higher. inflation could go a lot higher. it may be that we've come through seven or eight years of healing, gradual steady healing from the great crash, the great recession and now we're just hitting stride with the economy and people are now feeling more confident and the memory of the bad old days are going away. maybe we're going to have the unusual thing where the economy gets faster as opposed to gradually sloug down. >> part of the reason i asked him whether now is the time to sell the financials is because one of his earlier comments is how he bought google in 2011 during a selloff but then sold it again. still missing out on the up side. doesn't seem worried about the same problems or i should say is not selling out of the financials here. said inflation could be one of the things pushing rates higher. >> the infrags point is interesting. rates going higher as a benefit of the banks. if you worry about the economy slowing down and rates still

going and banks are one of the hedges to that. they can still benefit in that environment. i think his points on that were very interesting. >> i asked glen greenberg about the impact regulation s have ha on his business and here's what he had to say. >> we're a little business. four investment professionals, three able assistants and we have seven in our office. up until all the years in my career, 40 years, until 7 years ago we knew the rules. guess advantaging your client. we have to have a full-time chief compliance officer. coming in and doing a mock audit and it's gotten very expensive for a totally nonproductive type work. basically if we were crooks, which we're not, you know, we would -- we would just go ahead and do the bad things.

>> lie anyway. >> lie anyway. the good people are just shouldering a huge burden. >> there's a firm that has four principles involved in the firm and a full-time compliance officer. you're going to be a bad guy, don't do it anyway. we're going to hear from people in a number of different industries. there's a sense of it's too costly. is it truly unproductive to have 1/5 of your work force at your firm dedicated to that full time. >> i say two things to that. one is clearly these types of deregulation have a disproportionately larger effect because it's a bigger percentage cost of their total costs. the second thing, it's i think people are slightly underestimated how much deregulation can be done in the sector. we have an example overnight with the change in threshold. just simply by a change in tone and a tone in appointments from the trump administration. we're very much focused now on the gridlock that we might get around the health care bill and dodd-frank and there's no way the democrats -- >> even with a couple of

personnel changes -- >> we've got an example of that. again, it's not going to be total roll back of dodd-frank. it's a big change and a shift that we can see and a big focus i know all the big banks are looking at is who could be vice chair for supervision at the fed. >> great point. we're going to have more from that glen greenberg interview including what he says is the biggest mistake of his career and a three to four decade career. be sure to head over to cnbc if you'd like to catch the full interview. we have 21 minutes to go until the bell this friday afternoon. as you can see, we've lost a little bit now lower on the dow and the s&p. fractionally the nasdaq is higher. half a percent of a gain for the s&p. coming up, a new drug that lowers your bad cholesterol, but the price could give you a heart attack. that's next. president trump promising to deregulate the airline industry. we'll tell you which carriers stand to benefit the most when we come back.

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results on its cholesterol drug. this is a drug approved in 2015 along with a very similar one from regeneron. given the number of people are high cholesterol with high sales, sales only brought in $100 million each. even after. that's what the data was supposed to show today. today it looked like the data fell short of invoesor's expectations. they showed a 20% risk in those cardiac risks in the trial. that falls short sending amgen's stock down. we checked in with sean harper about this. >> this is one of the largest, most complex cardiovascular

outcomes trials ever performed and it does require a certain amount of expertise to interpret the data. and what the reception we've had to the data when we've been able to go through it in detail with experts has been uniformly positive. >> so saying really this is a very significant benefit and cardiologists are talking with. this will be very important. the reason this is so important is insurers haven't been reimbursing these drugs. with these data amgen expects to hopefully open up reimbursement and get sales up. reed expected sales of $2 billion by sales in 2021. there is some argument what do the data mean. of course there's implications for regeneron. quite an interesting day here in biotech, guys. >> meg, that's exactly what i was going to ask. now that you've explained it, i understand why amgen is down.

not enough to justify the price tag. to see that company espr down more than 20%, is there a whole class of drugs implicated by this or a sense that everyone will have to lower the price if they want more distribution? >> the expectation might be given the results the companies still have drugs in the pipeline including esperion. it's still trying to target that bad ldl cholesterol. the medicines company is targeting the same drug. perhaps they will have to have longer term trials in order to show this benefit to proof things. these are smaller companies so they are more volatile. >> meg, thank you for that. back at cnbc headquarters. just 15 minutes to go before the bell. markets up a little bit. taking a couple of them into negative territory in the last few minutes. the dow and s&p and now also the nasdaq just lower. >> wow. there we go. president trump has not been shy in attacking treaties. he sees it's unfair to america. we'll see if the open skies agreement is his next target.

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regulations. >> that was president trump last month assuring airline ceos he plans to cut airline regulations. federal agencies. >> for more on which companies could benefit from deregulation in the airline industry, joining us is helene becker and transportation analyst at cowan company. helene, 13 agencies is a lot in terms of people regulating these aircraft. then again, it's an incredibly important thing to do. we think about it every time we're on a plane. what kind of deregulation might be coming down the pike. >> the entire u.s. air line back in 1978. president trump is talking ab t about -- it's a 9/11.

we're going to get some news for airport improvements. long term products. the list goes on and on. that's really what we're talking about doing. eliminating those regulations. and he's talking about eliminating those regulations as well. >> so much of president trump will level the playing field or better the playing field for america versus the rest of the world. how significant is that in terms of regulation in the airline industry because of course such a huge portion of u.s. air line sales is domestic travel where international players don't really compete. >> well, if we talk about what helene is saying which is that

all these fees, they definitely don't create a level playing field when the airlines have to compete with the international carriers. all of these fees don't allow them to invest in their products. to the extent we can roll back taxes it allows them to compete better with companies subsidized better. >> what were you going to say? >> sorry. i was going to say what jim actually echo -- echo what jim said. don't forget that a lot of the airlines can shift point of sale based on the strength of the dollar. so a very strong u.s. dollar you're going to shift point of sale into the u.s. to encourage u.s. citizens to travel abroad and a weaker dollar you're going shift point of sale to encourage international travel to the u.s. >> a lot of this has been on the margins about the taxes and things feeding into the ticket price. what about, helene, the open skies agreement and the prospects of deregulation there? >> so the u.s. has open skies with a variety of different

countries, but one of the things the big three u.s. air lines are concerned about is the fact that in their view the middle eastern airlines are subsidized when they fly into the u.s. with a lot of excess capacity. that capacity is not profitable for them and it's not. their fares are artificially low. they're subsidized and they would like to see the u.s. open those agreements again and go back to instead of open sky agreements with those countries and we're talking about qatar, not sure if i said that right, qatar -- >> we know. >> right? as well as abu dhabi and for emirates and service out of dubai. so, you know, what they would like to see is just a bilateral agreement which would limit the number of cities those airlines could fly into in the u.s. rather than just let them fly anywhere they want to fly. >> jim, just quickly to wrap things up in terms of the prospect ofinfrastructure

spends. which would airlines see? what would be more impactful to airlines, stock prices, improvements on airports or some of the deregulation we just talked about? >> deregulation would be much more helpful. it would allow them to hopefully pass something back to consumers but give them a little cushion to the next down turn. it would encourage expansion into areas that are not being fully served right now and it would definitely help the industry be more profitable. >> jim, i see here one of the things here could be the clear losers, skywest. held lain, who do you think is best positioned for all of this? >> well, i think the big u.s. carriers are, right? american, delta, united, southwest are probably your winners. >> okay. thank you both. joining us to talk a little bit about what deregulation could mean to the airline space. as we head into break, art cashin says we have 3 billion to buy. it's an expiration day.

he thinks he sees a lot of that pairing off. a big number. a lot of it pairing off. the dow is four points lower with 6 minutes to go. up next, coming right back with the closing countdown. after the bell, president trump changing the face of the energy industry with deregulation as well. we'll take a look at the sector's winners and losing and where you should be investing. you're watching cnbc first in business worldwide. . sixty to seventy million people are moving to cities every year. at pgim we help investors see the implications of long term megatrends like the prime time of urban expansion, pinpointing opportunities to capture alpha in real estate, infrastructure and emerging markets. partner with pgim the global investment management businesses of prudential.

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welcome back to the closing bell. as we stand we are looking at slight declines to end off this week but essentially the markets are flat today. let's dive into the bigger movement. mcdonald's up despite the controversial tweet. bottom of the dow is goldman sachs suffering today. if we broaden out to the week as a whole, the kbw bank index sharper. suffered as the worst performing sector for the week as a whole. the best performing sector for the week as a whole is utilities. so much of that performance banks at the bottom for the week, utilities at the top. comes down to what bond markets have been doing both today and

for the week. bob pasani joins us. >> that's the biggest problem. why did we weaken? we've been tracking the ten year. last few days it's the ten year. 2.5. today we were at the lowest level. and the ten year started moving down all the way through the morning the stock market started moving down. bank stocks had problems. a lot of them were down, 1, almost 2% throughout the day. you know the old story, stock traders are paranoid by the bond market. stock traders think bond market people know more than they do. they're thinking there's something wrong. maybe the economy is not as strong as people think or maybe the trump agenda is not going to go through the way we think. the bond market is reflecting it. one of these two paranoid ideas is dominating the sessions. my attitude is the bond traders have seen so little growth for so many years that the opposite may be true. the bond guys might be wrong this time. wouldn't that be something to see? normally they've been right for a long time.

>> of course another big factor for the week this move in bond yield has had is the dollar. the dollar for the week is down 1.3% in the broader dollar index. it was a buy on the rumor. >> yes. the fed moment was the whole reason the market did even fractionally on the up side. without that we would have been sideways. there is no sign that there is any true technical deterioration. there's a little bit of weakness in the transports, we know that because the airlines have been a little weak and a little bit of minor bad news. they have the capacity a little high on that. we've heard that through some of the airlines. i don't see that as a fundamental problem. would we see a little weakness in the russell. i think the market is in fine shape. watch the bond market a little bit. so far i don't see any signs that the economy is imminently weak at this point. >> so with about 20 seconds to go we're down 19 points, 18

points on the dow. also just to round up the week, oil prices i mentioned they're going to end in positive territory. there goes the bell. down about 18 points to the dow. ringing the bell is urban partnership. diageo. enjoy it. happy st. patrick's day. that is the "closing bell." kelly has the second half. thank you, will. welcome to the "closing bell", everybody. i'm kelly evans. a big close here. we had a lot of options expirations. we knew it could push the options around. there are 3 billion to buy. a lot of that was pairing off. the dow dropping 19 points after having been positive most of the afternoon. couldn't hang on to those gains. the decline puts the index at 20,914. the s&p 500 dropping 3 points to 2378. now the nasdaq, which at 5901

had a record high is closing there a little bit shy of such levels. the russell 2000 up .4 of 1% having a strong session while everybody else is largely mixed. 1391 for the small caps there. we'll have much more on the markets in just a moment. also valeant still down more than 8% this week after bill ackman sold all of its holdings. coming up glenn greenberg of brave warriors advisors tells us why he sold. joining me on the panel, cnbc senior market commentator michael santoli. cnbc contributor evan newmark on a friday. welcome to you both. let's get to breaking news out of washington. our ylan mui joining us. >> reporter: the justice department has formally appealed a maryland judge's decision to block president trump's immigration order. that's according to dow jones. the appeal will go forth and a

fourth u.s. circuit court of appeals in richmond. the judges in maryland and hawaii have issued rulings this week blocking the president's revised travel ban. you'll remember many companies have raised questions and concerns about these bans with google, apple, uber, all of these companies worried about the impact of these travel restrictions. we'll bring you more as we have it, kelly. >> ylan, thank you very much. hawaii had tried to block it. maryland as well. this is a tussle to keep going. let's get back to markets in the meantime though. i really want to ask you about energy. i know we've already talked about it, what's happened with oil. first, mike, what do you think about the behavior today after the fed decision and just the way we've ended the week? >> i don't think there's much that you can look at the way the market is behaving and find very obvious reasons why this general up trend or sideways range is not going to continue to be honest. i do think it's interesting that we're well below the afternoon highs in a lot of areas like financial stocks. i think the big question is

where is the next sort of leadership impetus going to come from? >> is it mule soft? >> mule soft is a good one. if you can get some kind of good early organic growth stories moving, that's something. look, those big growth stocks are still working. new highs hit today by the facebooks of the world, adobes we talked about yesterday. i still think it's intact. the question is what gets you to the next level. you always have a little bit of give back often anyway, weak after that march expiration. >> evan, i know you were in canada goose loving that ipo, $900 jackets. >> by the way, the only thing i know about that company and the ipo is that i see too many people in new york already wearing it. >> exactly. >> for me that's a bad sign. you know, it's like -- >> but you have the rest of the country to adopt. >> i don't know. i just -- i think, you know, almost any retail or fashion apparel story over the past few years, they tend to have this trend. they get hot and then the wheels come off.

it's like crocs years ago. >> what about uggs. >> i replaced my uggs every year. that trend is here to stay. walmart bought mod clog. that's interesting. in a way it reminds me of yahoo!'s tumblr. a company identifying what's cool in that space. not sure what it does to move the needle at walmart. after buying jet they're looking to bolt a bunch of stuff together in the online space. >> it seems not as much of moving the needle, it's importing a certain kind of energy to attack a different point in the retail. let's hope it works out better than yahoo! tumblr. >> my concern with the ip os, i doesn't feel like the wealth creation, business creation energy that you would typically get if you really want the bull market to power ahead. it has an heir of everything is okay, normalcy.

trump didn't do anything super stupid. >> airbnb, we'll look past your comments, airbnb went public, google went public, the fact that they're not simply means it's a different kind of environment. if they were they would be the perfect banner case? >> yes and no. what you've had, mike i think can talk well about this. you've had the private markets have given the ubers and airbnbs and a lot of the hot jer -- have given them huge valuation. uber is running around with a fancy billion dollar valuation. >> we don't have the narrative we might have had ten years ago. the market dynamic might be good. >> it could happen a couple of different ways. it could happen the way you're suggesting, the marquis name, they do come out and accept it. it can be a steady stream of promising companies coming out and have a bull market and i think mna would go along with that, with the metabolism.

>> bob pasani said there will be a week in april or may that we have nine ipos. that seems like an enormous haul of ipos tells you the environment we've been in. >> on a much more serious note, there's no other way to talk about the market's reaction other than making sure that the comments from the secretary of state, rex tillerson, talking about military action being on the table, all of this happening when china's economic output is happening. when the president and german chancellor had a pretty comfortable summit. what do you do with that? >> i don't think you do anything. the bond market kind of shrugged. the oil market kind of shrugged. usual bull market didn't really react heavily. those are the kinds of markets where there's the geopolitical risk the world is going to blow up kind of thing. you would expect a reaction. >> they're so blaise. i think people have become hardened going back ten years to when things were really crazy, nine, ten years when things got

bad really quick. >> the financial crisis. >> i think it takes a lot more now to shake people up especially given that there are a lot of people out there who still feel like they missed a huge -- they did. they missed a huge bull market. >> in the meantime there has been great data on the u.s. economy. it jumped to 3.22 million. the retail high is 3.221. the inflation expectations were at their lowest level in the survey's history, lowest level and it began in 1979. 2.2%. >> is that a good number? >> the fact that it's that low? >> no. is that -- is that a good statistic? >> people's confidence are brightening. they think they're getting wealthier. it's weird as well that it's at complete odds with the fact that everyone says, you know, inflation could be the next -- >> or in fact wages have been going up so therefore the perception that i can't keep up with how much things cost. >> right.

>> goes away a little bit. who knows what the psychology of it is. i think there has been this issue where the so-called soft da tarks all the survey work, all of the how do you feel type indicators have been great. the quit rate is between soft and hard. actual people are deciding to leave a job and take fwhoer oan one. that tends to be supportive. we're in that zone where workers don't have so much power that wages are going to get up to a level that becomes a big pick. when wage growth gets to 4% analynualized that's when we ta about it. >> one of the closest allies was at the white house. eamon javers was there for president trump's meeting with the head of state. eamon. >> apologize. it's loud here. marine one has arrived on the south lawn to pick up the president who will be leaving from here to go down to palm beach for the weekend. i think you have to say from both sides perspective, this was a successful visit.

both sides very wary. each one wanting to avoid a diplomatic snafu. there has been a lot of analysis of the way the two leaders interacted with each other physically, whether they responded to each other's comments, et cetera, but so far anyway no major gaffes or problems with this relationship. the president got the chance to make the point that he wanted to make with angela merkel about nato funding. here's what he said about that. >> i reiterated to chancellor merkel my strong support for nato as well as the need for our nato allies to pay their fair share for the costs of defense. many nations owe vast sums of money from past years and it is very unfair to the united states. these nations must pay what they owe. >> kelly, you also saw the president there rejecting the label of isolationism,

protectionism saying that he is a free trader but he's for fair trade as well, kelly. back over to you. >> yeah. we heard him emphasize that a couple of times. eamon, thank you. eamon javers at the white house. meantime the white house and house gop leaders winning over some of their more conservative colleagues by granting some concessions in their health care bill to replace obamacare. let's get back to ylan mui with more on the story. >> reporter: hi, kelly. president trump met with leaders of the republican study committee today. they initially opposed the bill over how medicaid is funded. today the president said they cut a deal. they're turning repeal and replace into reality. >> all of these potential nos are all yeses. every single person sitting in this room is now a yes. >> here's what they agreed on. states look at the option of block grants to pay for medicaid under the current bill states get money on a per capita basis. this bill will allow people to

see who can receive medicaid benefits. finally ensures that tax credits in the health bill cannot be used to fund abortions. that's another big concern for conservatives. there are 170 members in the republican study committee so if they all fall in line they will be an important voting block, but the party is still split on the issue. moderates are worried too many people might lose coverage and the house freedom caucus, they tweeted that they are still opposed to the health care bill. still, republicans are feeling confident enough to plan a floor vote on the bill this thursday. what happens in the senate, kelly, that will be another story. back over to you. >> that's for sure. thank you, ylan. we've talked going back talking about health care how well it has done. this narrative has completely changed. now you've got the potential overhaul coming. what do you do with the space? >> i think you let it play out, meaning there was a time a few years ago when health care stocks, they really held up very

well, especially the biotech companies, huge run, but now you're in kind of the -- this area where it's really hard if your pharmaceutical companies raise prices. can be a lot of pressure coming down from the states to actually reduce hospital care and things like that. there's not a lot of flexibility on prices. >> there's more at stake. they basically led the market. >> it's still number 2. especially in terms of health care and things like labs. >> the last four? >> the areas have that. handicap what it's going to mean for the total number of insured. it really doesn't seem like right now this bill has form. it has the prospect of having the attrition. >> you wonder about the medicate. got hit on this initially being rolled out. into the final bill.

>> yeah. i think this can be a long time coming. i think the bigger question than what happens with health care is whether or not it just gets -- slows up the whole legislative process and we're talking about tax reform and aid early next year. >> the president doesn't want that. >> he may not want that. >> i think it's going to be -- it's going to be, you know, kill or fill for this bill within weeks probably. not necessarily -- >> i think you should do a limerick today on a day like this. new pipe lines and the return of coal, those are two of president trump's plans for the energy sector. how he plans to break the shackles of the energy sector. and if old energy is back, somebody wondered about the state of new energy. we'll get the answers from the ceo of a new electric car startup. at corning, i test smart glass that goes all over the world.

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than slow internet from the phone company. say hello to internet speeds up to 250 mbps. and add phone and tv for only $34.90 more a month. call today. comcast business. built for business. welcome back. >> kelly, interesting news. chelsea clinton, daughter of bill and hillary have now joined expedia's board in a newly created directorship position. there have been departure of some directors or certain

officers and re-election of some directors as well. this is the big name that's now joining expedia's board. the stock is up 16% since the start of this year. back to you. >> interesting move. thank you, susan. president trump has already revived two once dead oil pipe lines and more changes in energy policy are on tap. jackie deangelis is tapping what the energy sector is tracking. >> good afternoon to you, kelly. the energy deregulation certainly picking up. it started with the pipeline approvals but it's expected to impact fracking, deep water drilling and refining. it won't impact nat gas. think of it as an energy extraction bonanza expected to create jobs, benefit consumers and to push the u.s. towards energy independence. open season in energy also comes with some substantial risks. the first risk, supply. a deregulated industry with a

drill baby drill mentality could be dangerous. we got down near $26 a barrel because there was a glut of oil. production shrank and prices rose helped by the opec cut. as soon as opec cut and prices rebounded, shale production crept up. it's likely to go higher from here. if this triggers another slump in prices that could not only impact the industry but the overall equity market. the second risk is safety. so there are some benefits and there are some draw backs. the impact, of course, will depend on how quickly everything moves but if the president's executive order on the pipeline are any indication it could move quite fast. back to you. >> thank you. jackie deangelis. which companies stand to win and lose. neil, let's begin with you. you like a lot of what we might think of as the old energy

names. are they the clear winners in a trump administration? >> we think so. you know, kelly, we really think it's just the increase of fossil fuel production is really going to be the key. so for us we continue to be very bullish on any of those companies that are lower costs that can be some e&p companies upstream, the service companies that help provide it and even the midstream companies. and i think one of your guests said earlier, it really helps level the playing field and put the u.s. more in level field as with the internationals. >> as soon as you emphasize costs because the big issue with solar and with some of the other energy sources is the cost and how that will affect consumers if we're pushed in that direction. what happens now is there's less incentives and support. will the costs continue to come down? will they continue to make in roads? >> i think so. the important thing to remember is that the u.s. energy policy with respect to the -- it's determined on the state level, not on the federal level.

states like california, new york, other states have been supportive of renewables will continue to do so. there's not a lot that can be done on the federal level to impede that. it's economics, right? based on our analysis we think solar is already comparative on the lower end with efficient gas plants. not just coal plants or any type of generation, gas plants which is the lowest cost out there. we think that will continue. that's really about the economics. we do not think that the change in the political landscape will massively alter that. >> so you have sun run and solar that are buys? >> yes. we like that. you want to own the names that are -- offer the highest possible margin of safety. the highest quality names in the sector. those are the ones that we think of. first solar is a stellar balanceship. they have over $1 billion in cash. not going anywhere.

15 bucks per share, it's cash. it's the way to own it. sunrun is a residential name that is one of the steadiest from an execution standpoint. we think that's the name you want to own. >> neal, i know you don't own solar. who do you think are the buys in this environment? >> the oklahoma/texas companies can under cut any of the solar companies when it comes to costs and pushing that down. companies like concha resources or the resources out of oklahoma city are going to do phenomenally well. halliburton we think can do well as well as some of the pipe lines. >> maybe everybody wins, mike. >> neal, i guess i was wondering what's the impact if we have a lot more drilling, a lot more incentive to basically produce more? is that going to weigh on the

supply? what happens to the price of commodity? >> it definitely will, mike. you're going to have more supply. we think with that will certainly come more demand. so i think it will balance out to a trend and i think, you know, again, what this does is put us, you know, really in direct competition with some of those opec countries. the u.s., a lot of these companies that i mentioned can compete and probably in fact undercut them on a price. >> neal and sophie, thank you both for joining us. >> thank you. valeant stock ending the week lower. we will talk to glenn greenberg of warriors advisors. and in disney making a big bet on "beauty and the beast" we'll tell you how much the movie is expected to add to disney's bottom line coming up.

welcome back. more breaking news out of washington. ylan mui has the news. >> reporter: kelly, the white house has filed a lawsuit. this is a reversal for the d.o.j. under president obama it had defended the cfpb but now president trump and attorney general jeff sessions the d.o.j. says the administration should have the authority to fire the head of the cfpb. now you have the unusual situation of two government agencies duking it out in the courts. in addition, the senate

intelligence committee has announced its first hearing into russian intelligence activities. that will take place on march 30th. back to you. >> ylan, thank you very much. valueact raising its stake in valeant. valeant has been struggling since it raised the price of its heart drugs. it's been labeled the poster child of the drug rate hike. i caught up with glenn greenberg and asked him about the biggest misconceptions and when he knew it was time to sell valeant. take a listen. >> there are many misconceptions about drug prices, but drug trend in this country that the amount the companies have spent to provide their employees with their drugs have been consistently in the 3% area, 3% growth. 2014 was an exception. it went up to 8% or something like that, but that's not the experience. we as individuals have when we go to buy our one drug.

what typically happens -- >> what we're paying has gone up. >> that's right. what's happened is companies who provide our health care have been alarmed by the increase in drug prices and so they've tried to reduce the rate at which they're going to have to spend and what they do is they hire pbms to help them reduce costs. they're the ones that negotiate with the drug companies and negotiate with pharmacies to get the scripts filled at the pharmacy. in the case of express scripts they have a very large mail order pharmacy. they fill about 30% of the scripts that they handle are mailed out. >> pretty low cost? >> exactly low cost. >> what you just said is interesting. drug prices really have only been going up 3% a year. it reminded me of the data which you had indicated that if you look back over the last many years except for 2014 yeah they're low single digits. if you look back at the late '90s -- >> i know. >> yet it's now -- >> people have short memories. >> let me ask you then about valeant. you had been in valeant and

explaining why they had done -- they had sort of smart business model. they stuck to their areas of expertise in skin care, creams, dermatology for example. what went wrong with valeant? do you feel you made a mistake or do you feel that that story had a tragic ending and it could have come out differently? >> well, i feel that the management definitely made mistakes. i think the first mistake in 2014 was the deviation from their model in the years that we owned it prior to that. they did a hostile takeover attempt of allergan. up until then everybody heard of it and heard of it in a negative way. takeover artists, fire people, don't do research. all sorts of things. then the purchase of the heart drugs, raising the prices and then that was like -- shone a bright light on the industry. they became the poster boy for that. suddenly there were articles criticizing the company everywhere. probably the most devastating thing was the purchase of salex for nine times the revenues when

the practice of the company's revenues has been to pay less than three times revenues. they made their very biggest purchase. >> the critics said they did that to make their numbers and make acquisitions and grow the company and meet the targets and projections. >> there's a reason why greed is one of the seven mortal sins. >> let me ask you if that means bill ackman has to shoulder some of the blame for how this is all to happen. if he's one of the reasons why the allergan came onto the scene? >> i -- i don't -- i don't really have an opinion. it seems to me the management and the board of the company made up their minds what they wanted to do. >> you do sell out in the first part of last year. valeant is trading lower than $11 a share. at what point did you decide you had to get out? >> it became clear in the first quarter report of 2016 that their business model was under attack because the pbms were

hearing from their clients about how -- we're reading about the price increases, we're reading about valeant, their branded drugs instead of generics. what are you guys doing? and they -- they basically have the power, which they had never really used before, to say to a drug company, we're not going to put you on any of our formularies unless you take the price down dramatically, or we're not going to put you on our formulary at all. they can move market shares. when the first quarter release came out and the revenues were what they were, so much lower than what they had predicted, it was clear that it was a huge push back by the middlemen who buy those drugs and they just had to respond to what was going on in the newspapers and to the criticism. >> now you're the middlemen. >> yes. >> let me ask you a couple of big picture questions before we have to wrap all of this up then. one of the questions was going to be what do you consider to be one of your biggest investing mistakes? >> clearly discussed the biggest investment --

>> you consider it to be valeant? >> without a doubt. >> you've had a 30 plus year career. >> i've never done something so foolish. the funny part of it is we broke even on the investment. you h'd say that's terrible. so your largest holding breaks even that's a big mistake. >> and that is glen greenberg of brave warrior. he's had that firm since 2009. prior to that he was at chiefton. only has ten names in the portfolio at any time. interestingly his biggest position is in airbus. he talked about charles schwab. he's in a number of financials. owns a little bit of comcast as well. glenn greenberg at cnbc pro. >> his highlighting of the pbms and their role and how much they've come down, i think that's one of the more interesting areas of health care. they've really gone out of favor. it's the kind of opportunity you see potentially emerging. >> the reference i made to him

betting on those companies. he owns express scripts and explains part of the reason why he likes the model, asset light. they do mail distribution but they clearly wield a lot of power. >> i like the fact that he recognized this as the biggest mistake of his career. i don't think it was true that it was the pricing increase, one or two bad acquisitions. this was the hedge fund darling of the pharmaceutical industry. >> oh, yeah. >> a guy like glenn was in it since 2011. they knew perfectly what the rollup business model and strategy was. >> the point is it did change. when they went from saying we're not going to pay more than three extra and suddenly we're buying salex at 9 x. >> this was the strategy of a company, forget about the acquisition strategy they over paid. a lot of companies over pay. what happened to the valuation says a lot more. the fact that the company totally cratered meant that the thing was rotten not just because of one or two -- >> also value actions is even

longer. they bought 3 million more shares. they think there's a way to go out. >> that takes either guts or stupidity. >> they're banking on that tyco model where you had a rollup that fell apart and there actually was value in the real businesses. we'll see if it plays out. time for a cnbc news update. sue herera. >> guys, here's what's happening at this hour, everyone. president trump meeting with key leaders this morning on the issue of veterans affairs. he proposed a series of reforms to help eliminate many of the challenges facing veterans including allowing them to get health care at the facility of their choice. >> we're all united by a very common mission. we will protect those who protect us. i've been saying that a lot over the last two years at rallies and speeches. we will protect those who p protect us, and be that's just starting. i think the veterans have not been treated fairly. >> in peru muddy waters spilled onto the streets and into homes and a new round of heavy rains and floods that have killed at

least a dozen people. authorities say they expect the rains which are caused by el nino to last another two weeks. netflix is ditching its five star rating system in favor of a more simple thumbs up, thumbs down option. it comes after a successful test over the past year which resulted in a 200% increase in the number of ratings given. that's the news update this hour. kelly, have a great weekend. i'll see you monday. >> thank you so much. sue herera. president trump has articulated his america first policy more often. angela merkel heard it for the first time face to face at the white house. we'll discuss how she took that next. still ahead, disney's "beauty and the beast" hit theaters. it could turn out to be the biggest grossing family film ever. that story coming up.

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welcome back. a high stakes meeting today at the white house between president trump and german chancellor angela merkel. mr. trump pressed some familiar buttons on the topic of trade. >> many nations owe vast sums of money from past years and it is very unfair to the united states. these nations must pay what they

owe. during our meeting i thanked chancellor merkel for the german government's commitment to increase defense spending and work toward contributing at least 2% of gdp. over lunch the chancellor and i will talk about our economic partnership. we must work together towards fair and reciprocal trade policies that benefit both of our peoples. >> for more on what was said and not said between the two leaders we're joined by henrietta trays at beda partners. welcome. larry kudlow is here. joining us from the highway here at post nine. >> great walk. >> whole other story from the fdr. let me begin with you. what was the most significant thing you think came out of this? >> i thought it was incredible that the first two questions that came from the german

reporters were about the potential imposition of a 20% border adjustment tax on imports in particular from germany who has a trade surplus with the united states on their imports and obviously angela merkel, chancellor, is being tasked as being pretty aggressive to president trump as they get into negotiations over economic policy. the president has the advantage of not having actually set a tax policy or a detailed trade policy in any kind of legislative text or policy text yet so she has to combat something that doesn't yet exist which puts him in a powerful position when it comes to negotiating. this is top of mind for german constituents and for angela merkel. she brought it up in a really telling way saying we want to have these negotiations, but president trump stressed something that we've been focused on for a few days now, a few weeks now which is to say reciprocity.

you don't often hear about it in the tax world but it comes up in trade and visas and has been included in some of his recent commentary. he talks about it almost in the same vein that speaker ryan discusses border adjustment. i'm really closely monitoring the use of the word reciprocal. this could be indications that the white house is coming out with a border adjustment. >> i want to say one thing, my sources, what i pick up, is that the white house is leaning against and that, in fact, what i'm going to call the business people in the cabinet, wilbur ross -- >> i agree. >> -- cohen, mnuchin and some others are actually leaning against b.a.t. and leaning more free trade and asking the president to be more restrained on this whole issue. so -- >> and it can happen without b.a.t. you do a repatriation holiday. >> that is correct. >> throw a couple of things in

there about the interest deductibility. >> everyone i've asked -- i've asked them, are you against b.a.t.? they won't say no, but no one defends b.a.t. they won't come out and say, larry -- >> b.a.t. >> the last indian to defend that. it's interesting to me. >> kevin brady defends it closely. >> hang on one second please. it's interesting to me that the b.a.t. thing isn't being defended. i thought really in terms of substance substance, the meeting between the finance industry and steve mnuchin, our treasury secretary, mnuchin said some really important things. this is the second time i've heard that and i like it a lot. number one, there's no trade war. we want to avoid trade wars. good. i like the sound of that. number two, we believe a strong dollar is good. that's really new ground. >> do you like that? >> he said that. i love that because i'm a king dollar guy. you know, to me -- cut tax rates and have a strong dollar, company will grow, economy will grow like j.f.k. and ragan.

the fact that mnuchin said that. another point reported in the wall street journal shoibel is a cranky old guy. not a crank just cranky. >> very well respected in germany. >> terribly well respected everywhere, i suppose. he characterized the meeting as optimistic. i don't think he's used that word in 20 years. so what i'm saying is in the financial stuff, in the economic stuff we may be in much better shape than the public relations stuff that you kind of heard about. >> that's what you were saying anyway, henrietta, despite these things -- the problems that might exist between these two countries, it seemed like a productive meeting overall? >> it definitely did. i think that at the end of the day it's going to be a productive relationship because i am of the belief that a border adjustment idea will not actually pass into law. so the white house will be in a strong negotiating position now because it doesn't have to defend any one particular substance issue. i think that steve bannon, jared

kushner, reince priebus in the party is more closely aligned with speaker ryan who's going to the mat every day with chairman brady and subcommittee chairman peter roscom on border adjustments. the issue that president trump has in the white house is there are two power centers. there's a separate power center in the house of representatives and a whole other ball of wax in the senate. the whole thing that concerns me is not seeing border adjustment passed into law but the white house feeling while there is little in the way of legislative progress as we're seeing with the other bills, we might get into the position where he starts thinking about imposing a tariff. for my money, that's the source of concern that i have. >> a source of concern for larry. we have to go so you can start your walk back. >> i just want to say, you have to understand the relationship. trump was for brexit. merkel was violently opposed.

trump doesn't like the european union bureaucracy and taxes. merkel is right smack in the middle of that. and it was merkel really who created a border free zone in europe for immigrants from wherever they are and trump doesn't like that either. so that i think those two have issues that are below the surface that make this a very delicate relationship. you heard trump. trump is not going to back down, right? he's not going to back down. all of europe right now, all of europe because it has no growth, it has the immigration problem, people may secede, all of that stuff. europe is in disarray right now. europe is in a bad position and i don't see it getting any better for quite some time. >> the u.s. is happy to fill that leadership void. >> indeed. >> thank you for joining us. the race to create the autonomous car just got a little tougher. a new prototype was unveiled at

south by southwest in austin last week. we talk to the chief executive behind this car about whether the model will hit this market. a big weekend for disney as the live action version of "beauty and the beast" hits theaters. you're watching cnbc first in business worldwide. are moving to cities every year. at pgim we help investors see the implications of long term megatrends like the prime time of urban expansion, pinpointing opportunities to capture alpha in real estate, infrastructure and emerging markets. partner with pgim the global investment management businesses of prudential.

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deep cuts to the environmental protection agency. this has some wondering where it leaves renewable energy companies. they're betting big on electric karls. last week at the south by southwest festival they unveiled eav eve. there you can see it. in a cnbc exclusive we're joined by nio's spokesperson. >> hi, kelly. >> you're not part of the team that put this car together and everything. you've come to the company now. a lot of people saw these images and were really quite impressed. but how realistic are these plans to introduce this vehicle in mass production? >> yeah. so my company's part of the parent company. we're a global startup. we have an operation in shanghai. my company is based out of san jose in silicon valley and we work with the design team that designed this car, they're based in germany. we are working on full

autonomous vehicles that we plan to bring to the u.s. market by 2020. a lot of the things that we see in the concept vehicle vision car of nio e you will see by 2020. >> who was the initial customer set for a vehicle right now? you hear a lot about trucking fleets, commercial applications, ride hailing services. would you be selling to individuals? >> yeah, i think all of the things you mentioned actually. there is definitely i think companies working on automating trucking, freight vehicles, ride share but our target is really ownership. we are targeting people that have to commute. there's roughly 140 million people in america that commute more than 30 minutes one way to work and then 30 minutes back again and there's about 4 million people that commute 90 minutes each way. and if you actually look at the statistic, they say that there is a 40% increase in divorce rate if one spouse commutes more

than 45 minutes each way. so commuting really is a big issue for most of us who live in the u.s. and the same is true in europe. that's our target customer. anyone who has to commute more than 30 minutes one way to work, we you. so you can in it, you can sleep in it, you can be entertained in it. >> evan is making his plans to buy one. >> how does nio in materials of technological development, how do you compete with uber and others. my wife works for alphabet google. they're moving in the direction of the autonomous vehicle just as you proposed but they have a, let's call it, let's roadster fancy car design. they have a stripped down -- >> had. they have a different design

concept than you do. and how does a development company compete with the gools or ooubers who are heavily fund. >> so we are very well funded. we said we would raise $1 billion and we are on target to do that. our mission is very different. i think google could be a customer for us or a partner. they are mainly focusing on what is known as the autonomous driving stack, the lighters, the support. we're a stack company. we're changing everything from the design the of car, the interior of the car. nio is designed inside out. we did the interior and then outside. it is a very different thinking. we're changing the network in the car so it acts more like the internet experience that you're used to. most cars have a network more like a dial-up mode-up and we need to move that forward to bring it to the internet age. there are a lot of things need

to be done for an autonomous vehicle to become main stream. >> thank you for joining us. >> great. thank you. ceo of nio usa. a tale as old as time. fans flocking to the box office. disney finals are doing just that. the reboot comes this weekend. will it be a record breaker for disney? and coming up, carter worth who got a shoutout this week is back with another bold call. ( ♪ ) upstate new york is a good place to pursue your dreams. at vicarious visions, i get to be creative, work with awesome people, and we get to make great games. ( ♪ ) what i like about the area, feels like everybody knows each other. and i can go to my local coffee shop and they know who i am. it's really cool. new york state is filled with bright minds like lisa's. to find the companies and talent of tomorrow,

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. disney looking for big results from "beauty and the beast."

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welcome back. yes, disney is bringing "beauty and the beast" back and bringing animated characters to life this time. julia boorstin has the preview. >> well, thursday night screenings have grossed over $16 million just here in the u.s. the live action version, the hit 1991 movie could gross as much as $150 million in the u.s. this weekend which within one of the biggest spring openings ever. the film starring emma watson drawing a new generation and the original fans. a big win for disney had spent an estimated $300 million to make and margaret the film. now, "beauty and the beast" is expected to buy customer product sales and help maintain momentum for the other live action adaptations in the work. it has a 69% positive critics rating. with 82% of audiences saying they like it, word of muth

should be shopping. >> word of mouth strong in your household. >> it certainly is. the buzz anticipation was very strong. did get a chance to see a screening of it and it was definitely two paws up, i think. every dollar of the production cost is evident on the screen and i think it is the perfect interval. 26 years after the original. >> 26 years? >> to have another generation. >> that's not the original. the original was 1946. >> then why isn't anyone talking about that one? >> maybe they should be. >> the orange disney one was so good. i read the review of it. it seemed like he made a lot of good points. >> that animation, i feel as if it was definitely referring to that one. it was about inner beauty, not external beauty. it is so dazzling. it looks like, is the audience

going on connect with it? >> the great thing is, for most disney films, it really doesn't matter what the critics say. >> i've seen the reboot of cinderella because of my daughters and i think this is best of them. >> because of my daughters? >> that's my excuse. >> happy st. patrick's day. "fast money" begins right now. "fast money" right now. tonight, the financials, the worst performing sector this week and there is one big bank in particular. we'll tell you the name. plus, how low can it go? snap getting crushed again today. just $2 above its ipo price and there's a very good reason why that could be the next stop. and two overlooked stocks could be signaling the peak auto. it is the little noticed trend causing