box" begins right now. ♪ live from new york where business never sleeps, this is "squawk box. ♪ good morning welcome to "squawk box" here on cnbc we are live from the nasdaq market site in times square. i'm becky quick along with andrew ross sorkin joe is live in washington, d.c. this morning joe, playing the music for you all set up, looking presidential today. >> thank you thank you very much. >> west wing >> this music, we only pull it out at certain times it is worth -- you have to be here right when the sun is starting to come up with the white house in the background. it's -- i did get a little bit emotional. it's nice. we have a lot of great stuff coming up, as you know the launch of an inter-agency national council for the american worker to try to close the skills gap

the guy heading it up we'll have off the bat, wilbur ross i think you mentioned some others, peter navarro, kevin hassett, ivanka trump with a student of what's possible in terms of trying to take the jobs of today and match up the education with what people will need mick mulvaney, he had about six different jobs we'll talk to him and alex acosta working on some other guests we'll see what happens all that is coming up. >> i was thinking about it yesterday at delivering alpha. things kicked off with larry kudlow giving one view from the white house on where trade stands this morning we start things off with wilbur ross and peter navarro. different views. the president said he likes to hear different views on a variety of issues. in two days right here on cnbc on "squawk box," you will hear from all sides of the administration on what's happening in trade, which may be

the most important issue facing wall street. >> larry was great yesterday i have to say, they should put him in at the very beginning of the administration he's so optimistic give him -- you ask him, well, you're a free trader, what do you think? the way he sort of takes his position, but then is able to say, you know, this needed to be done i agree with that but with these qualifiers, don't get too pessimistic about it we'll see what happens about other guests should be great. >> we are looking forward to it. we'll talk to joe throughout the morning. before we get to these, let's check the markets. yesterday another strong day for both the dow and the s&p 500 you are looking at the dow on its longest winning streak in quite awhile s&p 500 was higher yesterday the nasdaq closed lower, but down less than one point that was one point off of a new

high dow futures indicated down by 58 points z s&p futures down by 7, and the nasdaq off by 18 in asia, markets struggling there. the shanghai down by a half percentage point hang seng down by a third of a percentage point if you check out what's happening in the early trading in europe, you will see it's a mixed picture. ftse in london is higher but the cac in france down by a third of a percent so it the dax. in germany also down stocks weaker in italy and spain. looking at the trisheasury yield this morning the ten-year note yielding less than 2.9%. 2.891% couple big corporate stories to tell you about. ibm's second quarter earnings report beating revenue forecasts on a boost from newer higher

margin businesses, such as cybersecurity and cloud computing. ibm has jumped for three straight quarters after falling for six years straight. cisco systems getting a pop on amazon is not planning to build and sell its own network switches cisco shares took a hit on reports that amazon web services may be looking to build its own hardware cisco telling cnbc during a call that amazon web services confirmed they're not actively building any kind of a commercial switch. shares of cisco up about 2%. sources tell cnbc that papa john's founder had preliminary merger talks with wendy's before he stepped down as chairman last

week those discussions cooled after his use of a racial slur became public leading to his resignation. he is still papa john's largest shareholder with a 30% stake in the company. and he remains on the board. wendy's and papa john's tell cnbc they don't comment on rumors or speculation. papa john's closed up 4% on that report yesterday. the u.s. economy taking center stage at yesterday's delivering alpha conference in new york here's a quick recap >> don't be gloomy and doomy in an overboard sense the american economy is in very good shape ♪ >> perception is out there that the market has gone up the perception is everything is going great. the reality is if the market is down, that means it's actually undervalued. >> i'm a natural optimist. i like where we are. that '08/'09 thing was vicious, it's taken a long time for

people to get elbow room i think we're there now. >> i think reading too much into the news of the day can get you nervous. as investors we may say, my gosh, i have to pull back. take everything out of the market wait for the all clear sign. that's a mistake >> i like that sentiment there you spent some time with david rubenstein i spent some time with ken griffin who had similar thoughts >> the theme kicked off with larry saying i don't see any signs of a recession don't see anything in sight. it was something that rubenstein echoed and most guests throughout the day said the same thing. david rubenstein said i'm a naturally nervous person i look for those things. right now i don't see any of those signs. >> the six to nine-month outlook now is good. my only worry is if everybody felt that way for the whole

day -- >> it sounded like davos, right? >> yes >> i had the same thought, it's a little uncomfortable when everybody feels so positive and optimistic >> i'm trying to think, chanos was there, but he is bearish on certain stocks i don't know if he's bearish on the market i don't think there was somebody out there truly throwing stones. michelle talked to steve bannon. he threw stones, but in another direction. >> amazing to sit down, listen to everything that happened there. fabulous time. >> great day big interview coming up, joe does >> we do when we come back, joe is sitting down with commerce secretary wilbur ross. that will be live. plus former white house adviser

steve bannon speaking out at the delivering alpha conference. we have a recap of his comments on russia and immigration. that's next right here what about him? let's do it.

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welcome back alcoa's ceo speaking out on u.s. steel and aluminum tariffs after the company cut its earnings outlook for the year the ceo acknowledged that u.s. producers are benefiting from higher aluminum prices as a result of tariffs, but said u.s. smelters remain at risk because they're older and more expensive to operate than those in other countries. the stock is flat now. let's get back down to joe kernen standing by at the white house with our first special guest of the morning joe? >> thank you, becky. i'm wearing a jacket first time ever that i'm wearing the jacket and andrew is not you should put it on, andrew i know how jealous you are commerce secretary ross is wearing one. andrew is the only one who looks informal welcome, commerce secretary.

wilbur ross joins us the president will sign an executive order for the creation of what is called the national council for the american worker. it's going to be an inter-agency entity you will be co-chair >> yes >> with ivanka trump what's the -- just for people -- i've been studying up on it. what will you do you will close the skills gap with the help of the private sector >> exactly what we're going to do is get very, very active involvement by the private sector they're the ones who have to fill the skills gap. they're the ones who need the workers. because right now we have actually more job openings than we have unemployed people. part of the reason for that is that they lack the skills, the unemployed people. so we have got to have a mechanism for giving them the equivalent of apprenticeship and other education. >> the facts, when you look at them, are daunting because the type of jobs that

were around not just 30 years ago, but even five or ten years ago have totally changed our education system at this point starts -- it never goes above 25 years old, does it? there's a whole group of able-bodied workers that maybe is reflected in that low participation rate because they don't have the skills for today's jobs >> it's true that's the reason almost 38% of the work force age people are not actively in the work force i think a lot of it is they don't have the skill >> there's automation coming there's so many pressures on the american worker. we tried in the past we have got -- we have 40 different job training programs spread across how many different government agencies? >> it's mind boggling. it's kind of an example of the bureaucracy and slowness of the government because it has not

been that effective. the results, for the money spent, the results are not there. this could streamline things >> one big problem with government is they love to create new entities but they never measure performance. in private sector you would never let a thing keep going forever without measuring. >> we all want -- democrats want to train people. they want everyone to have a job. but in this case, if you don't help the people that are not working, the economy -- gdp would be slower than if you did help this is a win-win for everybody involved because it's holding back the employment. we could be lower if these people had the skills for these 6 million jobs that are not filled now >> for sure. gdp growth is a function of several things population growth, work force growth, work force participation, productivity.

for productivity you need skills >> for republicans you're not going to hear, oh, this is another government program we'll throw money at a problem it's something that could help -- it's a growth initiative that could help gdp and help lower the employment rate and everybody wins >> this is not something that will be spending a lot of government money there will be the advisory group from industry and academia that will help us come up with ideas how to do things but we do not visualize this being multibillion dollar spending >> you have commitments lined up already. i know there was a goal. ivanka will talk about this later, but corporations are stepping up. that will be reflected today in who comes down here and some pledges you're seeing. >> yes it surely will be. i think it's going to catch on the same way that the thousand dollar bonuses caught op when we

p -- on when we put through the tax bill for corporations. you will see a ground swell of big american companies signing a pledge sheet that they will take on many more apprentices >> can we talk trade, auto tariffs. >> sure. >> things happening in the auto arena today. >> today we have our public hearings we have 40 people from the auto industry, from labor movement, from the auto parts industry, all sorts of people coming to testify. that's the next step towards coming to a conclusion what to do about autos >> larry kudlow was on yesterday saying don't be too doomy and gloomy about things. though you may not see the actual end of the tunnel, there play be some light are you seeing any give? we have -- we're all over the place with who we're -- who we are arguing with and trying to deal with here anyone that you see positive

signs coming around? >> yes, definitely positive signs. first, the new president of mexico has changed his rhetoric quite considerably he's made it very clear that he likes the idea of redoing nafta. he has a good team overlapping with the former president to conduct negotiations and we think those will get going quickly. meanwhile, on the 25th, the european commission is coming in to have a discussion >> there's someone back in the studio, i don't believe he's wearing a jacket, will you take a question from someone not wearing a jacket andrew, do you have a question >> i do. i know you had just touched on it, joe. these meetings today around autos. i wanted to just ask wilbur directly about this. this is a report in today's politico that says just one out

of the 45 witnesses, you were talking about the 40 witnesses today, is expected to testify in favor of imposing tariffs on autos. nearly all of the other 444 witnesses filed comments expressing opposition to president donald trump's threat to impose a 20% duty on foreign made autos and parts are you surprised by how lopsided those witnesses may ultimately be today? >> no, because the affected parties are the ones who will likely give testimony. if i'm a automobile manufacturer, and i don't want to have my current supply chain changed at all, naturally i will come and testify in opposition to it. when we did the steel and aluminum tariffs, there also was an awful lot of testimony in opposition to it but this is not a plebocite. the purpose of the hearings is

to get the facts together, make sure we take into account the cautions and opinions of the people who don't like it so that we do make the best informed decision at the end of the day >> that's a good word. so you won't take a poll of the 40 people coming if it's 25, 15, that doesn't matter >> okay. one more thing we had a guest on. he said previous trade wars, he had seen an average selloff in equity markets of 22%. it's notion is if we go to 50 bi 0 billion with china, that's a full blown trade war he also pointed out a november election that the president will be hesitant to go up through to november if this is in a full-blown trade war it will end there. are those concerns are you willing to go all the

way to the mat to get what you want >> first he talks about there being prior trade wars we've been in a trade war since the end of world war ii when our country unilaterally made all kinds of concessions to others so as the president has repeatedly said, the trade war idea is not new. what's different is our troops are coming forth >> becky, do you have a question >> just following up on the same issue, wilbur, if you had to look a year in the future, a year from now do you think we'll have a nafta agreement that we will be in do you think we'll have agreements with the eu do you think things will have calmed down with china or do you think this is a situation where tariffs will still be on >> i think we will have made very substantial progress well within a year. whether it's exactly china, eu,

or nafta, i would be surprised if we're still in this exact same situation as we are right now. >> i understand being surprised if we're in the same situation do you think it will be a better situation? >> yes, i do, because a lot of the other parties are finding that it's not such a life of bed of roses to be in the current situation with us. china, for example, is having a difficult time implementing their program against our soybeans they're literally having to pay farmers to try to convince them to grow soybeans instead of a more lucrative crop. they have not been able to replace our soybeans very effectively with beans from brazil brazil supplies about 55% of china's soybeans

we were about 33%. for brazil to replace us entirely, they would have to increase their soybean exports to china by 60%. guess what if they could increase them 60%, they would have done so already. so it is not as simple to put in these retaliatory measures as people have thought. i think the eu will find the same thing >> great, wilbur thank you. mr. commerce secretary, co-chair of the national council for the american worker. >> yes >> thank you for being with us early this morning >> thank you forhaving me on >> you're very welcome i'll toss back to you guys coming up next is peter navarro, office of trade and manufacturing policy director. andrew >> yes >> if you are inclined to be starstruck, anybody could walk by at any time right here.

you know who i'm thinking about that i might see >> it's possible >> eamon javers is who i'm thinking about that would be -- obviously a dream come true. don't see him yet. could be any second. >> well, please look out for him. thank you for that >> i will. >> we're looking forward to your interview with peter navarro in a bit. former white house strategist steve bannon made some headlines at the delivering alpha conference yesterday he sat down with michelle caruso-cabrera who interviewed him. she joins us this morning with some highlights. >> we talked about putin, the president's performance in helsin helsinki, situation with immigration and then spent a lot of time on china he's a firm defender of the president and the position the president is taking on china when it comes to tariffs ultimately i asked what is victory? >> how it ends is in victory

donald trump will not back off this the chinese are going to blink >> what is victory >> victory is when they give us full access to their markets and victory is when they stop -- remember, the warlordism in china and xi is under, i think, tremendous pressure is the state-owned industries main china 2025, they said it was to leapfrog us and converge on advanced chip design and robotics and artificial intelligence, eventually with genetics to converge on manufacturing. what the reality and what we saw with gte was -- zte, was to get off the west supply chain for components i think the number one thing you will see out of the trade war is the re-orientation of the complete supply chain of japan, western europe and the united states and southeast asia that 800 million people even before you get to india, okay around the freedom-loving countries. i think the regime in china is in deep trouble. >> what if they sell our treasuries what if they de-value the

currency doesn't believe they'll do it. he says the people of china are very anxious to get their money out of there as quickly as possible he thinks this regime in china is very, very weak >> part of the problem is what the people in china hear is what the regime wants them to hear. if you're traveling, you go overseas, you can see some different things, but they shut down so many things when you're there in china >> true. getting the message to them is difficult. i'm not sure he's that concerned about it at this point coming up, we'll tell you what he said about the president's performance in helsinki. he used the word fine, which i pushed back on it's an interesting discussion >> my favorite topic, bitcoin. >> he talked about bitcoin >> he's a believer in bitcoin, but also planning to develop his own cryptocurrency >> yes he says he is working on a couple of utility tokens >> bannon coin >> i don't know.

utility tokens are for various utilities. it was the lightning round what do you think that's about do you think there be a value to his token? i was trying to understand his take on the valuation of this stuff. >> i have no idea. we didn't spend that much time on it. >> so much ground to cover >> you bring up one topic with him, and you literally have to interrupt him if you're going to move on to something else. he will just talk. he's like that in private. we met a couple times in advance. what you see on stage is how he is behind closed doors >> stick around. we have reaction to your own interview. >> okay. >> nick johnston is here axios editor-in-chief. good morning to you. >> good morning. >> you got a chance to see the interview. what was your headline >> that's the way steve bannon views the world. this century will be about the war between china and the united states i think he's got a bit of truth in that. one of the great stories of this

century, i would call it more of a rivalry between the united states and china who advances the most in these semiconductor designs. who wins on you a fautonomous v and artificial intelligence. president xi has a 50-year time horizon trying to leapfrog the united states on exactly those technologies the story we ran a lot on axios is between tencent and alibaba and google and amazon. that's a true story. the way bannon approached it is we have to go to a trade war if not a real war at some point he viewed this as a clash of civilizations. >> nick, he also suggested -- larry kudlow was on first, he said we have not heard from xi we're waiting to do something here they're not -- >> were you surprised how open kudlow was about that? >> yeah. well, i think maybe one of the reasons he said that is steve bannon comes on later and says that's because for the first

time they have no idea what to do are you hearing that's what people in the white house think as well? >> i'm trying to report this out of china we have a great china expert, bill bishop who writes for us who was trying to think about that, why haven't we heard from xi his perception is they're ready to go to the mattresses on this. they view this the same way as bannon does. who will win the 21st century on earth? the united states or china xi takes a long-term view, 25, 50 years in the future and realizes how importantthese things are wilbur ross said something important in that interview on soybeans, how china can react to these kinds of tariffs the zte issue, those sanctions would have almost destroyed that company. so they have to think about if they ratchets up, how will they respond. >> the one comment i would make is that bannon seems to look at things similarly to the chinese in that they both take long-term historical perspectives on

things the chinese look back over centuries and centuries and try to figure these things out bannon takes a historical perspective. >> he does >> nick, before we let you go, just one question. you always reported on the white house, almost as if it's a soap opera. and there's so many different views and factions inside. joe is at the white house today. what is the reaction -- we will be interviewing so many different members of the administration what are the various sort of takes on what took place in helsinki >> yeah. our reporting inside the white house was a bit of dismay. they were gob smacked that the president would stand next to the president of russia and equivocate on who to believe we have a poll out this morning. a huge majority of republicans, 80% say what president trump did in helsinki was fine that speaks to the president's control over the party and the backing he has among republicans

and i think why we're not seeing many more people in the administration or on the hill speak out more forcibly about it >> great to see you. president trump just tweeting thank you to novartis for not increasing your prices on prescription drugs. likewise to pfizer we are making a big push to actually reduce the prices, maybe substantially on prescription drugs let's look at those stocks novartis unchanged, same with pfizer pfizer is a story we've known for some time. we will continue to watch novartis as we get closer to the opening bell. when we return, your list of the biggest stock movers and stocks to watch. and president trump's trade guru will join joe at the white house on the lawn in front of the big house. navarro will be talking about his next steps in the trade war. as we head to break, look at yesterday's s&p 500 winners and losers

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and deliver your clubs on-time, guaranteed, for as low as $39.99. shipsticks.com saves you time and money. make it simple. make it ship sticks. . welcome back you're watching "squawk box," live from the nasdaq market site in times square. good morning welcome back to "squawk box. i'm andrew ross sorkin along with becky quick joe kernen is in washington talking to administration officials about the white house's new jobs initiative.

he's right there on the white house lawn he will talk to peter navarro in a few minutes. in the meantime, want to get a quick check on the markets and show you what's going on u.s. equity futures at this hour, dow looking to open down about 75 points off. nasdaq off about 27 points s&p 500 looking to open down about 9 points wti crude right now a barrel is going to cost you about 68.05. tell you about a few stocks to watch ibm's second quarter revenue beat forecasts on newer and higher margin businesses like cybersecurity and cloud. ibm has jumped for three straight quarters after falling for six years straight. american express had better than expected second quarter results on loan growth and better spending by card holders. but amex had to set aside more

money to cover potentially bad loans, which may be a sign that customers may be struggling to pay bills. ebay had second quarter revenue that missed expectations and the third quarter forecast is underwhelming analysts. the company is blaming fewer games at sporting events and ticket sales at its stub hub unit the stock is off by 6.5% the biggest names on wall street gathered in new york yesterday for the eighth annual delivering alpha conference. leslie picker was there. she joins us with some other big headlines of the morning >> the biggest headline among all the panels was trade trade was a recurring theme. larry kudlow heads the white house economic counsel, he said he believes world trade is broken kudlow says he does not believe the chinese president, xi jinping, has any intention of

following through on their previous discussions >> insofar as we know, president xi at the moment does not wish to make a deal now, i'd love to be wrong on that we are waiting for him the ball is in his court and the tit-for-tat business which is nobody's favorite path, but nonetheless, they can end that this afternoon. this afternoon by providing a more satisfactory approach and essentially, jimmy, doing what the rest of the world knows needs to be done >> kudlow added they're looking for china to bring tariffs and other trade barriers down, get rid of ip theft. overnight china's foreign ministry spokesperson said that kudlow had unexpectedly distorted the facts and made bogus accusations that were

shocking and beyond imagination. for what it's worth, the hedge fund managers and private equity managers who spoke yesterday seemed optimistic that a trade deal would be reached and they were urging investors in the audience not do market trading on various news and headlines of the day, which seems like the market has not been reacting to. >> for the most part the market is stepping aside. we spoke with wilbur ross. he said he thinks a year from now the situation will be different. i pushed him he said it will be better, we won't have all these tariffs out there. hard to say when you don't know what the other guy is thinking >> mary erdoes yesterday talked about how the current market structure and the increasing complexities that we're seeing, the interkconnectiveness on a global scale, we have not been in a situation where we had a trade war and a market institutionalization like we have now it's been 50 years since we had

a trade war from a modeling standpoint it's very, very difficult for investors to do that and to think one step, two steps ahead. that's partially why they're urging investors to ignore the big headlines and focus on the long run >> lesliepicker, thank you big day. when we come back, the guest host at the top of the hour, joe moglia will join us to talk market momentum and what he's seeing from customers. and white house economic adviser kevin hassett will join joe in d.c., followed unby i va up by ivanka trump you're watching "squawk box" on cnbc

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♪ welcome back to "squawk box. we're right outside the white

house. joined by peter navarro, office of trade and manufacturing policy director. last time he was on -- and you've been on many times over the years. >> good friend of "squawk. >> this isn't orange county. >> not too bad this time of year at least >> you were on "squawk box" the day after the election and the futures were sharply lower >> futures were tanking. >> you reminded me of this andrew should listen this was funny you with the market down -- you weren't in the administration yet. you were in the transition you were in the campaign >> yes >> you said the dow is going to 25,000, even though it was down a lot. i don't remember saying this but i said that's modest >> andrew got all over me for being pie in the sky >> i said that's modest, and the pro growth policies would put it right there. >> what i explained at the time, which is true to this day, is that the president had a clear strategy it was tax cuts.

it was deregulation. it was unleashing the energy sector it was restructuring our trade deals, and getting trade on track. those four things work synergistically to drive this economy so we're at 4% unemployment historic low unemployment for blacks and hispanics we have investment off the charts manufacturing optimism at the highest level in history strong economy strong stock market and 25,000 on the dow >> the fourth leg of the stool is trade and that could be the bugaboo. that could be the wrench in the works, that could be the fly in the ointment, that could be the headwind that takes away from this other stuff you've been the most hawkish about pursuing that. you are sure this is the correct strategy because very few people on either side of the aisle agree with this strategy >> in terms of the data points, if you look at what's happened

since the president kourmgocoury put on tariffs on dishwashers, aluminum, we've seen an influx into those industries here so now we'll be building those products with american hands >> would you know if the supply chain was disrupted in the other areas of that? you don't know net-net whether there is a job loss or job gain based on some of those initiatives, do you? >> we watched that carefully you will have kevin hassett on later. we look at the chess board here is the thing. if you go back to 2002, the year after china joined the world trade organization, we know what bad trade deals do is they close over 70,000 factories, they offshore over 5 million manufacturing jobs, and if you could rewind that and ask yourself what would you do, you would be doing exactly what the president is doing now, which is

having a tough trade policy focused on free, fair, balanced and reciprocal trade that's what we want. we are facing a world which is not that way >> how will you know when you have accomplished all that can be accomplished before you're starting to have negative consequences how will we know when to say -- you won't get everything you want probably from china i know you saw larry yesterday president xi will not give everything he is willing probably to go into some areas other than trade to extract some pain when do you know you hit the end game >> i think from an investor point of view, we're cnbc here, right? from an investor point of view, it's important to put the china issue in perspective this is a trade dispute. if we can get that right, it will have strong, positive implications for the american economy and the global economy because what china is doing is upsetting the global economy

for investors, if you look at that, we have two economies which add up to about $30 apri30 trillion in annual gdp the trade we're affecting with the tariffs is near that so my point is it's much less disruptive than the headlines would suggest. and it's much more constructive as we see the adjustments made in terms of where investments will go and how we build today, since this is ivanka trump's day, she's doing a great job. i want to segue a bit into that. would you think, joe, five years ago that the problem we'd face today would be not enough skilled labor to fill all our jobs that the president's creating so what the president does -- >> the economy is creating >> well, i think it's what the president is creating with his policies >> i used to argue with the previous administration about who was creating the jobs. what's fair is fair. >> i go back to the day after

the election -- >> i understand. the economy is humming, the president's policies help that >> what the president has done this time with his daughter's help, look at the chess board over the next ten years we face a rapidly changing economy where we're moving from metal bashing type manufacturing to more advanced type of manufacturing we have to have different skill sets moving in realtime at warp speed in a different rhythm than in previous decades. so today what the white house is doing with ivanka's leadership is setting up a work force council designed to work with people like secretary acosta at the department of labor to build up programs working with private industry to make sure that we anticipate those skilled labor needs and work for it. the statistic i'm most happy about in terms of this administration going back to the

campaign we said there were millions of americans discourage the e. d, g on their couch and not included in the labor force we got close to a million of those folks back with hope and good wages into the labor force. this is what we have to do going forward we'll need skilled folks doing what we need that's what this labor council is about >> the participation rate is a problem. >> it's coming up. >> it is i don't know what percentage are able bodied people want to work who don't have the skills, but it's a fi knnite -- it's a big problem. we have the opioid problem, but there are able bodied people who don't have the skills for the economy, that would help the economy and these people >> there's good research on this now. this opiate crisis is at least partly the result of the devastation of the manufacturing community that happened in the last 15 years.

so we have to deal with a lot of these things >> just one other thing. because the technology that we're trying to match the skills with right now is going to really rule the world in the next five, ten years one of the of the problems with china is that in the past, they haven't played fair about the way that they acquire technology from us and that has to change. is that going to be -- is that what we're doing with china or is it purely a trade thing and i've been told anecdotally that they know that this can't continue, the way that they've operated with technology. do you see -- will they come around and can we prevent that at some point? >> we have to defend ourselves. my office came out with a report last month about how china uses what the national security strategy calls strategies of economic aggression basically. they're attacking our crowned jewels.

they make no bones about it. they steal it. you know that. >> right. >> they force the technology transfer so that when our companies go to technology they use all manner of coercion to say give us your technology if you want to sell in that market. they evade our export controls which are put in place by the department of commerce to prevent military technology. they accumulate so much of our wealth through unfair trade practices and their trade surplus with it, they buy it. they're going into silicon valley, austin and boston -- and just buying it up. >> we actually -- >> good news there, i was on the hill yesterday and there's strong signals that the siffus bill and senator cornyn has had great leadership on this is close to fruition and we really need to -- we need to stop that technology from being just bought and taken back to shanghai, because this is our future. if you look at artificial

intelligence, robotics, advanced manufacturing, high tech chipping, these are the china 2025 industries that china is targeting and so, unfortunately, it's a zero sum game now between china and the rest of the world and what we need to do as a country is to work with the rest of the world to make sure that we have a prosperity in the globe and a high stock market. it's all good. >> next time you're on, we'll pull up that sound byte from the day after the election. >> loved to see it. >> that's your finest moment as far as the stock market. >> i did predict a stock market crash in november of 2007. >> that as well. send it back. >> joe, thank you for that interview. congratulations to peter for being right about that. i remember -- >> thank you, sir, may have another? >> i don't really want us to go find that tape but for peter's

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still to come, our guest host today joe moglia and he's going to be making his way to the squawk set next. live from washington, d.c., joe

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this is a special presentation of "squawk box" live from the white house h. we're talking jobs, trade, the american worker and much more with president trump's economic team. up next, kevin hassett, adviser

ivanka trump, mick mulvaney and alex acosta as the second hour of "squawk box" begins right now. announcer: live from the beating heart of business, new york. this is "squawk box." good morning, everyone. welcome back to "squawk box" here on cnbc. we are live from the nasdaq market site in times square. i'm becky quick. our guest host today is joe mowing leah the chairman of td ameritrade. the reason for the music, joe is live in washington this morning and joe, we play the music as we see the sun coming up over the white house. what do you have coming up >> it's very inspiring, becky. i have right next to me cea director kevin hassett coming up as you guys have been listening and i hope you were because i know sometimes, you know, you have newspapers and everything,

but there's going to be a test, a little bit of a quiz, but andrew, we've been worried about automation, robotics, everything else that you probably are excited about this re-skilling of america initiative. >> i am. >> it's something -- it makes sense. you know what else we know what factors into gdp, population growth and productivity. so this is a component of that -- of that overall. i wanted to give you a chance to say, wow, this is great. >> i will be very happy to say wow this is great. i've been talking about reskilg and to me this is an important issue that we need to figure out how to address and i'm looking forward to hearing what kevin hassett and so many of your other guests and ivanka trump have to say about all of this. >> andrew, just one question about as it gets really bright, do you remember when you were in canand you didn't know -- what was the final decisions on the sunglasses because i'm starting

to squint and i'm going to have

our guest host this morning is t.d. ameritrade chairman. he's also of the head football coach at coastal chair university and it's also great to see you. you took over as ceo back in 2001. at that point the firm had 24 billion in client assets. under your leadership as ceo,

that grew to $280 billion -- it was billion dollars and now it's over $1.2 trillion. so when we want to know what's really happening with the average investor, you are a great person to talk to. you've got a lot of ways to seeing what investors are doing. we're watching markets right now and you saw s&p at a five month high. the nasdaq closed less than a point off its all-time high. what's happening right now >> i think the client base in general is very constructive with regard to the market but one of the things that i believe and i still believe is that, the retail investors as opposed to institutional investor tends to be a lagging investor. if you look at this year involved, we were involved with the first four months of the year but as the markets have become more and more constructive our base has gotten more and more involved and we'll have variations in a week. we've been doing almost a

million trades a day and one of the things -- >> how does that compare to -- >> it would be higher. it would be higher. and one of the things that we've noticed recently, though, is the clients are starting to ask more about fixed income and are looking for more yield with regard to the cash. >> wow. looking to yield is interesting when you realize the ten year is still trading at 10.9%. why do you think they're asking about that >> i'm talking about -- it's about cash. so for a long time nobody was getting any money. no investor was getting any money. now, you can get 1% or get a little bit more. the 1% with regard to some of the -- >> is that a suggestion to looking to protect the profits you've made at this point or lock in for safety >> as you start to trim some of the profits that you've had in your portfolio, that's a good place to put them until you find a better place to do that. >> joe, is going to be with us for the rest of the morning and we have a lost things to talk

about not only with markets but also coaching young men. >> all right. let's get back down to kernen who is in washington with another squawk news maker this morning. joe, take it away. >> thank you. i'm here with kevin hassett. andrew, are you listening, kevin just told me something horrific about the number of displaced workers from a.i. and robotics. you have an idea what that number could be in the future? >> i don't know the number. what is it >> you haven't read our report. come on. you're the nerdiest guy on the show. what we're looking at is between now and 2030 some where between 14,000,060 million people are going to lose their trucks. >> that's a lot. >> 14 is a lot. >> will lose their jobs. >> because of automation and a.i. and the problem is that if you look at people of different skill levels, it's the people of middle and low skills that tend to lose their jobs to automation and, so, they really are going to have a re-skilling challenge

that's even bigger than what we're seeing right now. >> you're a deep thinker and you're at a.i. and you are and this is your job. >> things like this ahead of time and start to get ready for it. >> and not even looking into the future, we're at a point right now where it's effecting the ability to hire people in terms of the skills gap. it's not even worried about 2030. we should've started a couple years ago. >> and if you look at it, about 51% of people who lose their jobs have to change industries and they need training to do that because maybe 85%, 90% on training people get spent before they graduated college. there's not a whole lot that gets developed after that. we're second to last place in how much money the government spends on training and our training programs -- it doesn't mean we don't have any of them. we have 42 of them scattered across 12 agencies.

they're just disorganized. >> people want to cancel them based on the type of success. >> they've not been well designed and that's the kind of thing with this -- >> they use it -- they use it as a poster child for bloated government some of these programs, don't they >> it's crazy to think that we have 42 programs scattered across 12 agencies. the right thing to do is to have as many programs as you need but to have them in one agency that has a -- >> we're looking at all of the above. >> we're thinking about things also like pell grants. maybe if you want to learn to do something else like that's more practical and takes less time like, you know, working in electricity or plumbing, then you ought to be able to -- >> is the overall budget going up or down based on what we spend on re-skilling and is the

private sector going to make it less expensive for the budget? >> right now the things we're doing today are about studying and making things better. if we're second to last place in spending on these things and we're looking at a period of time where we'll see an explosion of people who have to re-skill, then i think it's pretty unlikely that we as a country are not going to invest a lot more in people that are out of college but separate from their work and therefore need to re-skill. >> joe, you're not going to try to get him as a client of ameritrade. >> he's probably already a client. >> kevin, you're the guy, if i'm not mistaken, that actually wrote the book dow 36,000 is that correct >> that's correct. >> that was the late '90s that

got published. i read that book and if you remember the '90s were the dotcom boom and then we had the bubble bursting and we had some problems for the next three years and then later on, of course, we had the financial crisis. so i have no doubt that you're going to be right one of these days, but between now and then, the two bubbles that prevented you from being there right now would be what happened with the dotcom bubble burst and the financial crisis. as you look down the road, the next couple years, is there a bubble out there that scares you, makes you nervous >> as you mentioned you read the book and the whole point of the book really is, if you try to say what's going to happen in the next year or two then it's a losing game. joe has some hedge fund friends that could do that effectively but the typical investor needs to figure out what share of their wealth they're willing to put into equity and then they need to leave them in there for a really long time. as we've seen, even when there's craziness that happens in the market comes back, i could think

of a lot of bad things that could hurt markets. i would say the biggest bad thing is we made so much progress passing all these policies like tax reform and deregulation that have led to a surge in sentiment and economic growth and if politics were to change in the u.s. so democrats would come in and pass big tax hikes and reregulate, then that would be terrible. the markets would be terrified of that. >> i appreciate that. >> thanks. >> i don't see you, kevin, as a true believer -- >> true believer in -- oh. >> trade wars? >> i think the president is going to make great trade deals. he wrote the book "the art of the deal" and he understands our trading partner have been treating us unfairly for a long time. i believe the president when he says that he's going to use the leverage that he has to make better deals and, in fact, there's a lot of signs that there's movement. the president mentioned yesterday that we're making

great progress with mexico. we've got lots of representatives from europe coming over to talk the next few weeks. i think that the president is serious that if people continue to treat us unfairly then he's going to be tough on them. >> you're with larry kudlow on some of this. don't be doom and gloom. there's signs of movement. >> plenty of signs of movement. >> will you know when it becomes counterproduct for the united states will you be able to tell navarro or president trump or whomever that it's now -- what's -- anecdotally -- >> there's some disruptions and i understand that and there's some retaliation going on. we're hoping that the trade deals that we make are going to clean those things up, but we watch very carefully the data coming in and so far the data hasn't indicate that had the disruptions that are mentioned are in the data. so for example, in the latest jobs report, one of the things

we've been watching is employment and steel consuming industries because steel prices have gone up, it actually surged a lot because the economy is so strong that people are buying machines and everything even though they're more costly because of steel. the things we've been looking for are not showing signs of anything serious yet. >> overall -- >> it could be because right now it's about 4% of u.s. import that's are affected by this. that's just of imports. so i know that there's a lot going on and it's going to be very stressful for people and markets. we're talking about a small percentage. >> at this point, you know, you can -- people involved in the economic team can sort of walk around here with their chest out and feeling good. i hope that we're not on the side -- the other shot of a period wheresome of the stuff is, you know, a headwind because things are going well. it had to be done sometime. maybe this is the time to do. >> it's a good time to try to clean things up and it's also

one of those things that's a political reality that president trump was elected, he's got a short amount of time to fix the economy -- >> a lot of the people that elected him are the ones feeling it, though. >> but i think that if you look at it, the people who elected him are the people that in goods producing industry and they're surging in employment at about double the rate as we saw under president obama. so president trump's policies, especially deregulation and tax cuts so far are exactly benefiting the people that voted for the president. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> you going to be here -- will i see you in a year in the same job? >> i'm going to serve for a good long time. >> you heard it hear first. >> thank you very much. still to come this morning from the white house, presidential adviser ivanka trump. budget director mick mulvaney and labor secretary alexander acosta. stay tuned, you are watching "squawk box" ocn. n bc

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welcome back. take a look at futures and let's show you what's going on and how things are setting themselves up. we are in the red getting close to triple digits on the dow. it looks like it would open about 95 points. nasdaq off by 27 points. s&p 500 looking to open down around nine points. we want to have a conversation

with cathy wood. let's talk about where the markets are going. you have a couple of stocks that you really like right now that i wanted to talk about. in a nvidia is at the top of your list, what's going on >> it has his tentacles into many of our innovation platforms, so artificial intelligence, absolutely essential to have the gpus for the training side of that, autonomous vehicles, graphic processing units are going to be the brains of autonomous. genomic research. nvidia is critical in doing genomic research. that p.c. gaming is how many people understand it but it is really transforming our economy -- >> where's that leave all the other chip makers? >> intel's having a lot of problems. they've missed a lot of markets. mobile being the biggest. moores law is slowing down.

it's been four years since they're last upgrade. that has never happened before. we see -- just made an acquisition yesterday of a chinese a.i. chip company. very interesting, so i think on twitter it was -- there was wait a minute, there's something wrong here. i thought it was the other way around. >> cathy, the -- i want you to know i am an investor in your funds, number one. >> thank you. >> my rational behind that is, number one, i think you're smart, but two, if you look at the different things that you focus on with regards to the innovative technology, the dfa see consequencing and robotics and energy storage and blockchain, all sorts of things. with all the noise we have with regard to the economy, trade wars, they're an advantage to be able to focus on those disruptive technologies regardless of what's going on in the market you don't have to worry about the fed or markets going up or

down. the technology itself that differentiates it. >> what's really interesting about our strategy is, during uncertain times and especially during '08 own '09, our innovation platforms gained market share, massively. why? they're cheaper, faster, better. retail sales down 15%, 20%, amazon sales up at its worse. sales portion.com worst quarter's was 20%. i say that, their fundamental is fantastic. because these stocks at the time were not big parts of indexes and because the public markets had been moving passive, they will get hurt in a down turn. i know that truth wins out, we know that truth wins out, so we lead even more aggressively. >> just to go back to that very quickly, all the things you mentioned didn't even get to the change in leadership, does that make intel in a more vulnerable

position than some of the others >> i know that many people believe that there was a personal reason, but i think there was a fundamental reason. >> and that's what i'm asking. >> tesla, you like it. >> love it. >> you love tesla. >> yes. >> tell me what's going on and why do you like it. >> so we believe that tesla along with google is in the lead as far as the autonomous taxi network opportunity and in tesla's case the autonomous truck platoon opportunity. this new world is coming at us much faster -- >> why do you put tesla so high on the list? people will tell you that gm has better technology than tesla does right now. >> the secret sauce here we believe is data. tesla has collected more than 10 billion miles worth of data through autopilot. the others are nowhere near that. >> do you think they'll get

through their production headache >> yes. if he can land two rockets on a barge in the ocean, he'll be able to manufacturer model 3s. >> thank you. when we come back, our mystery chart of the day. shares have surged more than 50% so far this year and its market value hit $900 billion for the first time yesterday. we have the answer when we come right back. time now for today's trivia question. what tech giant was originally called backrbackru calledbackrup -- called backrup? the answer when we return. not that kind of hurt. yeah, aflac paid us cash in just one day to help with our car payments and mortgage.

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now the answer to today's trivia question. what tech giant was originally called backrub the answer, google. coming up in just a little bit, the president's daughter and presidential adviser, ivanka trump, making a very big announcement on the american worker today. she's going to join joe live from the white house lawn next.

welcome back. are we ready

welcome back. we are here with ivanka trump, adviser to the president and a special guest robert felder which is a mechanical -- you're in mechanical engineering. everybody says we need more stem. you do stem. i'm going to be a -- it's hard. >> not only that but robert -- i was just with him in new york at a university -- p.t. is a high school program where -- it's part of actually what we're doing and what we're focused on in terms of skills development and job training and vocational education, but robert graduated this spring from p.t. tech, from the high school, with 20 degrees towards his college education and is planning to be -- why don't you tell it, joe. >> like ms. trump was saying -- >> ivanka. >> like ivanka was saying. i graduated from the p.t. tech program.

i was part of the first class and i graduated with 28 college credits with my degree work. i'll be going to alfred university to study mechanical engineering. >> it's amazing. >> this program that -- there's going to be an executive order signed by the president -- >> yes. >> -- later today. it has to do with trying to matchup the workforce with the jobs that are not only here now but getting more different in the terms of skills and we're not addressing it right now. that's basically -- >> 100%. and this is something we've heard from employers large and small, so the larger employers are having trouble finding workers with the skills they need to fill their job vacancies and the small businesses are struggling even more because they're competing with the larger businesses. we see unemployment as obviously historic lows, but that brings to the forefront an issue we've

had for a long time in this country, where we cease to focus on real skills training and preparing students for careers. so there's been really for the last 20 years a focus on one path and that's the university path and that's a great path for a lot of people, but there are alternative pathways to families sustaining careers and p.t. tech is one of those examples. some people will leave p.t. and go straight in the workforce. others will go to university like robert will with a large amount of credits and far along and far advanced in their studies. we also have to be thinking about the mid-to-late career worker who needs to be retrained and re-skilled -- >> there's no education opportunities for people over 25, really. >> as a country by and large, all investment in education stops at the age of 25 and that doesn't work in such a fast changing increasingly digital economy. so this council is going to focus on taking a holistic

approach to still development, whether it's k. through 12 or whether it's through mid-to-late career workers and bring all of government together to device a national workforce strategy and we're calling on the private sector to step up. some of the best programs are programs like robert where industry comes into the school and says these are the jobs we need, please train our students with these skills and we'll employ them. >> i know there's a goal in terms of corporate participation that you far exceeded. >> the president will be making an announcement today -- >> are you allow today say before he makes it >> so we had a goal of 500,000 new enhanced career opportunities -- >> these are individuals -- >> these are each individuals, all new programs, whether it's new jobs for people leaving high school and going directly into the workforce or it's re-skilling opportunities for older employees who are at risk of losing their job to automation. these are all new commitments.

we had a goal of 500,000 and we have blown that out of the water. so today we're going to have industry and have trade associations, we'll have representatives from small business and they'll be coming to the white house and signing what we call a pledge to the american worker and this starts today but it's going to continue for the months and years to come, because ultimately we want business to step up to the plate and recognize that the most important role they can play is helping to promote and advance their own workforces and therefore the country as a whole, so we hope to all of your viewers, we hope you'll step up to the plate, you'll sign the pledge an amplify some of the great works so many companies are already doing to invest in skills training and create new and better opportunities for american workers. >> companies would sit back and the government was supposed to retrain people so we have 42 different job retraining programs spread across 12

different agencies. you try to get some data about how well it works and it's like are we really getting so little for the amount of money that we're spending. so it needs to be streamlined and it needs to be -- the corporates that benefit from the trained workers need to have some skin in the game as well and that's -- >> the best work is happening out in the states and it's when the states, city, local governments, they team up with the private sector, the community colleges, the technical schools, the universities, team up with industry and they create curriculum and they train students in that curriculum and the employers hire on the back end. what we can do as a federal government is, a, amplify that work, which we're seeking to pass and reauthorize in the coming weeks, but we can leverage big data. what's amazing is today there are 6.6 million vacant jobs in this country. there are 6.1 million unemployed

workers but there are many outside that have figure who are just outside of the workforce who have given up and are on the sidelines are now coming back into the workforce which is really exciting. when you think about the 6.6 million vacancies how can we leverage government data to inform people what industries they're in geographically where are those jobs located and maybe most importantly, what are the underlying skills to fill them. right now all we can say is, which industries have vacancies, but we can't say where the jobs are located or what the underlying skills are to fill those jobs in those industries. >> what we can do with big data now and with enterprise software and everything we read about every day, companies involved with that, i don't know why it hasn't been applied to this. >> and think about how will this empower parents and students and workers to make smarter decisions about where they spend their money in terms of career

and education and how they spend their time. if they know what skills are in demand and what jobs are available and so some states have done a better job at creating transparency but this is never been done on a national level. we're working with industry to change that. >> keep us updated. we'll hear more and more about it. you saw wilbur's excited about it. >> yes. he'll be working with us to engage the private sector and to make sure that employers, large and small, across the country and trade organizations sign the pledge and affirm their commitment to investing in -- >> it's hard to tell wilbur was excited. >> he's very excited and today's announcement will be amazing, so robert's going to be joining us for it. >> a lot of math, robert. it's worth it, though. i found with math, you put the time in, it's like eureka, it finally starts -- good luck to you. >> having spent time with robert, that won't be a problem. >> i had a problem on my side.

good luck, thank you and we'll continue to have some conversations about this -- and you were watching earlier. you got a tv set you can watch the rest of the show. >> we will watch the rest of the show, so we always do. >> great. ivanka trump and robert feldman -- felder. great. all right. becky and andrew i'll send it back to you. >> thank you very much. we've been watching that conversation very closely. our guest is joe mowglia and he had some thoughts on this too. not only is the chairman of t.d. ameritrade. he's also the coach of carolina's football team. >> i was very impressed with robert. he's got 28 credits to go towards master's and interest in mechanical engineering. i thought he was a big kid but i don't know if p.t. has football -- >> putting out the offer right now. >> 80% of all students that go to college change their major. that's when you're making the

decisions to take all these extra skrids in a particular course. there's a good chance later on you'll change your mind. you're only15, 16, 17. i was wondering what kind of advice/guidance/counseling do they get in terms of do they really know what their major is supposed to be. >> that is something you give to your players and we'll talk abomore about that later. >> great. investors have a lot to watch on the geopolitical front right now. so we have called an expert in to help us sort through that noise. former majority leader george mitchell will join us live when "squawk box" comes right back. so no matter what you trade, or where you trade, you'll only pay $4.95. fidelity. open an account today. who would have guessed? an energy company helping cars emit less.

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welcome back. making headlines right now, blackstone beating street forecast for the second quarter. they had economic net income of 90 cents per share. it's earnings up 55% from a year ago. chairman and ceo steve schwartzman said the firm delivered good returns despite turbulence in global markets and we heard from coo john gray at delivering alpha yesterday. >> we're looking at sectors or areas where there's better

value. we tend to be scale players in almost everything we do, so larger size deals that involve public companies for us tends to be more interesting. things whereas i said things we can intervene. tech enabled services where we see real growth, places like india where we've seen really great fundamentals on the i.t. side, business processing side, i think you need more conviction in this environment and you go in this environment from sort of buying everything, let's say, five or six years ago where you could be more comfortable to be much more narrowly focused in where you'll deploy capital. former trump adviser steve bannon sounding off at yesterday's alpha conference covering many geopolitical hot spots. >> good morning. thanks for having me. we spent most of the interview discussing the trade war with china but we started out discussing the president's press conference with vladimir putin in helsinki on mondays, which

was widely panned, steve bannon very supportive of the president. >> i thought the press conference was fine. i would like to be a little stronger maybe about the meddling but at the end of the day and the democrats are just going to have to embrace this, the meddling is on the margins, right? it's just not that big a deal. >> fine is a strong word. >> fine's actually a weak word. >> it's a strong word to describe it. i saw him in singapore and he was very much in command. >> command presence. >> and he was not in command on monday. that wasn't a fine performance. you really think that? >> singapore and helsinki are two different things. >> i also asked bannon about the president's attitude toward vladimir putin directly. >> i think he likes putin. it appears to me he likes putin. >> he gravitates towards personality that are strong personalities. he likes president xi, he likes

erdogan who i think is the most dangerous guy in the world and i think he's attract today putin because he looks at those people as strong leaders of countries, they're nationalists, they put their countries first and they get on with it and they don't think -- >> does it bother you he's attracted to those people? >> no, it doesn't. >> steve bannon doesn't really care much about what people think of him either so he feels very brave to say certain things. >> michelle, stay here. we'll continue this conversation but i want to bring in an expert on this. george mitchell is the former senator of maine who served as senate majority leader, he's the former envoy of northern ireland under president clinton and a former middle east peace envoy for president obama. he's now chairman of the piper law firm. thank you for being here. let's talk about this, first of all, meddling is on the margins when it comes to russia, your thoughts >> well, i think the russian

actions can be described as more than meddling. i think dan coats, the president's personally appointed head of national intelligence described it as a grave threat to our country, to our democratic institutions and it deserved much more of a strong response than the president provided. >> what do you think the implication of him describing it the way he did is long-term or even short-term? >> this is been a tough week for president trump and a tough week for the united states. the president's standing around the world is the lowest any american president has had, certainly in modern memory. in finland, an american ally traditional hostile to russia when the summit was held, fins by 75% hold a negative view of president putin.

president trump they have an 83% negative view. that's true all around the world. it's dragging down the president and it's dragging our country down with them. america's strength has been based on the reality around the world, the perception and the reality that here, unlike all past history was a great power with values, mistakes are made, of course, we're all humans. humans, institutions and persons are all fallible, but america stood for something, freedom, opportunity for all and it was the basis of building the international order from which we have so much benefited and that president's tearing that down and our country's coming down with it. >> there's certainly some sort of change in what has been the status quo since the end of the last world war. >> yes. >> are there some reasons that you can see for breaking down some of the change is it fair to say we haven't

always gotten the best deal on trade? >> yes. >> is it fair to say that maybe it's time for some change in some areas or you think that's not fair either? >> i think that is very fair. overall we have benefited enormously from the spectacular increase in international trade that's occurred since the second world war but there have been exceptions and china is one of them. the president is absolutely right that china is violating the rules which it agree today abide by has taken advantage of its so-called developing nation status and should be called to account. the problem is that a tariff program allegedly grounded in national security not following the procedures of the world trade organization is the least effective way to deal with china and just at the time when we should be rallying our determine allies in europe and in asia to join us in confronting china on

these issues, we are, in fact, alienating and antagonizing all of those people. this is not just the europeans who are historical allies which who we have strong bonds of blood, it's countries like japan and others in asia. they all have a common interest and we have frittered that away. the president's decision to withdraw from the transpacific partnership was a grievous error, the best favor -- >> it was never going to happen. go look at the dnc and look at all those signs that were against tpp. no matter who won the presidency, tpp wasn't going to happen. i know everybody brings it up all the time, but the whole country, for whatever reason, has gone against free trade, maybe that's why president trump actually made it to the presidency. steve bannon argued yesterday

that president trump in some ways is trying to save the post world war ii order, especially when it comes to, for example, nato, that europe had turned into a protectorate because we are spending all the money on their defense and getting them to actually pay for it equalizes them and raises them. do you believe that? >> i disagree with almost everything you just said. first off, i was a senate majority leader when the senate ratified the world trade agreement. the arguments you just made about the tpp were made then, but national leaders made the effort to persuade the american people and a majority in the senate to ratify the world trade agreement. if you have the nations and the world's leader denigrating it, yes, people follow that. if you have a strong, aggressive national leader -- >> bill clinton would have -- that would have been -- tpp would have been happened under hillary clinton?

>> i'm not sure it would or not. i think she was wrong to reverse her position because she thought she need it had to defeat bernie sanders. i believe that was a mistake. but the president made a further mistake when he withdrew from it and so i just don't agree with the premises that you set forth. >> sir, if you go back to what you said in the beginning which was pretty serious about the president and his current status after his trips, i'm pretty sure he's not going to call you on this, but if he called you today and said how do i turn this around how do i make our country feel better how do i get my ratings more positive what kind of advice would you give him >> the first advice i would give him is stop denigrating our allies, stop this practice of using a national security provision to impose tariffs on our friends and allies. secondly, say the truth about putin, which all of his advisers have said. is there any doubt in anybody's mind here that if barack obama

had said in helsinki facing putin what trump said that mike pompeo, john bolton, all of the republicans in the senate would be -- would have done dozens of television interviews, have written dozens of op ed articles denouncing him as weak and feckless and not representing the united states. change the position with respect to putin, except what his own advisers have said and what he has the president is known for a year and a half that putin personally approved these actions against the united states and deal with that directly and treat our allies as allies and friends. of course, they should be encouraged. you talked about contributions to nato. they made a commitment to increase -- to 2% by 2024. they are online to meet those targets, some countries already have done so. the president's actions did not change their policies one bit as both president macron, the

italian leader and others said after the meeting. we're on target to meet our goals. yes, they should be prodded. no, they have not done all they should, but the way to deal with them is not as hostile foes, but as friends and allies with whom we should work toward a common goal because we share common values. >> great to see you. thank you for coming in. coming up this morning, some stocks to watch plus at the top of the hour, mick mulvaney is going to join joe live on the white house lawn. stay tuned.

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"squawk box" in washington. we've heard from commerce secretary wilbur ross. do you see positive signs coming around >> yes, definitely positive signs. >> president trump's top trade adviser, peter navarro. >> if we can get that right, it'll have very strong positive implications for the american economy and the global economy. >> and ivanka trump. >> because ultimately we want business to step up to the plate. >> and the news makers continue with budget chief mick mulvaney and labor secretary alexandria acosta. a special hour of "squawk box" begins right now.

if you're hearing that music, it can only mean one thing and that is we are right outside the beautiful white house on a pristine day in washington, d.c. i don't know whether, just because it's early, it's not humid, it doesn't feel hot. there's not a cloud in the sky and it's just a beautiful scene. you've seen also who we already had on. we've had a conversation with ivanka, ivanka trump, obviously, the first daughter as well as wilbur ross, peter navarro. i sometimes call him a fire brand but he certainly tells us what he feels. so coming up, i've got mick mulvaney and alexander acosta. normally i have a teleprompter, andrew and becky, we have about four screens in front of us. i look -- i feel like my daughter and son now. i'm looking at my iphone constantly because all my instructions on what to do are here. i'm not being -- >> you're not listening to the voices in your head. >> that's what i do to my kids

too. >> i'm not being distracted but we certainly have a lot still coming up and i've been saying that i'm trying to get one more interview and i kept saying we'll see what happens. you know who else says that and that's potus himself, so i will be speaking to president trump later today and we'll tape that and we'll have that tomorrow morning. we'll talk about a lot of things but obviously, we're a business network and keep it in our lane. there's a lot of good things to talk about as far as the economy. we'll touch on some other things as well, but time is always constrained but looking forward to it. we'll have that, guys. >> we are looking forward to that too. it's going to be -- tomorrow morning right here on cnbc. >> oh, all right. we're actually going to stay here right now and get to mick mulvaney, omb director, acting cfpb director, am i leaving anything out

you've got at least two jobs. >> that's enough letters. >> and when -- you know, i can't control myself. when you sat down, i said, so you're the guy lowering the unemployment rate because as alexandria owe kazia cortez says, that's why its low because people are working two jocks. >> -- jobs. >> that's not how the numbers work but she's a socialist so it doesn't surprise me she doesn't understand math. so that's all right. >> she had trouble with -- we're digressing she had trouble explaining what a democratic socialist is. is that a better than a normal socialist? >> i think what you're seeing is she's the new face of the democratic party. that's fine. it doesn't surprise me that they don't understand economics. apparently she doesn't understand international affairs if that's what the democrats want to offer. that's fine with me. this is a big deal. we don't do this for everybody. you must be really important. >> i am and i said that to you, although, i only have one job.

let's talk about this rollout. i'm explaining it in a lot of different ways that should appeal to you and that is i have an impression of jobs training programs that isn't very positive. >> that's fair. >> based on the results that we've seen in the past which have not been very positive. a lot of money, like so many programs it seems to be -- you know, you figure if you spend enough that it's absolutely going to bear fruit and it doesn't all the time. 42 different retraining or training programs spread across 12 different agencies. there's got to be a better way, a form efficient way and a way to get better results and this is -- >> i have to laugh. you're saying there's 42. i'm saying there's 46. >> no one knows. >> some said 47 or 48 and that's part of the problem. we have suggested to congress as part of our reorganization plan putting the department of education and the department of labor together and putting all or most of the workforce

training programs, the workforce development programs there. until congress does that, this task force, this commission is an intermediate step to allow us to focus our energies to get these dis prit programs together and on the same page. >> this is mick mulvaney cutting funding to education and to programs, that's what they'll say. >> here's what i say to my democratic friends and i do have them, believe it or not. look, i stole this from peter wel welsh. >> mick, you're a republican, you hate -- you like small government. we should all hate bad government and my democrats friends should. republicans might look at a fixed department of education and labor and say, we want to get the same amount of output for less money. democrats want to say, we want to get more output for the same amount of money but both of us should be interested in fixing bad government which is what we have now.

>> and should be interested in figuring out a way to prepare our workforce to matchup with the jobs that you're changing fast and furious. there's one blockbuster left, i think it's in alaska. there's one left. there were two left and -- you remember blockbuster ten years ago? >> i'm old enough to remember blockbuster. >> but that's just one example. things are changing fast and furious. we've got more jobs available than people to fill them. we need to match the skills. >> and part of the job of this task force is going to be to make sure -- one of the things we struggle as with a government is trading people for the right jobs. when you've got 40 odd programs in 12 or 15 or 16 different agencies, there's not going to be a consistent theme. we may well be training people for jobs at blockbuster, to use your anaulgy and this group, mostly from the private sector, is going to make sure we're focusing our effort and money on training people for jobs that are actually out there. >> the private sector will benefit so they should put up a

lot of the money, what's wrong with that? >> they pay a bunch of taxes to begin with. i'd be more than happy to have them help us spend that money. >> big data is applied so effectively to so many different places y can't we matchup geographically and in terms of skills and where the jobs are with where the people who need them. >> we do a lousy job with big data. we're still operating. there's some systems in the government that still operate on a dos system. there was a hearing i had a couple years back where part of the defense problem is still working on 8 inch floppies. we don't do a good job of big data at all. >> on your commodore computer i guess. how are you viewing the ongoing trade disputes how -- what's the end game how long does it last? does it become a significant headwind >> that's a great question. what's the end game? the end game is the economy gets

better, jobs get better, pay goes up. everything else the president has done from his tax policy to his energy policy to our deregulatory agenda that we're helping him with over at the office of management and budget has all been aimed at growing the economy and making everybody in this company better off. trade is pointed towards that same direction. it's harder to get there because we have to influence other people's actions, but the end game is we're better off. >> how many hours a day are you working? >> all of them. >> how long you going to have both jobs? >> not very long. my successor, the president has nominated cathy cenninger on the hill today. she's a tremendous candidate and my hope is she's confirmed before the senate goes home in august. >> great. mick mulvaney, thanks for stopping by. which job are you going to now >> it's thursday so i'm across the street at the bureau today. >> okay. excellent. thank you. alexander acosta, i think

we'll wrap things up in a couple of hours and i got to prepare for the president, so i'm going to send it back to you now, becky and andrew. >> joe, thank you. if it's tuesday it must be belgium, is that where mick is at this point. >> right. we'll check back in with joe in just a few minutes. our guest host this morning is joe moglia, he's the chairman of t.d. ameritrade, also the football coach at coastal carolina university and that's what i'd like to talk about. you have 150 young men in your program and you're not only their coach but you look at your role as a mentor and trainer very seriously in terms of building leadership out of them. tell us about how you go about doing that. >> one of the things that i think we have a challenge in this country with in general, becky, is our kids tend to grow up with the subconscious sense of entitlement. so when we have a guy come to our school, our program, he's

been a high school star and he tends to have that. so what is it that we might be able to do that potentially starts to adjust the way he -- >> when you say high school star, what does that mean? >> all the guys we recruit as far as football players are high school stars. >> they often get special type of treatment and they often have that subconscious sense that somebody is going to take care of me. at the end of the day is, we don't have any rules in our program and our philosophy is you stand on your own two feet, you take responsibility and treat others with respect. because we have all males we call that bam, be a man. that's the way i raise my three daughters and my family. the management standard i had at merrill lynch and it's the philosophy upon which we build the program. it's not just football. it's their attitude in the classroom. >> i want to know how it has changed these men and how you keep it going?

how do you keep instilling it? >> first of all, you're always responsible. what you look for upfront -- what you hear a lot of time, my teacher doesn't like me or my coach, it's too hot outside, my parents don't get it. i got an issue with my girlfriend. every time you say that, you're subconsciously letting yourself off the hook with regard to what's going on. a practical example. one of the things we do that nobody else does, we give up -- i give up. i give up 30 minutes a practice a week to talk about subjects that have nothing to do with football. my guys know what isis stands for. most of the country does not. the average age of my team is 20. they're kids your age putting their life on the line so we can live in freedom. living in freedom, there are responsibilities associated with that. we can only pray that our

political and military leaders have the guts to make the right decision. we live in a democracy. we got the right to vote. 116 years of college football, i'm very proud of this, other than perhaps the service academies. the other program who's entire team voted in november 2016 for the president of the united states was coast carolina's football team that's because of this. that's the life after football perspective related to bam. take responsibility for yourself and that touches on every aspect of your life. >> i love this. i do. >> i want to talk -- >> we can spend two hours on this one. >> we could. >> exactly. you give a half hour a week to talk to your guys about this. we'll talk more about this. joe is our guest host for the morning. let's take a check on the markets this morning. yesterday, you saw both the s&p 500 and the dow close higher. it's the highest levels since early thursday. nasdaq was down but only a half a point off. staff futures are indicated down by triple digits.

s&p futures off by ten and the nasdaq down by 29 points. the ten-year note right now the yield has picked up a little bit. actually it's back down. 2.882%. here's what's happening at this hour. couple things goin on. check out shares of tesla. falling after a downgrade to underperform. the stock still overvalued. reiterating its bearish stance on the electric carmaker. slower sales of model s and x on increased competition and what they called an unsustainable capital structure and that's an issue that a number of people have talked about before. want to get you caught up on a couple of earnings report. dow component travelers posting a second quarter miss that's largely due to a significant increase in catastrophe losses. travelers own a 1.82 per share that compares to consensus cuss element of $2.42.

revenue did come in above forecast. blackstone, beating street forecast for the second quarter. economic net income of 90 cents per share that beat consensus estimates of 75 cents, earnings up 55% from a year ago. we heard from had the coo of blackstone yesterday. >> we're looking at sectors or areas where there's better values. so we tend to be scale players in almost everything we do, so larger size deals that involve public companies for us tends to be more interesting, things whereas i said, we can go in and intervene or situations where industries, tech enabled services where we see real growth, places like india where we've seen really great fundamentals on the i.t. side, business processing side. i think you need more conviction in this environment and you go in this environment from sort of buying everything, let's say, five or six years ago where you could be more comfortable to be

much more narrowly focused in where you'll deploy capital. >> shares of blackstone this morning down just marginally. when we come back this morning, we will get back to the broader markets. >> they just turned from red to green for a quick second. dow futures down 103 points. nasdaq off by 26, the s&p down close to ten. coming up, we will take you back to the white house for an exclusive interview with labor secretary alexander acosta and another big interview coming up tomorrow, joe is sitting down with president trump. we will bring you that full kfrs tomorrow starting at 6:00 a.m. eastern time. stay tuned. you are watching "squawk box" right here on cnbc. keep your insights from prying eyes, so they won't be used by anyone but you. the ibm cloud. the cloud for smarter business.

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don't be gloomy and doomy in an overboard sense. the american economy is in very good shape. >> perception is out there that

the market's gone up. the perception is everything's going great. the reality is, if the market's down then that means it's actually undervalued. >> i'm a natural optimist. i like where we are. that '0809 thing was just vicious and it's taken a long, long time for people to get some elbow room and i think we're there now. >> i think reading too much again into the news of the day can get you very nervous and as investors who may say, i got to pull back, take everything out of the market, wait for the all-clear sign and i think that's a mistake. that was just a few of the highlights from the delivering alpha concert yesterday. joining us right now is lewis johnson. still with us our guest host this "morning joe" moglia. it is great to have you here. >> pleasure to be here. we were talking about the major investors we talked to, basically all were fairly

optimistic. don't see too many clouds on the horizon. what do you think? >> we think it cycles a lot. the average business cycles is nine and a half or ten years and we're nine and a half years into this one. >> we're long in the tooth. >> yeah. we look more towards safety at this point and it's not that we're bearish, we know the odds and we're kind of positioned accordingly. >> what is safety? generally, we think of the bond market as a safer place but when you're looking at yields that are so incredibly squeezed, it's hard to think that's a lot of safety unless you think there is a big selloff? >> that's a really good question. the way we think about safety is just not losing capital. there's no question that the yields are lower now than they've been in other years. germany or japan or the other place that's you could keep money our yields are some of the highest in the world. >> you're talking about less than 2.9% and if you are already

seeing inflation past 2% and the fed wanting even higher inflation, you could be talking about losing your money at some point if you're only winning that back. not talking about losing a lot but the value of your money will erode? >> we don't make those investments for the next five or ten years. if you look back a year ago, we had very little treasury exposure. we've begun to build that position the recently. >> what a lot of people are not aware of, you also have studied commodities in your entire life. you deal with individuals, individual investors, so to what extent should the individual investor really get involved with commodities, to what extent -- is it something that he really understands or learn more about, especially with all things that are going on in the world today? >> the commodity market is one we've studied for a long time. it's a great market to be involved in at this point in the

cycle. the wonderful thing about commodities, those markets always balance. prices go up and down and it's volatile and difficult to forecast in the short run, but in the long run the market always balances. that's something you can count on so when we invest on behalf of retail and clients, our clients, we do so at a time when the news is horrible and valuations are depressed. so we don't look at it and say, we think the next six months or 12 months are going to be great. what we're saying to clients -- downside is limited and we'll hold that patiently, because once supply and demand get tighter and price dozen that, the price goes up profitability gets better, people see this in earnings and then people get excited about the equities and that tends to be when we start to exit because we're valuation based investors. >> all you hear is trade war, trade war, trade war. with regard to potential trade wars, which commodities are going to potentially benefit from and which ones will get slammed?

>> steel has always been a tremendous amount taking place. our job as investors is not so much being able to forecast with pinpoint accuracy what's going to take place. we try to minimize risk. we think there's a nice opportunity in the fertilizer sector right now because the agriculture -- >> buy fertilizer. >> this is a long story. again, what we're really saying, we can buy assets in that market for 50 cents on the dollar. >> we've been running back and forth. agriculture has been very depressed in part because of the trade war. soy bean prices. they've gotten killed. it has been a bumpy crop. more than half of what's happened there, lowest prices we've seen in years has to be because of this trade talk. >> no question that trade wars really effecting sentiment right now. it's difficult for us to forecast that. if we're buying assets at 50

cents on the dollar, i can afford to wait a very long time. it's what you pay for your securities. >> i'm sorry. you're basically telling people to buy crap when you tell them to buy fertilizer. >> love it. >> i've heard people say you're full of fertilizer. >> there's a longer back story there. i don't think we have time for it. >> come back next time. >> i'm glad the way you said it. >> i'm sorry. coming up in the next half an hour, we'll get back to joe in washington. he's got an exclusive interview with the labor secretary alexander acosta. it's coming up at 8:40 eastern time. the must-see interview with president trump. catch the full conversation that will begin on squawk starting at 6:00 a.m. eastern time.

we have a very big day. >> it is possible that a, quote,

real business growth cycle is right there in front of us. >> i don't think you get to tell people, oh, we'll make 20,000 model 3s a week when you know that's not going to be the case. >> one of the things that weighs heaviest on our mind are these currency move. >> we're in a war with china and you're seeing an opponent that's standing up for themselves. still to come, weekly jobless claims. they are about to hit e thtape. we'll take you live for the numbers. "squawk box" will be right back.

welcome back. breaking news on the jobless claims front, they're a little late. on philly fed, this is the july number, a little late. we have weekly claims showing up. weekly claims moved from 1.43 million to 1.75. philly, this is a very realtime outlook, it's much better than expected at 25.7. this follows just slightly under 20, our last read was 19.9 for june. it moves up.

i am trying to find initial jobless claims, 207,000, on our most recent week in jobless claims and the prior week was revised to 215,000. so we're down 8,000. so that rounds out today's data front, but if you're looking at the markets, it's just beginning. we're actually seeing -- yes, we are, i'm not joking a little steepening of the curve, not very much, but a little bit. today could be day 21 that we settle in the 280s for ten-year note yields but it's creasing up. why that dollar index today, andrew. back to you. >> you know what i have a trade question for you, which is -- i hope you saw it. i'm curious of what you thought of larry kudlow's comments yesterday on china, giving your

perspective on all this stuff. did you get a chance to see that >> i did. i don't think -- i have much disagreement with regard to larry on china. i think that china really needs to be addressed. i think many of the dynamics in place were set in place to bring china into the group, but i think that we are well beyond the expiration date on that philosophy, but i think the real issue is, there's so many plates in the air with regard to trade issues that it's a bit hard to focus and between the japanese and the europeans and their agreements, too many things up in the air. it's a lot of uncertainty. i really do agree on the china premise. i think it's gotten a whole lot more complicated. >> rick, great to see you, my friend. >> thank you. earlier joe spoke to president trump's top trade adviser, peter navarro. here's what he had to say about the ongoing trade war with china and the potential impact on the economy. >> if we can get that right,

it'll have very, strong, positive implications for the american economy and the global economy. >> joining us right now with his comments on all of this and more, chairman of the council of economic advisers and a professor in chicago. he used to sit where peter is sitting right now on the lawn, often times, of the white house. i imagine you have a very different take on all this, austin >> well, i don't have a different take with that one statement that if we get this right it could benefit the world economy, but i definitely have a different take and i feel like the take that i have is the same take that most of the market has, which is, oh, gees, do we really have to contemplate launching five simultaneous trade wars against all of our major allies if we want to try to bring china into line, let's not declare a trade war on steel, aluminum and a series of other things against europe and canada and mexico and

japan. let's try to use those alliances to go after china -- >> but austin, to some degree that has been a feckless approach thus far, meaning -- i'm not suggesting the current approach is working, but prior approaches have not. >> when you say that, take the obama administration, they filed more grievances and successfully at the wto than against china than all previous presidents combined of the now, if the trump administration had forwarded that and done more, i think it would have been successful. if they hadn't nuked the transpacific partnership and the things that it was going to do to bring asian allies of the united states and other economies and try to rein in the national champions, that would have been a substantial

improvement. both of those things were blown up. >> given where we stand today and given the fact that joe is going to be seeing president trump later today and president trump may actually be watching the program as we speak, what would you tell him how would you suggest he pivot right now? >> it's not so much pivot. look, hopefully we'll get a strong gdp number this quarter. all the indicators are that that's a big green light, making up for a modest gdp number that we've been coming in with and just set some priorities. so if china is the number one priority, then get the whole government on the same page and let's try to deal with china. don't simultaneously declare trade wars against the people that could help us in the battle against china. the irony here is, the strongest thing the president's got going

for him is that the economy has this robust character to it. why risk that by threatening farmers and manufacturing which have historically been the industry that's are the two biggest that the president had the two strongest support for, they're going to be the two most hit by a trade war. >> joe moglia. >> the other joe. >> the better looking joe, two questions and one is -- i'm not even implying anything negative as far as president obama goes, but the first question is, everybody's well aware of the differences between president trump and president obama with regards to economic policy, so question one, there's got to be something that they would both be totally and absolutely in sink on when it comes to the economy? when you look back -- not saying anything was done wrong with president obama, but when you look back with the value of hindsight, what would you have

done differently if you had a chance to do it over again from an economic policy perspective >> look, both of those are big questions. on the first, what couldthey agree on i like the announcement that you've seen in the last two days from the trump administration that's about the need for upgrading the skilled base of the workforce and try to rollout a series of things to do that. that's a great idea. i think if you got president obama, president trump in the room together and they sat down and made a list of important things, i think that would be close to the top of the list -- >> austin -- >> yeah. >> i want to interrupt. we have breaking news that's just crossing the wires. comcast is issuing a statement in regards to its pursuit of the assets for 21st century fox. it says that comcast does not intend to pursue further the acquisition of the 21st century stocks' asset and will be focusing on our recommended offer for sky. it's probably something that

anybody reading the tea leaves over the last week or so would have assumed when they saw they raised their offer for sky, had gone silent for quite a while after -- after disney was giving clearance to go ahead with this acquisition. that changed the picture pretty drastically. people started thinking that comcast would have to pay more. if you were watching, you might've anticipated this. comcast put out a release that it does not intend to further its acquisition but instead will focus on their recommended offer for sky. you can see how this is playing out in the market. comcast shares already up by 1.6% on this news. 21st century fox shares down by 1%. this is just the one day impact -- >> comcast shares have risen dramatically in part because there was expectation they would walk away from the bid -- >> let's play out for a week or

so and this has played out. it's been coming down. >> that's a function and becky, i think you put the fine point on it, i think the moment at which the regulatory issue was solved for the disney twenty-first century deal which i think surprised the entire market that they were actually able to get that done as quickly as they did t really did put comcast in a much more difficult position because it would have forced them to bid up even more -- twenty first century board a very easy way -- actually no, no, no. you either have to pay through the nose for this or we have very good reason not to -- not to go along with this. however, what this does mean is, the real attention will move to sky and may suggest we'll see a real bidding war for them and we'll see how high the price

goes. comcast shareholders as we know had been somewhat frustrated and anxious about how high the bidding would go on twenty-first century fox and that's why you're seeing -- >> comcast shares are up 15% or more from the lowest levels they've seen. we were trading at $30 right now and trading just below 35. joe's been watching from the white house. your thoughts? >> the doj's they were going to appeal and presumably unwind the at&t time warner deal and they're asking for it to be expedited so that the integration doesn't get too far along. you know all this, andrew. >> that's been the scuttlebutt. >> even if it's competented, they're talking about february before that -- at&t doesn't

object to it being expedited for everything to be heard, i don't know what the government's case is going to be versus what they presented to judge leon. they weren't allow today talk, andrew, but the body language from disney almost seemed like both companies seemed to be sending out sort of signals that, look, neither one of us want to tax our balance sheet to the extent with the bidding war. we'll see whether -- >> the question is does disney come back with a higher offer. >> we'll see what happens with sky. it almost looked like -- do you see it that way? did disney say, okay, go ahead and take sky and we'll -- >> i would -- i would not suggest that disney has said take sky at all. i think we'll continue to see potentially a bidder bidding war for the -- >> you wonder how much shares

should run up yet because it's not over. >> we could also see whether if you ever do get to some kindof trade, we've always talked about where does hulu play in all of this. i would also make one small point. we said earlier on that for brian roberts and comcast and the parent company of this network, that it's hard to lose in that thus far to the extent -- i don't think this was the objective going in, but he effectively forced bob iger who intended to pay $23 a share for twenty-first century fox and got pushed to 38. as i said, i don't think that was necessarily comcast's objective. i think they did want to own the asset. there is a little bit a side benefit. >> either company could go -- if they both really want sky, that

could go sky high because they definitely have enough money to take that much higher. >> and remember, for everything -- the end result on that would be that disney if it acquires those stock assets would be the beneficiary of any high bid for sky too because it's going to be owning -- >> right. >> i make one other point real quick. everybody looked at the doj approval of this transaction and said, okay, it's done and that is true. in the united states it's done, and, by the way, joe, you're on the lawn of the white house, it's not done in europe in terms of the eu, it's not done in china, by the way. you talked about our allies, you talk about trade and you talk about who loves us and who doesn't in the moment. >> and where they can make problems. >> this could be very interesting very quickly. >> the lead story in the "the wall street journal" today is about the eu slapping that $5 billion fine on hulu yesterday. >> it would not be surprising if

one or more of these other regulatory bodies says, actually, you know what? we're going to hold off for a second. that could happen. >> what i realize was that, i bring out the worst in austin, because he seems so reasonable with you two today. do you notice that >> he's still there. >> oh, my gosh. >> oh, no. >> i'm still here, joe. >> did you say you liked something the trump administration was proposing today? >> i just, you know, put me -- >> you're like a different person. i bring out the worst. >> you bring out the worst in a lot of people. >> i do. you're right. on purpose, i know. the right people, if you think about it. i bring out the worst in the right people. >> the worst in the best people. let's bring in ed lee. he's going to join this

conversation too. ed, your take on what we have just heard from comcast in terms of saying, okay, no more when it comes to the fox assets that looking at sky as that's where it's focusing its power. >> this was completely expected. they had reported last week that they were definitely going to back off or more likely to back off on fox. also the fact that the shareholder meeting was going to come up on the 27th next week and comcast hadn't said or done anything in all those times or told us, you know, they're not going to make another run. if they were serious they'd have to sort of announce it earlier, they'd have to go do due diligence and all of that takes time. that 27th date sort of told us that this was most likely -- >> i'm sorry, what was that, joe? >> i've got the labor secretary sitting here. i guess my mic was out. i'm glad i didn't say what was this. >> never mind. >> we'll go back to that.

>> this is obviously breaking news. >> ed, in terms of how this might game out with sky, what's your thought, what's your feeling? what have you gleaned in terms of whether disney is going to continue to pursue sky as well >> yeah. so on the flip side of it, there's a filing from last week as well from fox that indicated, look, if fox is going to make another run at sky, it's going to eat into disney's debt. disney would have to make a signal they're willing to push for sky. what you have here is comcast likely getting sky, disney's getting fox and there is a bit of a splitting of the baby here in terms of -- most likely at this point. >> you don't think there's additional bidding, you think -- the price is the price and that's the ends of it.

>> i think that's the end of it. if they wanted to make another run, disney will have to look at the books again or can they leverage it even further and they're still getting a lot with the fox deal, right? they'll get control of hulu and the international assets or the star india as part of the international assets. they're getting a lot in return. anything can change, but at this point that seems to be the current state of play. >> let's bring in jim cramer. is that your read on the situation? >> totally. i'm relying on my partner's reporting. there is peace between the two in the statement that comcast gave. brian roberts congratulations disney. i think that'sthe spirit of going forward. split as david has said and therefore i think that it makes logical sense to put disney and comcast trades up. >> what does that mean if this is how the break goes? break it down, what's it mean? >> for comcast, the stock was at

40.42 and now obviously there are people feel that there's too much leverage taking on. the balance sheet totally supports the idea for them to buy this. i think the stock goes up because it's got international growth and people think international growth gives them a very long runway. it's very hard to stay negative as some of these analysts are from comcast. if you go international, then i think that things begin anew and we'll get some upgrades. for disney, we got some certainty and we no longer think about disney at espn. that's why both of these stocks should trade up on a re-rating. >> ed, what do you think -- where do you think comcast shares -- they're up about 2% this morning, where do you think they ultimately go how much pressure was on them as a result of this ed, you there? >> i'm sorry. it's for me. where should comcast be going on a stock? >> the question is, what do you

think the overhang was on this deal >> oh, for -- so, comcast is going -- they had -- they were talking about leverage not just for to get both sky and fox, talking 100 billion, so that i think was a big part of what shareholders were shying away from and telecom, companies like this can leverage higher than other companies generally can but still for a lot of investors that was at the higher end of their appetite. other thing i wanted to point out, though, is there is still potentially more to happen afterwards if this goes the way it does. comcast would still own 30% of hulu and fox/disney will own 30% of sky. if they want to make themselves whole on either end of that, there might be still a deal to be worked out with those two people. >> play that out. what would have to happen? >> it's as simple as, all right, comcast goes to disney and says

i'll so you 30% of hulu if you sell me 39% of sky. of course, it could be as simple as that. if they want to fully consolidate and own both ends of it, that's a deal that could still need to be worked out. >> jim, saying, okay, i'd like to congratulate bob iger let this go down because we've talked a lot about the animosity that's risen between these two companies. >> exactly but go back to the reporting for sun that david did there is a different spirit and it is going to lead to exactly what just occurred you picked up a quick 15% if you listened to david i think the analysts are playing catch-up with what david did, saying we'll split this thing very positively. suddenly you have a growth element that you didn't have and the analysts never give a darn about the balance sheet. they always know comcast has the best cash flow rerating of comcast as an

international player in cable which is something people like a lot more than current. >> any chance disney comes back with a higher bid and we get into a bidding war with sky? or you really think a detent has been reached >> i think a lot of this has been signaling and i think it began with a ac that we reported on monday that we also reported it was highly unlikely comcast would come back for fox, but ak, the fox file to their proxy where they added this language about disney needed to get consent and it might not give that content to increase any download for any further increase in the bid for sky. they're at 14. comcast is at 1475 the quote from roberts congratulating disney is more signaling. i was able to actually call bob iger and read the statement to him this morning he didn't know about it. so he said, "thank you for the call you can report that you read me

the statement and now he's telling me this is an exciting development. we will now focus on gaining regulatory approvals, closing the deal, and integrating the assets." >> david, did he say something nice about brian roberts, in turn >> no, we didn't have a great connection when we were on the phone. but he said, holy cow, i think was a nice way to put it yeah it was full -- came full circle for me, from the original story, to being able to tell bob that comcast has stepped down if you want to step back, we got to go back to almost a year ago when rupert murdoch and bob iger began that romance, if you want to call it that, where it ended up after a lot of back and forth, and our reporting of course very early november on the talks. they got it done comcast though had the opportunity, did come in there

but did not sway that fox board with their offer, even though on a monetary basis it was above the disney bid that was accepted of $28 a share but then comcast of course says they had made it clear waiting for the outcome of the time warner/at&t lawsuit and almost immediately after that it went the way they hoped, of course, with judge lee onsaying the deal could come through, came with that $35 all-cash offer, only to be met by what i think they did not expect in terms of price, how high it was from disney. it was at the higher end of their range. the half cash/half stock component of it, comcast has been figuring out what do we need to come back with to overcome their lead on doj given they've already gotten approval from regulators in this country, what do we need to come back with now that at&t and time warner is being appealed and the

fok boa fox board may still be concerned about any antitrust ramifications. it seems like rupert murdoch prefers disney in some way iger and murdoch had lunch together in london they seem to be together all the time looking through all of those things, we reported it was highly unlikely they would come back andthey're better off focused on sky that's where the hope is we've talked a lot about this, that perhaps you get something where you do get the deal done at $1,475 for sky, you get them to eventually sell the 35% of sky that they own once disney controls fox, it will be a great capital raising opportunity for disney which will be more highly levered given the debt they're taking on. then 30% of hulo gets owned by comcast goes to disney giving them 90% control of that important asset. it is an interesting day given that they chose to put it in

writing, signaling is a very important part of all of this. >> i want to make sure people heard this you talked to bob iger, and i think you were paraphrasing, but he said, holy cow? >> yeah. he said, "holy crap," actually that's what i wrote down i don't think bob would mind because he told me i can -- yeah >> i think it is important to find out that he's hearing this news from you this morning this was not something that -- the signaling is taking place. >> he's traveling on business and i think so -- i'm not sure -- but importantly, again, he said, listen. this is an exciting development. we will now focus on gaining regulatory approvals, closing the deal and integrating the assets they are obviously relieved at disney that they aren't going to have to raise any further. certainly were not happy that they had to raise their bid by as much as $20 billion or so

but an interesting day certainly on the developments in this big fight that finally has ended, at least on one front, guys >> right now -- thank you, david, for all of that heading back to washington, joe has another special guest. >> those guys -- we're going to get to it. did those guys convince you, andrew, or you still think the big bidding war for sky? we got to talk the secretary of labor, has been very patient but listening to the beauty of the american economy right before our eyes, the very hot media sector and assets that are valuable to two different media companies. it was kind of interesting to hear, wasn't it? >> it was great. you are seeing this across the economy with foxconn in

wisconsin. >> the initiative that the president will sign an executive order on today in terms of trying to close the skill gap must be near and dear to your heart at the labor department. >> it is very exciting for the last three months, we have had more open jobs than we've had americans looking for jobs that has never happened since we've started keeping these numbers. >> that's a good problem to have >> it's a great problem to have. the economy right now is so hot that we have open jobs that cannot be filled what we need to do is make sure that americans that want the jobs have the right skills to fill those jobs. >> the idea that education and labor could be merged, that's a proposal at this point you think that's a good idea and is it something that could happen >> congress would have to vote on this. but here is why this is important. the department of education is working with higher education across the country, educators to

provide life-long learning but people go to school and college and university so they can get jobs and education right now is silent it is not responding to the jobs market so we're teaching individuals for the jobs of yesterday, not the jobs of today and not the jobs of tomorrow so we need to break down these silos. any company would bring divisions together and break down silos the federal government should look at that >> you've got to apply big data to match skills with where people are i mean there are ways to do this i think we're living 20 years ago in terms of technology we're using to try and do that plus that would raise participation rate, lower the unemployment rate even further, add to gdp and lower unemployment it seems like it's something that's a no-brainer. >> that's right. no-brainer demand for an education. education should respond to what the workplace is demanding mr. secretary, as i said, you

seemed like you were into the discussion about -- >> i was watching along with you. >> great names, comcast, disney, fox. >> this is what it is about. this creates jobs and that at the end of the day is what will transform american lives that's exactly what it is about. >> mr. seshg tecretary, thank y appreciate your patience and being with us this morning i don't know how much time we have left. i can't really tell. i got nothing. i got no telefromt prompter, no screens. >> you got about 50 seconds. >> all right well then i will tell you, i am going to interview president trump in not too long a period he'll be signing that executive order later today. if you remember in davos, remember i said, why don't you use your businessman acumen to solve this education issue how do we get to the most educated workforce in the world?

he thought about it. i'm taking credit for what's happening today, i guess back to you guys >> joe, thank you for bringing us all those interviews. we look forward to the big one which we'll see tomorrow we also want to thank you the other joe on set with us, thank you for a great -- >> thanks for having me. >> we will see everybody tomorrow "squawk on the street" begins right now. ♪ great show, guys good thursday morning. welcome to "squawk on the street." i'm carl quintanilla, with jaime cramer and david faber of the new york stock exchange. you just heard comcast dropping its chase to focus on sky. europe is mixed 10-year near $2.88. china firing back at c