(grandpa) i'm the richest guy in the world. (man 1) i have time to give. (man 2) i have people i can count on. (grandma) and a million stories to share. (vo) the key to being rich is knowing what counts. >> to you. >> and welcome. >> to power lunch alongside. >> kelly. >> i am brian. >> all right. president trump in the. >> oval office. >> he is talking tariffs. >> we're going to talk about the potential impact. >> of. >> more tariffs on. your money

and the american economy. plus why. >> bad news. >> in europe may be very. good news here, especially when it comes to energy. >> and we're seeing gains across the board right now even as we begin to get these headlines from the white house the past 15 minutes or so. the dow has moved higher. a gain of a couple tenths. that's turned into a half point rise. the nasdaq is up nearly 1% right now. and we're watching meta to see if that winning streak can continue. still only down a third of a percent right now. so it's possible. it's been 18. it could be 19 if it's up today. intel also a big winner this week up 25% since monday. trump administration reportedly has reached out about possible collaborations with taiwan semi and one of the year's biggest winners. soaring again today. strong results. we're talking app lovin. it's now up 900% over the past year. >> all right, so there is a lot to do. >> but let's. >> begin with some potential big breaking news the past hour. although i guess we're. >> we're not really sure. >> president trump. speaking at the white house right now. he is

talking about tariffs, but saying that he plans. >> to put. >> tariffs on nations which basically tariff us, saying that he hopes those countries will cut or eliminate tariffs on american made goods. megan costello hopefully can make sense of all this and joins us from washington brian. >> that's right. so these aren't taking effect today or not even in the near term. i'll get to that in a second. what the what the white house is doing here is they're looking at five different criteria, and they'll be going on a country by country basis, coming up with a customized tariff rate for each one. they're looking at the tariff rates that they're putting on us products, but they're also looking at taxes, including the vat tax, non-tariff measures like regulation or subsidies, exchange rates, any attempts to devalue the currency, as well as any other policies that the ustr, the trade representative, determines, is an unfair limitation. so quite broadly written here in terms of making these country by country customized tariff rates as we move forward, but a little bit

of a lead time as they come up with what exactly they want to see in terms of rate by which country. but commerce secretary howard lutnick did just tell reporters in the oval office that he expects and hopes that this will all be done by april 1st. april 1st. ready to go then? i'll also say, guys, that the white house says they expect every country to come to them to negotiate. so there is room here. but it's not just tariff rates that other countries will need to lower. they'll have to adjust these non-tariff measures as well. this also appears to replace that universal tariff idea from the campaign. they're now talking about this one. they like it better now because they can do it in this sort of customized way. and a couple other headlines just in the last couple of minutes from the president. he's saying that if consumers. he's asked if consumers can expect higher prices. he says not necessarily, maybe somewhat in the short term, but he expects jobs to go up as well. and he says that interest rates are going to be coming down. so if you economic projections there from the president as he continues to talk with reporters about this reciprocal tariff plan, guys. >> all right. so there's a lot there. megan i just want to it

sounds like there's no new tariffs being announced. but the trump team is going to look at how other nations treat us. and if they deem them to sort of tax our goods, we may or may not tax them back. am i kind of getting that right? >> that's exactly right. and you're keying on an important point that there's not a concrete action being taken today, but they are pretty emphatic on this point. even in the first term, we heard a lot about these types of issues. so now they're going to go country by country. they did say they might start with countries that have the largest trade deficits with the us. so think china think mexico as they do this. one white house official said that it could be a matter of weeks, a few months until this is done. so we don't know exactly yet what the tariff rates will be. so you're right on that point. but they often name brazil and india, and we may hear about more of this later today when the indian prime minister is at the white house. they also talk about china, of course, the most in the eu as well in these non-tariff barriers. so they're sort of putting countries on warning, i would say, as they

try to get some negotiations done and see what concessions countries might offer. >> yeah. and we'll be watching for the back and forth on all of that. megan, thanks. appreciate it. megan costello, the president has also been pushing for lower interest rates, saying they should go hand in hand with tariffs. but our next guest says it's not the time to cut. the fed should keep rates on hold. she says. we've got good growth, healthy labor markets, sticky inflation. loretta mester is here with us. she's the former cleveland fed president, currently adjunct professor of finance at wharton school of business and a cmc contributor. it's great to see you. welcome. thank you very much for having me. so the big development this week, cpi. is that why we're on hold. and it was interesting to have the president say lower rates should go hand in hand with tariffs when if anything tariffs probably make lower rates less likely. or maybe they don't. yeah i mean the cpi. was just another confirmation that. >> the progress. >> on inflation coming down has stalled since. >> the fall of last year. >> and so. you know, given. >> that the economy. >> still is healthy in terms of the labor market and growth, we

saw that the economy grew. >> at 2.5%. >> last year. that's really good. it was 3% the year before. that's very healthy growth. it's above trend, right. there's no reason for the fed to be moving rates down at this point. they need to hold and wait and see how things develop. and so that, you know, it was another confirmation that we haven't seen the progress that we'd like to see on inflation. it doesn't mean that inflation won't start to move down later this year. no, you can't say that yet. we saw higher inflation numbers at the beginning of last year as well. and then inflation began moving back down. but i would say at this point there's no compelling reason to cut rates. and holding this seems to be the best play here. >> should they. >> have cut rates? >> i mean, they. >> did cut. >> rates by. >> 1% last year. >> yeah, i mean, rates are very high and very restrictive at that point. and we had seen a lot of progress on inflation. so they were bringing them down. now it's debatable how restrictive the current interest rates are. but i would say most economists say they're still somewhat restrictive. and we'll have to just hold here for a

while to see what's coming. well, there's a lot of uncertainty, as we've talked about coming out of the bond. >> as you know, the bond market when i only. >> listen. >> the fed's done what they've done. so what do you always say. you get what you get and you. >> don't. >> get. >> don't get upset. >> don't get upset. well the bond. market got upset. >> yeah well the bond market is reacting to a lot of things right. the bond market yields went up partly because they were more euphoric about what was the outcome for growth coming. right. so there's a real play. there was a term premium in there worried about the deficit. right. and then there was what the fed was doing. so i don't think you can point to the fed as being driving that ten year. the weird thing. >> i don't know if we have this chart ready, but it would be a chart of monthly job growth over the past 12 months. and it just this eerie thing happened where job growth started to slow throughout the summer. we had that yen carry trade things, you know, sending markets lower in august. and it looked like the economy is rolling over, the markets are rolling over. and that's why they cut 50 okay fine. then immediately jobs

started to pick up again. and so those facts change. i'm trying to figure out if you're the fed what do you do about that? i mean, this is such an unusual cycle. >> well, you do know that when the data comes in, you know that they can be revised. and so that's why the fed always says, look, we don't move on one data point. we're going to look at what the data is telling us. and you're exactly right. i think the reason they started cutting in september was because, right, they had made all that progress on inflation, the size of the cut, whether 25 versus 50, i think was driven by their concerns about some of that, what was going on in the labor market and some of those reports. now, you're right. that got revised away and still the labor market. but then it picked up. yeah, but it is a moderation from what we saw. you know, earlier last year in terms of the growth rate in employment. so i would say that it's still a healthy labor market. it's still, you know, in balance, supply and demand, which is what you want. you don't want overly tight labor markets or, you know, overly loose labor markets. so it's an imbalance.

but that's something that they're going to be looking at going forward, partly because of the uncertainty around some of the forthcoming policies will be they're going to have to be very attuned to that. >> you're an ohioan. where are you. >> from originally? >> baltimore. >> baltimore. >> baltimore, maryland. >> you got to say, without the. >> t baltimore. >> charm city. >> yeah. exactly. >> right. >> yeah. >> if i went down to towson and i started and i went into, like a bar, and i just started talking about how. >> the fed data says this, and. >> i'm going to get punched in. >> the face. >> i believe that, right? >> yeah. >> because if i tell the dockworkers that may hang out in baltimore what their life is like based on federal reserve data, they're going to remove me from the premises in an unfriendly manner. >> okay. >> does the fed recognize that sometimes the data doesn't match up with. >> real life? >> well, i think one thing that's very clear is that you can't go out and say inflation

is down when you still have the prices at levels they are. yeah, i think there's a misunderstanding of, of sort of like what does that mean. right. inflation can come down but the price level doesn't have to come down. and, and unless you're wages have gone up enough to cover those higher prices, you're hurting. and i think that's a key thing because if you look at the cpi, the level of the cpi and the level of wages, they that gap hasn't closed, right. wait prices are higher than what you could afford back in 2019. you never caught up. and so that gap hasn't closed. and i think that's part of why people are are very, you know not satisfied with where inflation is. it doesn't matter that it's come down from 7% to two. >> no. >> they don't care because the this goes to the article you sent last night and i retweeted out with a credit to you that it was a political article that said basically the federal reserve and the white house kind of found out that the way people

feel isn't reflected in the data. and i'm summarizing the article. it's on our social feeds. but the idea that, yeah, if you want to tell people inflation is coming down because their burger went from 12 to 18 and now it's only 19, they're still ticked off that the burger is 19 not 12. >> but remember the fed's mandate right. is price stability right. and full employment or maximum employment. right. so they can they can set their interest rate to work against inflation. right. they don't target a price level. so this is but this is i think significant in the sense that right. you have to consider where people are and explain where you want the economy to be going. eventually wages will catch up and that gap will close because we've seen that in the past. but at this point it hasn't. when you go into the grocery store or go to the gas pump with prices at the level they are, that's why terrorists are going to be a problem, because terrorists are going to lead to higher prices. we don't

know how much, because it really depends on whether the producer eats some of that tariff in their margins, not passing on at higher prices to consumer. but in general, terrorists will raise prices. whether it's continuous inflation, we can't tell you that yet. but a series of tariffs like we're hearing and reciprocal tariffs going back and forth could be an inflation problem. that's why it adds upside risk to the inflation that the fed's going to have to consider. >> loretta mester from baltimore and the cleveland fed. thank you so much for joining us today. >> we're going to do our show live from a food lion in hagerstown, maryland right. thank you for getting that. so the fed's rate cutting cycle is over for now. unless and after the break we're going to dive into what unless might look like. >> a crypto watch is sponsored >> a crypto watch is sponsored by crypto.com.

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by granger for the ones who get it done. >> all right welcome back stocks and your investment dollars as you can see. or just listen to me they are higher. again the macro market is up. and now the s&p is up just under 4% for the year. but your next guest says you may want to stop trying to guess what's going to happen and just get on board with some stocks that he likes, regardless of what happens. let's talk about it all with bryant cronkite. he is senior equity portfolio manager at all spring global investments. we've got your picks. but you know maybe comment brian on what you heard. loretta mester said i love the fact she came in. she was she was brutally honest and i appreciated the fact that she kind of said, listen, the fed maybe whiffed a little bit. >> yeah, i think she's. >> absolutely right. i think. >> number one, right now i. think the fed can just. >> be. on hold.

>> they don't. need to. >> do anything. they accomplish their mission. >> out of the gate. and today you see unemployment at very low numbers and stable inflation is moving modestly. >> higher, but not in an alarming way. and so i think. >> the fed's cutting cycle is over unless something breaks and if something breaks, it's usually very bad for investors in the short term. but the fed will then step. >> back in and do. >> their job at that point in time. but if you're on the fed board right now, why get involved? just step back and say, i don't know what's going to happen in regards to tariffs, immigration policies. i'm just going to step back, not cause any trouble and just be here to pick up the pieces. if something does break in the future. >> as a fund manager, your job is to take the current and future economic situation, plug that into your models, then come up with some stocks. so you like let's say a canadian pacific, for example. does it matter what the federal reserve does vis a vis your investment in a canadian slash american railroad? >> well, the federal reserve always matters, right? they always have the ability to drive markets and the economy. but in

a moment in time, like we have today, where i think they're going to be less involved, and they were over the past 12 to 24 months. i think you want to own businesses that have financial freedom. financial freedom is something we measure through the company's balance sheets, and it's the ability for them to play offense with their capital allocation decisions. for example, canadian pacific, the railway made a big acquisition of canadian of kansas city southern a few years ago. that acquisition allows them to be the only railway that controls transnational from mexico through the us to canada, which is a really important rail to have. now, what's great there is that the benefits of that are still way ahead of us. no matter what happens with the economy, we're going to see volume increase. we're going to see them gain a length of haul. we're going to see margins expand through that acquisition, and it's going to be really good for us as investors. now, we might get tailwinds or headwinds, but they're on their own doing a great job. >> yeah i was just going to say it's an interesting name to pick a railroad in the midst of all this. do you think all of this tariff talk is creating other dislocations that could be opportunities for investors in

this market? >> well, i think it certainly is. obviously, we see the market reacting very, very quickly to headlines like mark crossed with tariffs. and so anything tied to mexico or canada is going to be an important one. there's other areas though where i think we can kind of ignore some of that. i don't want to go into the storm right now with tariffs. i want to try and find companies that that are that are going to avoid that. so if you look somewhere on the inside, for example, look at healthcare in labcorp, for example, us focused business, certainly we're seeing healthcare tape bombs everywhere right now with regulatory issues, pricing issues. but the labs are doing a service that is incredibly valuable and is very low cost of the total cost of care. and labcorp today is using their balance sheet for acquisitions, rolling up a fragmented industry, which is an incredibly powerful tool to grow their top line, but also to see margin expansion as they do it. so i want to avoid the news and avoid the noise if i can, and only go in places where i think that that risk is priced in like a cp, otherwise avoid it and own something like a labcorp today. >> all right, brian, we're going to leave it there. we've got some breaking news, but we'll

welcome back any time. labcorp, canadian pacific, brian van cronkite, brian. thank you. >> we got a lot more news coming out of the president's comments in the oval office, touching on everything from tiktok to the ukraine. megan costello with more. >> kelly, quite a long confab with reporters in the oval office. i would say right now a few more topics to hit here. the president was just talking about tick tock, as you mentioned. he said the tick tock deadline could be extended. he says he hopes to make a deal on tick tock, and that he will make it worthwhile for china to approve a tiktok sale. he's also alluding to chip tariffs, it sounds like here saying that taiwan took our chip business away and we want that business back. he has threatened tariffs on chips. we don't have any further details on that at this time. he also said he is not concerned about countries shifting their business to china. and then one last point, given that the indian prime minister, narendra modi, is planning to be at the white house later today, trump also said that elon musk met with prime minister modi earlier today, and trump said he assumes that musk wants to do business in india. so no further details on that, but more to look

forward to as we await the full tape playback from this oval office. hey guys. >> megan, thank you very much. megan cassella and still to come, the energy behind the ai boom will check the charts for some key names set to cash in and market navigator next. >> we empower those. >> who. >> act. >> those who see the. correlation between predictability and. >> probability, those who manage. >> risk by anticipating. >> each movement. >> flawless execution. >> timing and accuracy. >> identify the goal. match power. >> with precision. reach new

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has. >> my back. get invested. join the club today. go to cnbc.com. jim. >> all right well this morning we thought that the president might slap some huge new tariffs on a bunch of stuff. that's not happening i mean it could happen as megan talked about maybe april 1st we get some of these sort of tit for tat tariffs. not the case. and so the market is reacting in a positive way. the dow s&p and nasdaq all higher. the nasdaq is up by 1%. you got some health care names like ventas doing very well. cvs by the way intel doing well. supermicro also doing well. and supermicro is a great role in for your next guest and market navigator because as ai and data centers boom demand for the electricity to power those data centers also booming. and that could mean opportunity for you. joining us now to make sense of it all is tony wang. he is portfolio manager for science and technology equity fund at t rowe price. all right tony good

to see you. listen a lot going on with the market stargate deep seek nvidia whatever. what do you make of everything that's going on and who may win regardless of what happens. >> yeah i think that's a great question. >> as you mentioned, there's. >> a lot. >> going on in the news. >> and so i think what we saw was a. >> big announcement. on stargate to continue. building large amounts of ai infrastructure. >> in the us. >> and then. >> followed by. >> ipsec, where there's a, you know, largely a much more efficient. >> model, though. >> it is more slimmed. >> down. that kind of is able to use kind of. >> the gpus. >> a lot more efficiently. >> and so i think that. to me that this. >> is a continuation. >> of the technology evolution where. costs do come down and as a result, adoption increases. you know, i think that. >> this earnings season. >> we talked to palantir as well as hubspot, and just seeing that. >> large language. >> models. >> are becoming a lot more economically viable. and so.

>> when you see that, you. >> generally see more adoption. the excuse of. >> at the. >> app layer improve. and i think that, you know, there's a good amount of benefit that can accrue to also the companies that sell kind of picks and shovels or the ai chips in this case. and then, you know, on that list is probably like nvidia. >> marvell, tony, you, you, you and your team have had the chance to dive a little more deeper into deep sea. i mean, deirdre bosa talked about it on this network i think on the 24th or whatever of january it hit over the weekend. monday, the market panicked, sold everything. maybe you didn't, but the market overall sold everything. a lot of those names have now come back to even higher levels than they were prior to the deep sea news. what have we learned? what have you learned about it? to sort of ease our concerns? yeah. well, i think that what. >> you've seen is that, you know, this is more of an evolutionary than revolutionary model. and as a result, like, you know, i think that this.

continues to increase the adoption, but it doesn't mean that the us tech players are going to essentially not continue to spend and fast forward their efforts. and so i think that everybody is going to adopt the deep sea. model and what they've got. >> but then also. >> you know, the two two things that you push on are essentially is compute and the model. and then you're going to see continued build out. and you saw china announce big build outs after the, you know, deep sea got announced. so to me, i think that, you know, the race continues as a result. this probably doesn't change. >> you know, too much. and that's probably why the. stocks are up. you know, at. >> the same time, i think that you have to believe that you understand that the world is cyclical, spending is cyclical. and so you can't, you know, just expect that things to go up in a straight line. >> sounds like deep sea may not be the big killer that we all thought it was. tony wang, really appreciate your views on market navigator. thank you. >> and speaking of energy, we'll speak to the chief executive of this data center stock that runs

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jason robins breaks down earnings numbers before the call, with wall street plus the state of the growing sports state of the growing sports betting market. jon fortt. finding the right path takes experience. as a national leader in municipal investment banking and wealth advisory services hilltopsecurities can help you find the best path to reach your financial goals. with the backing of a diversified financial services enterprise, deep industry knowledge, and a 75-year history of innovation, we don't follow the herd. we lead it.

from your structured settlement call. now. >> welcome back. overall market might be taking the president's 1 p.m. event in stride here. but a different story for the defense stocks, which are now turning lower after trump in the oval office said that we could have an h a v e. defense spending has been cut in half. he said we will work with china and russia to cut spending. shares of stocks like lockheed martin have turned lower down a couple fractions of a percent. >> we could have we could cut defense spending in half, is what he's saying. >> that's what he said. >> that's in half. >> when we get the tape playback, we'll have a clearer sense of what it is. these are not huge moves to the downside, but it has turned these stocks from rally into sell off territory. >> wow. pretty amazing. i mean, you think about defense spending just only continues to go up. >> well, we might have to have

it if interest payments continue to be what they are. >> to have and to hold. i or not. we'll try to get clarity on those headlines. in the meantime, let's talk about ai and energy, because ai and data centers boom, the amount of electricity needed to run them will also boom. but mostly that's here in america. and your next guest says that even with all the ai excitement, the world's energy demand may not grow as much as you think. joining us now is bank of america securities commodity and derivatives strategist francisco blanch. always a must read, and we love having you on, francisco. how much of this might be all the well-publicized problems with europe and their lack of growth? and to your point, a lot of it is really outside the us. us energy demand is really booming. you're saying 2% power demand growth, which is astonishing when you look at the average of the last 15 years, it's been roughly 0.2%. places like texas are seeing 3% demand

growth in, in in the power sector. so yeah, it's really more more of a more of a european story to your point. and frankly, i think china's demand is also slowing down. world gdp is going to be a little over 3% for the next few years. >> and with that, that means. >> energy demand will be a little under 3%. right. the beta is a little lower than gdp. but but it's fascinating because europe is now potentially at the verge of some important changes. right. and remember, europe has been really handicapped by this extremely high energy prices. and that may be starting to change sometime soon. right. yeah. it could change. and i think the question is everybody's trying to figure out what does it all mean. we know that energy demand is going to boom. we know. we know that. we know that nuclear may come back online and maybe go to power. some of these data centers, if not neighborhoods. but how do we make money from all of this?

well, i think i think one of the one of the potential developments for the course of the next few months, if indeed the we see a ceasefire and potentially a peace in ukraine is potentially lower energy prices. right. and i think that'll be true for a lower european gas prices, in particular on a on a global scale, might be a little different. the us will continue to export natural gas to the world. tires might make things a little complicated. that's the. >> challenge i. >> think we are. we are going to see a potentially dislocations like the ones we saw last week. francisco. yeah, i think speaking of power, francisco, i think i think we the six hamsters running this feed have perished. we will get you back on again soon to get the feed going a little bit better. francisco blanch of bank of america securities. thank. good. important point that he's making. we know that europe's been a total disaster. by the

way. the hamsters are fine. >> let's move along to the mystery stock we teased, which is iron. it operates data centers powered exclusively by renewable energy. interesting play there. optimized for bitcoin mining and ai cloud services. they had results yesterday. beat on earnings and revenue. stock is down fractionally today. one analyst we spoke to said it could be because bitcoin is down and capex spending concerns are there. just as they've announced a big expansion to the data center under construction in texas. iron has been on a massive run up over 500% in the past two years. let's bring in dan roberts. he's the co-founder and co-ceo. and, dan, most people think renewables aren't a great way to power data centers because you got to have that perfect always on energy. welcome. >> thanks for having me, kelly. oh, look, i think that's a bit of a misconception. the reality with data centers is they are connected to utility grids that underwrite the intermittency. >> from renewables. >> so every network is a melting pot of wind, solar, batteries,

gas, etc. connected into the west texas ercot grid, 80% renewables, but continuous 24/7 power. >> got it. so you're just connecting into a grid that is 80% renewables, is that right? >> that's spot on. but it gets better because we've got an algorithm that automatically puts our computers to sleep when power prices go up. so when the wind stops blowing, the sun stopped shining. there's a weather event network outage. we're able to automatically put our computers to sleep and give that power back to the market, a bit like a demand side battery. >> so tell me why. you know, this is a prime opportunity for the explosion we're seeing in ai. and obviously the continued demand for mining bitcoin. >> well, it's all about power. it's the power story. and you're seeing hyperscale capex forecasts for ai growing 6,570% year on year, over $300 billion in 2025. and there just isn't

enough power to fuel this appetite for ai demands, let alone bitcoin as well. if you assume just half of that $300 billion capex is going into nvidia gpus, that's over ten gigawatts of additional demand. morgan stanley are forecasting a shortfall of 36gw of power in the next three years. and yes, we've secured 2.3gw of grid connected power, but it's still not enough. >> can you explain, dan, in plain english or plain australia as it may be to the audience? because i've tried i've tried my best to do this, which is how power is different, right? electricity is different in different places. and this idea, as cool and as revolutionary as it might be, probably would not work in minnesota. >> yeah. look, it's about large quantities of electricity, but it's not just enough to get the

electricity. you've got to step it down to a usable level. and all of that takes time and many years of development and permits, planning, network study. if we take that ten gigawatt number, that's equivalent to 10 million washing machines. you can't go and plug washing machines into a high voltage transmission line. there's a very lengthy process you have to go through in order to step down that power to a usable voltage, let alone procure all the components chillers, generators, steel, concrete, low voltage transformers. so there's a lot that needs to happen over a multiyear time horizon to actually deliver this power, deliver this data center capacity. and this is at the heart of the issue. it's the dislocation between the real world and the digital world. we've got these digital world exponential trends, whether it's bitcoin going from zero to a $2 trillion market cap over the last 15 years, whether it's ai

going from no one talking about it 18 months ago to being the latest biggest thing today, right. these digital trends are unconstrained by the real world, but it takes time to deliver real world capacity to service these trends. >> what dan, what is going on in abilene, texas? i have not been down there. you're. so you guys are about 40 miles from abilene. 30 miles from sweetwater. abilene, of course, is the site of this, like ten cluster stargate, massive supercomputer that they're building out. you're just a little bit away from. why has this become the epicenter, as it seems like it is of these mega data and energy plants? what's going on? >> it's the power. it's where the power is in minnesota. you can't get gigawatts of power for data centers in texas. it's an open network. it's an extremely large network. and the availability of power is there. so this is the story. data centers are migrating out of metropolitan areas, away from customers to the source of low

cost renewable energy. and that's where texas. >> low cost, the source of low. >> lots of wind, lots of. >> sun energy is west texas. >> it's boone pickens, it's lots of wind, lots of sun. >> never would have thought that 50 years ago. and here we are. dan, thanks so much. appreciate you joining us today. >> thanks for. >> having me. >> texas the renewable. >> they've called it the saudi arabia of wind. >> yes they have. and it's the renewable generation leader in the in the world. people don't think that. great story. but it is. all right. the event in the oval office is over. eamon javers was in there listening to the president. eamon obviously there seems to be a buffet of headlines to choose from. so yeah, i'm just going to ask you to look at the menu and choose. >> yeah. >> look brian, the president gave us an hour in the oval office small. >> group of reporters. >> in there as he signed this new presidential memorandum. >> on reciprocal tariffs. >> the memorandum creates a timeline. >> for the. >> government to. >> issue a report. >> after that, the. >> u.s. >> government will begin to

implement. these tariffs. i asked the. >> president exactly, you know, what. >> date do you expect. >> the tariffs. >> might actually go into. >> effect as. >> a. >> result of this? >> and he and howard lutnick said, you know, the earliest they see is april 1st. >> and then after that. they may be. >> able to put tariffs into place on a case by case basis. >> so we'll wait for. the details. >> of this rollout. >> but the president took a lot of questions. like i said. >> for an hour. >> in the oval. >> office. howard lutnick. >> was. >> there, peter navarro was there. >> kevin hassett, the national economic council director. was there as well. >> i also asked the president. >> whether he'd spoken to any. >> ceos about these tariffs. he said he. >> has been. speaking to ceos. >> he said all. >> the ceos that he's talked to love the tariffs and think that this is a tremendous idea for the u.s. government. of course, we know there are other ceos out there who've been very. >> critical of this. >> so maybe those are not the. >> same. >> folks that the president is talking to. >> and he talked. >> about a wide range of subjects, including tiktok. he said that he does have a range of buyers that he's working on

for tiktok. i asked him if he thinks that xi jinping would sell. >> tiktok. >> if it came down to it, if. >> he's. >> able to line up a buyer, would xi jinping even sell? the president said he believes that it's in china's best interest to sell tiktok, and that he can convince xi jinping about that. he also talked about the upcoming what he what he views. >> as. >> the upcoming end of the war in ukraine. and he. >> sketched out. >> a vision. >> for global. >> peace which was sweeping. >> he sees himself. >> having direct conversations. >> with. >> vladimir putin. >> soon in person and with. xi jinping in person, he said. it doesn't matter to him where those conversations happen. he said he could even see a trilateral meeting. >> of xi jinping, donald trump. >> and vladimir putin all at once in one. >> place. >> and what he wants as a result of that meeting. >> is for. >> all of those nations to commit to cutting their defense budgets in half. >> he'd like. >> to see some significant defense savings. and he also said, frankly, the scale of the nuclear weaponry that the united states and these other countries have is terrifying. and he said

that he wants to do what he can to denuclearize the world. so we'll see how soon that vision can come to pass. and the president joked at one point about tariffs. he said, you know, there are certain things, you know, family, god, that are important. but he said tariffs are probably in the top four. >> in his view. >> so the president was in a very expansive and good mood today took a lot of questions. you'll see a lot of those headlines coming out on the tape. but for our purposes on tariffs, what he said was after april 1st, they do envision these tariffs going into effect. >> so a few things. number one i mean listen, whatever you think of it, it's nice that we're getting access to media to the president. we're hearing directly from the president that that i think should be whatever side of the table. you're on a win. let's clarify this defense spending and half thing. we talked about the headlines. was and i know we're i think we're going to hear directly from the president a couple of moments ayman. but did he say that the

us should cut its defense spending in half or the world should know? >> he said each of these countries should. he said, why are we spending this much money on these nuclear weapons that in in theory, one would hope you never use? right? because if you do use them, that's the end of the world. so why would we be spending an enormous amount of money on those weapons? right. so his view is if he can get these people into a room. and one of the reporters asked him, well, would you do that through the g20 or what global body would you do that through? and he said, i don't need bodies. it's just people. it's just myself, vladimir putin and xi jinping. i just talked directly to the people. he sees himself as a dealmaker who can do something historic and sweeping here in terms of denuclearizing the world. now, a lot of. politicians have tried that over the decades. >> sorry to jump in. i know your time is tight. i want to be clear. so yeah. so there was a headline effectively that that the guidance we got to think kelly was trump says he could cut defense spending in half. that's very different than the president says. if the world

cuts its defense spending in half, we would go along with that because we should have fewer. those are very different headlines. >> when he talked about cutting defense spending in half, that's in context of this grand deal between the united states, china and russia. so he's saying if they do it, we'll do it as well. i also asked him if he'd cut defense spending if ellen finds. >> waste there. >> he said, yes, the president. >> go ahead. please. go ahead. go ahead please. >> mr. president. >> you are meeting prime minister modi. >> of. >> india this afternoon. >> what kind of. >> trade and tariff relationship would you like to have with india? and what's the vision for india? >> yeah, india. >> traditionally is the highest, just about the highest tariff country. they charge more tariffs. than any other country. and i mean we'll be talking about that. but again, whatever they charge us we're charging them. so it works out very well. it's very. >> it's a. >> beautiful simple system. and we don't have to worry about g charging too much or too little. but traditionally india is right at the top of the pack pretty

much. there are a couple of smaller countries that are actually more. but india is a very, very they they charge tremendous tariffs. i remember. >> when. >> harley davidson couldn't sell their motorbikes into india because of the fact that india, the tax was so high, the tariff was so high, and harley was forced to build, i guess they built, i don't know, that was a while ago, but i think they built a factory in india in order to avoid paying the tariffs. and that's what people can do with us. they can build a factory here, a plant or whatever it may be here. and that includes the medical, that includes cars, that includes chips and semiconductors. that includes everything. if you build here, you have no tariffs whatsoever. and i think that's what's going to happen. i think our country is going to be flooded with jobs. >> so what are your. >> what's the timeline. >> consumers expect. >> our prices going to go. >> up short term. >> long term necessarily i mean not necessarily. but i'll tell you what will go up is jobs. the jobs will go up tremendously.

we're going to have great jobs, jobs for everybody. this is something that should have been done many years ago. china did it. i mean, china did it at a level that probably nobody's ever seen before. if you manufacture a car, you couldn't send it into china. the tariff was so high. so everybody went and they built in china. it was no big secret. so we're going to see, but it's going to mean tremendous amounts of jobs. and ultimately prices will stay the same go down. but we're going to have a very dynamic country. >> prices go up. >> mr. president, because of these tariffs, who do you think voters should hold responsible? >> oh, i think what's going to go up is jobs are going to go up and prices could go up somewhat short term, but prices will also go down. and i think the farmers are going to be helped by this very much because product is being dumped into our country, and our farmers are getting hurt very badly by the last administration. the last administration hated our

farmers, like at a level that i've never seen before. i think our farmers are going to be helped. jobs are going to be helped, but our farmers are going to be helped. our manufacturers are going to be helped. and again, if somebody wants to come in, including the car companies, if they want to come in and build car plants, they'll do it without tariffs and therefore prices won't go up. there could be some short term disturbance, but long term it's going to it's going to make our country a fortune. >> so americans. >> should prepare for some short term pain. >> you said that. i didn't say that. >> but if prices go up and. >> let's see what happens, nobody really knows what is going to happen other than we know the jobs are going to be produced at levels that we haven't seen before. we know that we think interest rates are going to ultimately be coming down because of things that happen, and they go hand in hand with the tariffs. but we think that we think that the prices for some things, many things it could be all things will go down, ultimately will go down. >> mr. president could explain the timeline here. sir. there's

a period of time for a review, a report 180 days. what's the earliest date that you think tariffs will actually be implemented? >> well, i would say maybe i'll ask howard to answer that because he's going to be the one that's implementing. what do you think. >> our studies should be all. >> complete by april 1st. >> so we'll hand the. president the opportunity. >> to. >> start on april 2nd if he wants. so i think we'll be ready to go pretty soon, april 1st. and. >> we'll hand it to the president. >> and he'll make his decisions. but remember, if they drop. >> their tariffs. >> prices for. >> americans are coming down. our production is going up and our costs. >> are going down. >> remember, it's a two way street. that's why it's called reciprocal. >> have you spoken to any american ceos directly about this? are they calling you and asking for. >> many and many love it. and they say this is going to be the thing that makes our country really prosperous again, and this is going to be what pays down to $36 trillion in debt and

all the other things. and this is going to be this is an amazing day, this i think this is going to be a very big day and in a very positive way for our country. yes, please. >> president, you talked about the vat and the. >> eu before. >> and your concerns. >> with how the eu treats you. do you have. >> a number. >> in mind on the european union? >> do you have any idea. where that. >> number is going to land? >> well, what they are now is they have a 20% vat tax, which we're considering to be similar or the same as the tariff. plus they charge lots of fees and, you know, they're doing something else. the european union has been very tough on our companies. they sued apple, they sued google. they sued facebook. they sued many other companies and their american companies. and the kind of numbers are staggering. and the court system over there is not very good to our companies. if you know that apple had to pay, i think, $16 billion in a penalty court case, that was really shocking because most people thought they would

have won that court case, people that watched it. so they've been very tough. airlines have called me up and they said, could you help us with europe because they're charging us so many different fees? i got a call from the head of american, united and other airlines saying, every time we land a plane, we get just absolutely killed by the european union. and so they haven't been treated as good. you know, we think european union is wonderful. we all love europe. we love the countries in europe. but european union has been absolutely brutal on trade. canada has been very bad to us on trade. but now canada is going to have to start paying up. and canada has been tough on the military because they don't have a very they have a very low military cost. they think we're going to, you know, protect them with our military, which is unfair. so canada is going to be a very interesting situation because, you know, we just don't need their product. and yet they survive off the fact that we're,

you know, we do 95% of what they do. and canada is just absolutely i say it. and sometimes people smile and sometimes they say great idea. but canada with their taxes would come down greatly. their security would go up greatly. amazing things happen to canada and really canada in this particular, why would we pay $200 billion a year in subsidies to canada when they're not a state? you do that for a state, but you don't do that for somebody else's country. so i think canada is going to be a very serious contender to be our 51st state. >> i we are. >> going with canada. >> there was. >> obviously a delay in. >> implementing those tariffs. >> i spoke to governor trudeau on numerous occasions and we'll see what happens. but it just sets up so good for them. look, the people would pay much less tax than they're paying right now. they'd have perfect military protection. they don't have any military protection

because they essentially because and you take a look at what's going on out there. you have russian ships, you have china ships, you have chinese ships, you have a lot of ships out there. and, you know, people are in danger. this is a different world today. it's a different world, and they need our protection. yes. >> elon musk and the efforts that he's undertaken with your you granted him new authority this week. will he secure any new government contracts while he is working on doge? >> no, not not if there's a conflict. if there's no conflict, i guess, what difference does it make? but we won't let him do any of anything having to do with the conflict. >> are you. >> personally checking to make sure. >> there's no conflicts. >> of interest? yeah, i am. >> i am, he answers. >> to you. sure he does. i first of all, he wouldn't do it. and second of all, we're not going to let him do anything with his. a conflict of interest. >> in negotiations. >> with the eu. >> or, you know, there's. >> just discussions ongoing already. >> how quickly do you expect that you'll hear back from them about any of these? >> i can't tell you. yeah. the

eu has been very nasty. it's just been they haven't treated us properly. look we were great to them on nato essentially it's similar group of countries. when i came in my first term i raised their fees. i mean they were not paying. we were paying for, in my opinion, almost all of nato. and now, you know, i had the bad moment with the press where the press said, well, does this mean you won't protect him? i said, i won't protect him if they're not paying. but because i said that the secretary general, as you know, said it was the greatest thing he's ever seen because the money came pouring in. and but they don't treat us right on trade. they don't treat us right on the military either. i mean, if you look at ukraine, we're in for probably $200 billion more than europe. why are we in for more than europe? we're in for more than europe. i mean, think of it. or nato. i mean, that's just call it now because canada is in. by the way, canada is just about the lowest payer. also just you know, they shouldn't be that they are just

about the lowest payer in nato in addition to everything else. so canada has really been taken advantage of. and if they had to pay just something modestly fair, they wouldn't be able to succeed as a country. and that's why that's why i feel they have to become a state. yes, ma'am. >> thank you, mr. president. is it your. >> expectation that partners will offer. major concessions. >> and that. >> you actually don't end up applying those tariffs? >> no, i think that a lot of them will stay the same. and whatever they pay, i'll pay. i mean, we'll we'll have we'll have a lot of them stay the same i think some look i heard they as an example, eu lowered their tax on cars down to the exact same amount that they were much higher. they were approximately five times higher. and they lowered them down to the exact tax that we're charging that took place like yesterday or the day before. is that a correct statement? i think so, yeah. >> do you. expect any

exemptions. >> or waivers? >> i don't expect that. no. this is a simple system and there wouldn't be any. and in the case of apple i gave them a waiver, an exemption in my first term because samsung was in south korea and samsung didn't have to pay the tax because it was a tax on china. and apple makes a lot of their product in china. so i did that because it wouldn't have been fair. but now this applies to everybody across the board. this is a much simpler way. it's better. >> yes. >> sorry. >> you have that major call yesterday with president putin of russia. president zelensky responded today basically saying any agreements they won't accept unless they're made with ukraine. will ukraine have a seat at that table for those negotiations? >> they would. i mean, they're part of it. we would have ukraine and we'd have russia, and we'll have other people involved, too. a lot of people, a lot of a lot of forks in the a lot of forks in this game. i'll tell you what, this is a very interesting situation. but the

ukraine war has to end. the young people are being killed at levels that nobody's seen since world war two, and it's a ridiculous war and it has to end. we had a good talk with president putin. we had a good talk with president zelensky, very good talk. and somebody said, oh, i should have called zelensky first. i don't think so. i mean, we have to find out whether or not russia wants to make a deal. i know that zelensky wants to make a deal because he told me that. but i now know that russia wants to make a deal. >> if you ask. >> secretary to walk back his comments yesterday saying ukraine won't join nato and won't go back to pre 2014 borders because. >> those are. >> bargaining chips you could use. >> no i didn't, somebody told me that, but i thought his comments were good yesterday and they're probably good today. they're a little bit softer perhaps. but i thought his comments from yesterday, i thought his comments yesterday were pretty accurate. i don't see any way that a country in russia's position could allow them just in their position, could allow them to join nato. i don't see

that happening. and long before president putin, russia was very strong on the fact that i believe that's the reason the war started, because biden went out and said that they could join nato, and he shouldn't have said that. as soon as he said that, i said, you know what? you're going to have a war now. and i was right about that. this is a war that would have never happened if i were president. >> mr. >> president biden, not president. i mean. >> i think biden is incompetent. and i think when he said that they could join nato, i thought that was a very stupid thing to say. i thought when he said, well, it depends if it's a minor incursion. in other words, it's okay if russia does a minor incursion. i thought that was a very foolish thing to say. when it started. the other thing that got it started was how badly milley and these stupid people, bad generals, how badly they did with afghanistan. i was going to pull out, but we were pulling out with dignity and strength, and we were going to take our

equipment with us and everything else. they are. i mean, what they're doing is what they did with that. i think putin looked at that mess and he said, wow, this is a great time. i'm going to go in. but what what the americans said, i'm not blaming americans, but i will say what they said had a big influence on his deciding to go in. yeah. >> when elon musk met with prime minister modi earlier today, did he do so as an american ceo or did he do so as a representative of the us government? >> are you talking about me? >> no. elon musk. >> elon i don't know. he they met and i assume he wants to do business in india. but india is a very hard place to do business in because of the tariffs. they they have the highest tariffs just about in the world. and it's a hard place to do business. no, i would imagine he met possibly because you know he's running a company. he's he's doing this as a as something that he's felt strongly about for a long time because he sees what's happening

and he sees how the country is really being hurt badly by all of the fraud, waste and abuse. yeah. >> he's meeting with the ceo or. meeting with a representative of your government. >> well, he's meeting with me in a little while, so i'm going to ask him that question. all right. i'll ask him that question. yeah. >> i what should we expect? so you mentioned obviously steel and. >> aluminum and pharmaceuticals. >> what do you think about that? >> i think autos are coming soon. i think they're all coming more or less at the same time. and it's not going to be a big shock to the system. but what it's going to do is it's going to bring pharmaceuticals back to our country. much more important than the money. it's a lot of money, but it's going to bring pharmaceuticals back to our country. it's going to bring chips back to our country. it's going to bring automobile. we're going to do a lot more automobile manufacturing in our country. you know, when i did this, when i announced this during the campaign, they were going to build the largest car plant in the world in mexico was almost under construction. it was just