the favorite is jordan spieth and tied with dustin thomas. rory mcilroy is 12 to one. stuart: tiger playing with mickelson. i'm sorry i dragged on. but masters is very important. but now it is yours. neil: is this golf? i was looking for the 18th hole with the clowns. stuart: i just hit a hole-in-one. neil: thank you, buddy. checking up. thank you for keeping us up to speed on that. i have the latest results. meantime, look at this, taking back one-fourth of the ground lost yesterday. we had come back double this earlier on. this is market weighing on the trade war thing. going after amazon thing. i know i wasn't here for the amazon thing, i'm telling you friends, this has enormous

implications for any business that might not catch the president's favor. and why is that the case here? does it have to do with the president's concern about one company taking advantage of the u.s. post office? i don't know but this much i do. there are some alarming precedents being set here, whether you like the president or not. we're going to get into that a little later in the show and implications potentially of an expanded trade war as well. but let's get a read on things with the dow up 118 points. many so-called "fang" stocks are coming back but not so robustly. they swapped what had been a perilous drop we'll keep an eye on that. we have dane manning and "fbn:am" co-host lauren simonetti. >> hey. neil: markets want to see a rebound and watching all the technical factors with the s&p moving below the 200-day moving average and all that. what are they worried about the

dow and all markets making a rebound today? >> let's get technical. we're just above that 200-day moving average for the s&p 500. it has been 2 1/2 years before yesterday, before we went below it. so that determines the long-term momentum of the stock market and that is a big question mark right now because you had last year this tailwind for these big multinationals and everyday americans of tax reform and a tax cut. now with the threat of trade and these big, just a few tech companies that have such an outsized influence on your portfolio and on the markets overall having such sway that can overcome what we might have seen more of in terms of the tax benefits. neil: dave, how do you play this when it is so volatile? we talk about volatility so much that i wanted to revisit what is the definition of volatility. i guess it represents a swing up or down more than 1%, whatever the market average is. already this year we had twice as many such days as we had all

of last year, so i guess you have to get used to that but what do you tell your clients, your customers? how do you keep them calm? >> well, neil, i mean no secret, a, urge caution and b, patience. you don't want to make -- anyone who is making singular stock bets on one of these, you know, on a narrow field is not being very smart and even more so as you point out in an era where we have a government that thinks it can begin to target individual companies or individual industries very narrowly and somewhat, at a moments notice that is not a good environment to make individual stock bets. it is old standards of patience and diversification. neil: by that i want to follow up. a lot of people look at amazon say, all right, i held this stock for couple years. i have quintupled my money. i don't want to risk spoiling

that. and so they get out and it is a herd mentality that invariably comes too soon or is overwrought but the history of such events that they overplay themselves. what do you think, for example, when it comes to amazon? >> well specifically with amazon that is a company that i think can be accused of overreach. it is really hard, it always has been very hard to be good at everything. that company says i'm going to be good at retail. i'm going to be good at delivery. i'm going to be good at health insurance now. i'm going to be good at media. i don't buy it. that is not, that is not what internet enabled specialization and collaboration. not mow -- monopolization. if you want my individual view on that one, that is not a bet i would make. neil: interesting. lauren, the other drama spotify comes out, there are already indications it will be appreciably above what was

thought to be the opening price. it could be 150, could be 160, there is difference how this is being handled. this is not a typical ipo. it is not formally an ipo. what is the excitement around this. >> this is direct listing. the price we're hearing 165 to 170. expected to open, i spoke to a bunch of analysts this morning over by the post. they said probably after 12, i heard a lot of 2:00 p.m.s. ask your question, tech, look at "fang" stocks they lost almost $80 billion in market cap yesterday. this is the day after. you're looking for recovery, smaller tech stocks trying to become public, is there appetite for that because if there is panic selling in the tech sector would that hit a company like spotify, right? spotify need to, a, make more money and manipulate the industry a little differently. they have to do the media thing and appease the record labels and keep their 71 million paying

subscribers happy, right? maybe become more of netflix getting original content to those subscribers. we're waiting for spotify to open, 160. neil: a direct listing as they call it. we'll keep an eye on that very, very much. >> sure. neil: goes without saying, dave, thank you very much. the president i want to get back to the issue i missed when i was out yesterday, one i think will be watched closely, but business historians, that is how this president is focused on walloping amazon. keep in mind as president of the united states, if he doesn't like a company or particular industry he set his sights on this giant retailer right now, going again with the notion that it is somehow hitting the post office. keep in mind the post office i can remember was losing money long before amazon came into being but targeting a high-flyer on this. at same time there are reports that he invited vladmir putin to

the white house. that is just odd. you know what i mean? putin comes to the white house. one of the most successful entrepreneurs in the world, an american by birth, seattle, if that counts being american, is being targeted. it is just so incredible. here is someone else who is incredible, former ronald reagan budget director david stockman what he makes of the tit-for-tat and trade wars going on. this is something, not to politicize this, we usually hear out of democrats, right? john kennedy going after the steel industry. jimmy carter went after big drug manufacturers, that sort of thing. this is very, very different though. this is one president targeting one company. what do you think of it? >> well the argument is that trump is pro-business and that's mistake. he is pro-trump. and by pro-trump i mean whatever comes into his mind. neil: hold on, david, i want to alert our viewers this is never-trumper alert. this is a never-trumper alert.

go ahead. >> whatever half-baked idea comes into his mind he tweets it out and runs for a few weeks. neil: for a long, long time he railed against jeff bezos in particular. he has said his wealth has been really built on taking advantage of a system and a relationship with the post office, too many sweet deals. without getting into that. his real problem with jeff bezos is the "washington post." he owns that. "the washington post" has been very critical of this president. what do you think of this whole thing? >> i think he is right about amazon for the wrong reason. it's a predatory monster, destroying value, jobs, businesses, assets, all over america. neil: you sound like you're not a prime customer. >> i am a prime customer. i use it a lot. neil: why are you whining? >> i'm telling you its absurdly overvalued. neil: that is not my point. >> it is an important point. neil: do you think that is what he is talking about? >> my point is not about the

post office. there is a little bit of subsidy there, get rid of it. the post office ought to allocate more overhead to the package business because it is more expensive but that is minor. the big problem that if you tell bezos he can run a profit-free business and market cap goes from 200 billion four years ago to 750 billion, in other words half a trillion gain with no profits in the entire e-commerce business. all the profits they make are from the cloud. neil -- the truth is, i would like to document this because you know the listeners don't get this off the. the minor profit they're making is from aws, the cloud business, totally independent of what we think of as amazon and shipping everything 24 hours from a to z. that business had 160 billion of sales last year and lost 200 million of operating income. neil: that is not what the president is saying. >> i know. neil: i agree, there are many

who by the way are equally leery of companies that have run up and quintupled and risen 10-fold with very little to support what is going on there. there are others who will argue the point, amazon deserves the attention it is getting and response it has gotten but this comment made by the president, first of all it is not his role to do that. and this sounds more like a vendetta than anything else. >> i agree. presidents shouldn't be commenting on companies. presidents shouldn't be meddling in the economy with -- neil: your old boss ronald reagan did with the japanese and dumping chips on our market. >> that was a big mistake and he was bamboozled at the time. when they all came in, little kind of conspiracy in the cabinet, browbeat the japanese into agreeing for voluntary quotas on auto exports. neil: the japanese did. >> they beat the hell out of them. they came in and told the president that they voluntarily

agreed. he said, oh, isn't that wonderful. that isn't the way it works but this is much worse. this is kind of across the board. donald trump has been a protectionist since he started speaking publicly in the 1970s. neil: you know what is going on. we're going after china and chinese response, where do you think that is going? you're a free trader, right? >> i'm a free trader. this is not going anywhere good because it is not attacking the real problem. frankly the real problem is we're borrowing money like never before at the federal level, at the household level, at the business level. we got 68 trillion of debt for the entire economy. neil: you're talking about all unfunded liabilities beyond just our federal? >> i'm talking about the debt of business, household and government without even adding in unfunded. we're living way beyond our means. the fed has made -- neil: is that what is going on in the markets today notwithstanding? >> the markets are a giant bubble. what is happening right now, some little crack of rationality

is trying to break through. the market has a long way to go down and trump made a huge mistake by embracing the bubble that in the campaign he pointed out was one big fat ugly bubble. he was right. but instead of going to the heart of the matter, cleaning house at the fed, he put in janet yellen in trousers and a bow tie. in other words powell is the same old keynesian nonsense, keeping interest rates below zero in real terms and that's the mother's milk of speculation. after inflation. neil: after inflation. you think we're setting up for something even worse here? so these, when you see a spike up, a day after big selloff, doesn't always happen, most of the time it has. >> yeah. neil: does david stockman keep selling through all of that? >> that would be a great time to get out of the casino. my advice would be run, don't walk because this place, the stock market, the bond market,

is the most dangerous -- neil: you're not a fan of a long-term strategy that says markets invariably go up over the long term? >> if you've been in for 30 years, no reason to jump out. if you bought the stock market, s&p 500 at 2500, 2700, on the dip, now 200 day is 2580 or something like that, you're going to lose your lunch. neil: even if you don't need money for 10 years? >> yeah. yeah. neil: really. >> i think this time the fed -- neil: where are you putting your money? >> under the mattress. neil: no you're not. where do you put it, seriously. >> you stay safe in cash. you preserve the capital. you don't get in harm's way. neil: what is cash for you? treasury notes, bonds. >> treasury bills, sure. and interest rate -- neil: you said interest rates are unrealistically low. >> awe at least you're get a small yield. not taking principle risk if the

stay in the shortened of the market. if you get into the long end of the market or into the stock market or any of the etfs, you're asking for trouble. neil: it sounds like you're disappointed in this president when you start out liking some of the rebellious things he was talking about? >> i always thought that we needed a great disruptor. he is disrupting everything but i never felt he had a program to solve the problem, okay? it is becoming more clear by the day he is just kind of a whirling dervish, random, he randomly strikes and has focus own wrong thing. the mexican border is not the heart of the problem. the heart of the problem is in the eccles building, the federal reserve. listen to this the last 90 days the federal government borrowed $500 billion. the gdp this quarter may go up 200 billion. which means we borrowed 2 1/2 times more than the growth of this, modest growth of gdp this

quarter. we are in huge trouble fiscally, and we have you know, washington running out of control. this last bill they passed, it is called the omnibus. it was really the horibus bill. i have never seen an appropriations bill this far out of control domestically, defense, and all the rest of it in my entire career since 1970 when i started down there. trump went in asking for a 50 billion cut in domestic appropriations. he signed a bill that raised it 63 billion. in other words, by the time the bill got to him he was 110 billion deeper in the red. neil: he said he would never do this again? >> no, i don't believe it for a minute because he has gotten so bamboozled by the generals in the military industrial complex, that we need 80 billion more for defense. not that we need more funding, we have too many missions. he says we're done in syria.

make that happen. get the hell out of there. ought to get out of iraq. shouldn't pick a fight with iranians. neil: i would zero base everything, really from the ground up what we're committing to. always good seeing you, i think. thank you very, very much. yes he is a prime amazon customer but that matters little to him. he will tell let you know, amazon, if you think you have given him props. think about that next time you try to ship a package to him. meantime the president is invoking nafta talking about the so-called caravan. this caravan is kind of interesting. began a little north of honduras at 600, 700 marchers. it is now doubled that. we're told heading right toward the american border and they expect to walk right in. are we getting it right? the story you're not hearing on the network you should be watching. what you should be doing now if you're hearing and watching me. so good for you.

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comcast business outmaneuver. ythen you turn 40 ande everything goes. tell me about it. you know, it's made me think, i'm closer to my retirement days than i am my college days. hm. i'm thinking... will i have enough? should i change something? well, you're asking the right questions. i just want to know, am i gonna be okay? i know people who specialize in "am i going to be okay." i like that. you may need glasses though. yeah. schedule a complimentary goal planning session today with td ameritrade. neil: i don't know if you remember the name of alexander swan, he admitted in february that he misled investigators probing alleged russian meddling in the 2016 election and possible connections to the trump campaign. now agreeing and admitting to that he lied to bob mueller's

investigators. he will be in jail for 30 days, pay up to $20,000 fine. the first such prison sentence meted out in this early bob mueller investigation. i say early now because we're getting reports as well he is nowhere near finished on this whole thing. we'll keep you posted on any further developments. meanwhile caravan, that is what they're calling it, caravan, in immigration terms refers to gathering of 100 more or more immigrants trying to leave an area where they feel they are oppressed, to an area where they feel they are safe. they're largely coming from honduras into mexico. hoe hope to make it to the u.s. border we're told, making a statement. better 1200 strong. some say about it time they get to the u.s. border, 2000 strong, to state their case, they're under duress, they should be accepted wherever they go whether mexico or united states. this has become a global sort of a mission here. center for immigration studies executive director mark

kerkorian. where is this going? the president given special attention, framing this something gotten out of control. it chose the failures of nafta, et cetera, what do you think? >> well i think the people organizing this, it is a u.s.-based group out of san diego that's basically opposes borders. they're an open borders group. they i think are sort of hoping for some kind of confrontation, something that is going to make news on the border because their goal of course is to eliminate borders. let's be, they're open and frank about this i don't think the mexicans are going to let this go. i think they are going to do what they can to kind of make this go away because even though things like this have happened before, and there are always illegal immigrants, not just from central america, even from africa and asia going through mexico to reach the u.s. mexicans always look the other way as long as they keep going, they don't care.

this has gotten such news attention, the president tweeting about it, what have you, i think the mexicans will definitely want this to go away. the question is, are they going to be able to do that? there is an interesting tidbit that has not come out, yet the mexican media, people in the caravan will have training this week, workshops, how to gain the asylum system here and the asylum system in mexico, taught by immigration lawyers, american and mexican immigration lawyers. neil: to your point the heat is accelerating here, as this caravan approaches presumably our border the u.s. will guard our border with the military. he is talking apparently to defense secretary mattis about just that i could see how this could get nasty very quickly. >> it could, but like i said, with the immigration lawyers telling them how to play the game, i think what you're going to see, they will go to legal crossing points.

the way the law is now, they can walk up to our immigration inspector and say, hello, i would like asylum. we have then consider whether they have a plausible claim and put them in the pipeline or not. if they are central american, we decide know, they don't have a claim, we can't just push them back across the border anymore. we have to put them in detention, get paperwork, it takes, a lot of work. neil: mexicans encouraging them? i know at least three prominent mexican towns along the route simply looked the other way, or actually gotten out of the way for them to make it. >> yes. neil: what is mexico doing her to contain this or, you know, incentivize this? >> it's a mixed bag i think here because at the local level, at the mexican border the buzz freed reporter said that the inspector, sort of lowly field person there just went off got coffee and looked the other way, couldn't care less. they probably can't be bothered.

at the national level their immigration service has said they are going to try to disperse this caravan and i think, like i said, because it has gotten such attention, the capital, the government in mexico city is going to say, make this go away. so i think this is a stunt that probably isn't going to work but they will keep trying, these anti-borders groups. they will keep trying. we need to change our rules. this is the basic problem. so that if you pass through mexico, which has its own asylum system, you shouldn't even be allowed to apply in the u.s. because you passed through 1000 miles of mexico, that is where you should have applied. neil: mexicans along the way may be encouraging this. this is a mess. we'll watch closely. thank you, mark, for the latest on that the president already promised to mark's point, if and when they get to our border, preparing for the possibility if and when they get to our border

we'll be there with troops. this could get, to say is the least, very, very messy. more after this.

neil: all right. spotify shares are indicated to open anywhere between 165 and 170. you remember them saying maybe 50, when it started out. it would not be a initial public offering, it would be a direct marketing offering if you will. christina, good to have you. >> all the traders are huddled on the far end to waiting for what the opening price for spotify will be. the ceo is not here or somewhere in the back. you didn't have any ringing of the bell. why is that? because spotify, this company never turned a profit has chosen to take a direct listing. so let's just talk about the comparison between an ipo and a

direct listing. when you go to the direct listing route which the company says is more transparent and democratic they are essentially getting rid of the road show, they don't have to woo investors. a big institutional bank is not setting price. they are saving billions in fees. for those that do have shares, early birds they got in, there is no lockup period. they don't have to hold on to the shares but can immediately dump them in the market today. neil, between 165 and 170, there is trader whispering in my ear right now, it is 166 right now. there are 5.5 million shares out. that is a small portion of the total amount of shares. there is 55.7. what does spotify do? how will it possibly continue to grow in this market? let's look at comparison between spotify and pandora. i particularly use spotify, very similar services that curate

services for you. spotify has lower number of unique monthly users. those that choose to use spotify spend double or almost double the amount of time listening to music, myself included because of all the curated lists. people that i have spoken to and reports that i have read, there is potential for spotify to grow into the original content world. think of like a netflix. they can produce their own podcasts, what they're doing, produce their own music and get more artists to release music like taylor swift and the weekend on their platform. so right now we're waiting. which is probably moments away before spotify does open but it hasn't happened yet. i would hope it would happen right now as we're live on air. neil: you never know, kristina. thanks again. good seeing you. >> thank you. neil: how does market watcher scott scott shellady feel about this. i think, i think listening to kristina's fine report, it is gunning for wall street

veterans, the pros, you. >> well, they have putprice on the relationship, right? in the past you have spent billions of dollars in fees to kind of get to know your big shareholders, the road show per se. they have thrown that to the wind. it is disruptive. i like disruption. if it is successful you will see a lot more of it happen. if not maybe not. there is a lot of shares out there but not a lot today, but i think this will be leading to a lot of volatility which is why they have the road shows. they're lucky they're coming out when things are buoyant. if it was yesterday it might have been a big story. i'm interested in seeing how this turns out. neil: you're in london. it makes me think you are never coming back. >> if they have ipos like this, i will be back very soon. it will be interesting to see how it turns out. neil: spotify likes to say unique approach going directly to the market will save them

from underwriting from firms such as your own, i'm being a little bit general here but if this succeeds do you worry it will become a pattern, it will become sort of like the new -- that the way these things get into average folks hand will change permanently? >> that could be the case. it doesn't always mean, change doesn't always mean it's bad. there is a lot of money to be saved here if this does work out. ultimately could stay in the company's covers, ultimately better for shareholders and bring up maybe a higher price. tough remember, there is a lot behind the scenes folks don't normally know about. there is some buffers there and big investors there, to stand in there and step in, to buy your shares when things look a little iffy, it's a little bit of a two-way street. they're going totally against. it will be interesting to see where the chips fall. 178 million shares out there coming to the market today? no. we'll not have some sort of calamity but absolutely will be

interesting to see what happens, neil, on very volatile day like we've had over the last few months. neil: yeah. i would like to get your sense of this market right now and the volatility. some blame it on the president and the trade war and fingering amazon and all. what about you? >> i can tell you what it is. i cut right to the chase. i think the halo has cracked on the tech sector here. we have bezos who destroyed retail, not badly but there are some good things coming but there has been a lot of collateral damage we don't ever talk about. folks have lost their jobs. trucking is the number one business in 27 out of the 50 states. we'll take all the drivers out of trucks with driverless cars like elon musk wants to do. obviously facebook and information he is quote, unquote maybe abused with 50 million users out there. think america is waking up to the fact that these guys made a lot of money on their backs with the tech superhighway. maybe a lot of information is proprietary and belongs to them.

they might need to rethink how these guys get paid. neil: you and i both know that is not what the president is concerned about with amazon and bezos. i think the president is concerned about a certain entity bezos owns, "the washington post." if he didn't own "the washington post" none of this would be happening right now. that is my thought. >> he could have still owned "the washington post" and not printed a lot of stories too, that might have made a difference as well. neil: okay. >> at the end of the day i think you're right. the tech sector, i think the shine has come off that crown a little bit. but you know what? the president has an opportunity here. he has the bit in his mouth. he will not let go until he sees something what he says is the abuse of the u.s. postal system. i don't really think that is the case. neil: you know that is not the case. we've been around this financial block a few years, right? post office as long as you and i can remember was losing money long before amazon. there is something else going on here, right? >> got to be. you know why the post office

loses money, the internet. nobody mails anything. not packages. maybe packages supported the post office. clearly that is not the case. there is something else going on, we all know what it is. it is "the washington post," bezos, the tech guys have not lined up behind him. remember that was issue early on. we'll see how it goes with bezos. neil: you are the best, my friend. we miss you. scott shellady jolly old london, not jolly with what is going on with spotify. what is he talking about with spotify, if this becomes the ipo process and wine an dine the brokerage powerhouses an take a cut and make sure they have the speed bumps up for you. what if a company like spotify says we don't need them and they get very upset and some of their traders run off to london and never come back? we'll have more after this.

neil: the president meeting with baltic leaders at the white house. let's dip in to this.

>> many of you were with me. he is a tremendous person but we have a problem with china. they have created a trade deficit and i really blame our representatives and frankly our preceding presidents for this. they have a trade deficit of $500 billion a year. it is not something we can live with. so, we'll be working with china. we'll be negotiating with china, again our relationship is very good with china. we intend to keep it that way but we have to do something to seriously relief that trade deficit. we can't have it $500 billion a year trade deficit. we also have the theft of intellectual property and that is probably in the neighborhood of 200 to $300 billion a year. whether we like it or not, we have a great stock market. we have a very powerful country. we have country military as you

know. we received $700 billion. our military will be stronger than ever before. we have to do something with trade on certain countries. obviously china is the leader in terms of deficits. we never had a situation where a country, nor has there ever been in history a situation where a country has done that to another country. we've helped rebuild china over the last 25 years, if you take a look ad what's happened. we have helped rebuild china. so we intend to get along with china but we have to do something very substantial about the trade deficit. and with that, nothing is easy. i campaigned on that. i talked about that. china won't be the only country but i did in fact campaign on it. mexico, if you look at a caravan of thousands of people coming across, i told mexico you have a cash cow in nafta.

nafta has been great for mexico. has not been good for united states. a lot of businesses closed down because of nafta. you look at empty plants. this is years ago and they still haven't recovered. nafta has been a terrible deal for the united states. we're renegotiating the deal. it will still be good for mexico and for canada. when this caravan came in this is a caravan of a lot of people coming in this case from honduras, if it reaches our border, our laws are so weak and so pathetic you would not understand this because i know how strong your laws are at the border. like we have no border because we had obama make changes, president obama made changes that basically created no border. called catch-and-release. you catch them. you register them. they go into our country. we can't throw them out. in many cases they shouldn't be here. many, many cases they shouldn't be here. and after they get, what we've happens over the next two or

three years, they're supposed to come back to court, almost nobody comes back to court. they're in our country. we can't do anything about it because the laws created by democrats are so pathetic and so weak. so i told mexico, and i respect what they did, i said, look your laws are very powerful, your laws are very strong. we have very bad laws for our border. and we are going to be doing some things. i've been speaking with general mattis. we'll be doing things militarily until we can have a wall and proper security, we'll guard our border with the military. that is a big step. we really haven't done that before, certainly not very much before. but, we will be doing things with mexico and they have to do it, otherwise i'm not going so do the nafta deal. nafta has been fantastic mexico, bad for us. we've had our car plants move to mexico, many of them.

we make millions of cars in mexico. that years ago didn't exist. they closed in michigan. they closed in ohio. they closed in other places. now they're starting to move back because of what we've done with regulation and with taxes. they're starting to come back that our country, in a big way. but i told mexico very strongly, you're going to have to do something about these caravans that are coming up. i just noticed that the caravan now, which is towards the middle of mexico, coming up from honduras is breaking up very rapidly. because mexico has very strong immigration laws as we should have. we should have those laws. we don't have -- we have immigration laws that are laughed at by everybody, and it has got to be changed. we need the wall, we need protection and we have to change our immigration laws at the border and elsewhere. so mexico has, at this moment, it seems they have broken up large numbers of that particular

caravan and we'll see what happens. but we're prepared at our border. we can not have people flowing into our country illegally, disappearing and by the way, never showing up to court. so the court case will be set for two years or three years, if you can believe this. and, they never show up. for the most part, very rarely do they show up. plus if you notice, they're trying to hire thousands of judges, so every person that walks across and they're taught to say the right thing, they walk across, and then they go, they're supposed to go to court. so we're supposed to have thousands of judges because we can not have them take it out. we have to bring them before a ridiculous court system. we have to change our policies fast. just like we have to change on sanctuary cities. if you look what is happening in california they're having revolts out there because there are a lot of areas, orange

county and others don't want sanctuary cities which are guarding criminals. so a lot of things are changing but i just heard from the care have ran coming up from honduras is broken up. mexico did that they did it frankly i said you have to really do it, we're going to have a relationship on nafta. we'll have to include security in nafta. so mexico, very strong laws, and that's the way it is. so it looks like it has been broken up. so that will be good. okay, thank you very much. [shouting questions] >> the caravan doesn't irritate me, it makes me very sad this could happen to the united states. we are thousands of people that decide to just walk into our country and we don't have any laws that can protect it, and the wall, because of the democrats has been delayed. which we have started wall. just so you understand, we have 1.6 billion. we're fixing and building brand new walls in certain areas.

we're doing a lot of work on walls. we have 1.6 billion, we're starting brand new sections of walls. we need a wall that is about 800 miles, 7 to 800 miles of 2000-mile stretch. we have a lot of natural boundaries. it is sad to see it. it is sad for both sides. it is said for the people of the caravan and sad for the people of the united states. it is sad that we don't have laws, we have a border, if you don't do it legally you can't come into the united states. to me that is a very sad thing for people of the united states. thank you all very much. >> scott pruitt staying? scott pruitt staying? >> thank you very much. [shouting questions] >> please exit. >> we'll be, i have great respect for the baltic states. tremendous people. tremendous leaders who i have known now for a pretty long period of time. we have great respect for the baltic states. thank you. thank you very much. >> scott pruitt, sir, you

support scott pruitt, sir? >> thank you very much. >> market volatility? >> if possible this, is speaking with the baltics states. ideally we want to get along with russia. getting along with russia is good thing, not a bad thing. maybe we will, maybe we won't. probably nobody has been tougher to russia than donald trump. if you take a look at our military strength now, which would not have happened had the opponent won, if you take a look at oil and gas we're producing now, we're independent. we're now exporting oil and gas. this is not something that russia wanted. if you, three presidents just told me that nato is taking in a tremendous amount of money because of donald trump that would have never happened. so nato is much stronger. you may want to say that. would you like to say that, madam president? please. >> we talked already five minutes ago for us important for the president's impetus of the

united states in nato. we expect together, would nights go ahead with deep reforms on nato especially with decision-making on decisiveness and denial, acts of denial which we expect to see from russia in case of aggression. without the united states this is not possible. the spending coming to the nato from the united states and why the vital leadership of organized states is reforms are important. we are behind and with you. i think that the best allies you have in europe and nato is the baltic states today and we also doing our homework. we're modernizing armies. we're already spending the percent and together we can do a lot and i'm very much looking forward to see everybody around the table in brussels and going ahead with better nato, more

resultative nato and more efficient nato. >> has donald trump made a difference on nato? >> what is that? >> this is very risky question. she same thing in the oval office. >> i repeat pressure on all members to better pressure to all political elite that somebody else needs to protect but not themselves. so the first you do the homeworks, then you ask for your partner to come with you, and that is exactly what you did. this kind of leadership is good. i'm open. we're using this to influence their opinions in our countries, that the first we need to invest ourselves and only then the partners can come with us. >> nato has taken in billions of dollars more because of me, because i said, you're delinquent, you're not paying to many of the countries, is that right? many of the countries weren't paying. even now germany is paying 1%

and they're not paying full 1%. germany hooks up a pipeline into russia where germany will be paying billions of dollars for energy into russia and i'm saying what is going on with that? how come germany is paying vast amounts of money to russia they hook up a pipeline? that's not right. so you look what is going on. germany pays 1%. the united states is paying close to 4%. the united states as you said is paying 80% of the cost of nato. do you think that is fair? with all of that being said, because of me and you can speak to the head of nato, stoltenberg, he said that because of what i have said to the countries they have taken in, general, you will confirm this too, many billions of dollars more than they would have had if you had "crooked hillary" clinton as president, okay. that i can tell you. many billions of dollars more.

we've been very tough on that. we've been very tough on russia, frankly. but i will say, that it we got along with russia, that would be a good thing, not a bad thing. it is possible we won't. we're going to find out if we do. if we could all get along, that would be great. that include china and many other countries. but we'll see what happens. only time will tell. nobody has been tougher on russia, but getting along with russia would be a good thing, not a bad thing of the just about everybody agrees to that except very stupid people. okay? >> [inaudible] >> we'll find out. i will let you know. there will be a time i let you know. you will find out very quickly, see what happens. [thanks, everyone. >> thank you all. [shouting questions] >> thank you. i have a great respect for the baltics. i have great respects for my friend. i've known them right from the beginning of my presidency.

these are great courageous people and have done a fantastic job for their countries. i have great respect for you and your nations. >> thank you, everyone. >> amazon or "the washington post" sir, what has amazon done to bug you, sir. >> you take a look at the post office. you take a look at the post office. and the post office is losing billions of dollars, and taxpayers are paying for that money because it delivers packages for amazon at a very below cost and that is not fair to the united states. it is not fair to our taxpayers. and amazon has the money to pay the fair rate at the post office which would be much more than they're paying right now. the other thing a lot of retail businesses out of the country are going out of business. that is a different problem and a big problem. you have retailers all over the united states going out of business. you look at some small towns had a beautiful main street, the stores are all gone.

that is a different problem we'll have to talk about. but if you look at the cost we're subsidizing, we're giving a subsidy to amazon. we're talking about billions of dollars a year, the real cost. a report just came out, they said $1.47 i believe or about that, for every time they deliver a package the united states government, meaning the post offers, loses $1.47. amazon will have to pay much more money to the post office. there is no doubt about that. thank you very much. thank you. reporter: scott pruitt, sir? >> i hope he is going to be great. reporter: i hope he is growing to be great. [inaudible] neil: president made a lot of news, that last question concerning scott pruitt, epa director has been criticized for

cozy relationships with industry players. we'll get into that for second. i hope he is going to be good, was response to that question, mr. pruitt. he made a little news earlier. we're showing you spotify, i do want to let you know, president focused something i have not even alert anywhere else, i'm not sure he is right on this, but he is the president of the united states. that the mexicans intervened to break up the so-called caravan of illegals, in this case mostly from honduras making their bay north through mexico. it started out as group of 500 or 600, ultimately over a thousand, close to 2,000. this comes from the president of the united states. i'm sure he has it on good authority that the mexicans breaking up the caravan. some reports come out texas press and mexican press, they were not being impeded anyway. the group continues marching north and mexican officials turned other way. taking president face value here, they have intervened.

we don't know how or to what degree but to break up that into much smaller groups. whether that makes any difference whether you have a bunch of smaller groups or one big one merging on the united states mexican border but that again is surprising me. this is surprising what is going on with spotify, the music site, doing different way going public without the initial public offering, direct listing. it is list the. fox business's kristina, what are you hearing? >> spotify is opening on markets. i was taking bets, when it would happen. one trader said maybe this will be tomorrow morning this is not your typical public listing. this is not an ina poe but direct listing this is already listed shares and put it on the market. this is different than what a

regular ipo is. there will be volatility because no institution bank sets price of spot spy shares. what we're seeing at $160 u.s. just a little above that. when i was standing in the pit when it went public, it was 165.90, and it hit a high of 169 and we're seeing it drop. part of because coming from me, why we're seeing it drop, number of shares being put on the market has climbed to 10.5 million shares. that means the original investors, shares on to the market, that could start deluding the price which is possibly why we are some of the drop. i spoke to another trader earlier, he said she's concerned about the future of the company, you're working on lower margins, he's trying to understand how the company could turn a profit because it hasn't yet, it's been opened for quite some time, has been private up until this moment but not turned a profit. today finally exciting because it's something new for the

floor, direct listing for spotify, opened at 165.9 and it's going down from there. sent it back to you, neil. neil: all right, thank you very much, cristina. to cristina's point whether this could have been different in ipo route, big investor bankers shepherding this process along, in that process investors have lost money coming right off the gate as well. jury is still out as to whether you go about making your debut on wall street, i do want to get the read on a list with charlie gasparino. we have the former bush 43 white house press person. >> first off, i doubt that founders are dumping their shares, that's generally not how it happens. neil: strictly forbidden. >> let's take the founders out of it. what is probably happening now, a degree of flippers, people that get at ipo price which whatever the ipo -- set price,

okay, and are flipping it just after it pops in the market. that happens, by the way, with street-run deals. neil: absolutely. >> when you get the insider price you can make a lot of money flipping it. that's what you see right now. this looks like it's running pretty well. when you do a deal like this without underwriters, the market is up, we had a selloff in tech shares the last couple of days which -- neil: a proxy, the market was about 70, we got news of 160 some-odd figure. i really don't like to read into that but spotify will be a proxy for potential market comeback. >> it could be, it could be. i know a lot of silicon valley that are in the stock, they made a lot of money. i talked to one last night. i think the bigger proxy is amazon, though, that's a fascinating story. i've never seen, you know, the president goes after cnn a lot,

you know what i'm saying, he generally did not go after at&t or time warner specifically. we are in unchartered territory where the president is attacking the business model -- neil: again, he opposed that and still opposes the merger of -- >> i talked to people inside the trump, sort of kitchen cabinet who were involved with discussions with trump would tell you, yes, he had animus against cnn and his justice department antitrust division found a legal rationale to go after them. they make strong points but that's a whole other story. at&t, amazon thing is fascinating, he went after them again, made news in the press conference. they will have to pay the post office more, what i don't understand and maybe art can help out with this, what power does the president have over the post office, i think it's

somewhat limited. neil: slippery slope. >> did amazon rip off the post office, i think he's wrong on that. >> the president doesn't have control over the post office, they are independent and set their own prices which is power of job owning which makes me uncomfortable is i'm a purist, when it comes to the matters of the market and specific businesses, i never liked it when democrats criticized entire industries, big oil, everybody on wall street, when they go after by category and i don't like when you go after a company by specificity, enron, something along those lines n this -- in this case i do think it's about the washington post, the president is doing what he does, finding leverage through another vehicle to put pressure on somebody or to get a change. neil: would any come -- >> no, i don't think so. if you're a supporter of donald trump, he loves you and --

neil: boeing was in the same position for a while with the president and now -- >> boeing went to him and negotiated a price of air force one, didn't they? that will allow the president to get favorable press coverage. when the president gets favorable press coverage, everything is good. if the press coverage is bad, he finds leverage to go after it. neil: it's not unreasonable for presidents, president obama, but it is quite unusual to your point to target one company. >> really crazy, here is the thing, though, a lot of it is bs. it really is. let's be real clear about downtowns, small town businesses, initially what really put them out of business, guess what, all the buddies in the mall business. wal-mart, downtown mom and shop

businesses is not amazon, this has been going on for a long time because malls take people away from the downtown, ironically what's happening now is downtowns in a lot of places are -- there's a resurgence because people hate experience of the mall, they will buy all the garbage online and have the high-end experience downtown, butcher, baker, you name it. that's what's going on right now. >> charlie, the highway system. >> you could give a number of reasons but for the president to target, the decline of downtowns to amazon -- >> it's just wrong, absurd. >> e-commerce does have an impact, of course on mortar and brick shops, but it's an overstatement. >> let me ask you a question, who likes going to a mall? worst shopping experience in the world. [laughter] >> you spent a lot of time b -- but think about it.

the worst shopping experience in the world. >> shopping is the worst experience in the world. neil: a lot of people who love to shop. >> it's a different experience, here is the odd thing about this, he essentially by attacking amazon, he wants to raise everybody's taxes, amazon has basically cut costs. i mean, it's a good thing -- neil: hasn't amazon also worked out taxes, that was a big problem in the beginning. >> amazon pays all state taxes. a lot of states don't have to do it. neil: so any feel -- >> they are getting a break. neil: are you in campus created whole new businesses as a result, more than made up for the loss of mom and pop? >> i'm in the camp that the government can't tune how companies flow and shrink.

what i don't understand, i haven't seen anybody run to ground is the postal service issue about whether they are losing money or not. i have seen -- neil: i'm told they are not losing nearly as much now. >> amazon and packaging whether that's sud sidney to -- subsidy to amazon. i wonder if those fact-checkers are saying. >> the journal had a very good op-ed today. listen, i don't understand everything. by the way, their deal is proprietary, we just -- we can assume and surmise a few things about the deal. a lot of their, quote, writing on the back of the taxpayers has to do with the mandates about how the post office has to work, 6-delay delivery and things of that nature, making sure that certain packages get to rural areas, a lot of complication

here, by the way, the post office cut the deal with amazon. i can't imagine amazon exploited them at the time. it sounds somewhat -- neil: analogy that making a deal with amazon in those days was like making a deal with the mob and you better to do business than to be shoved out of business. >> well, the u.s. post office, you would think you would have some leverage somewhere. >> i'm not sure u.s. post office are the best negotiators. >> probably not. the presidential appointees and congress. >> they all derive from government. neil: i think you touched on something that's going to go significant here, the messaging, bully-pulpit of the presidency to pound a company, but is there any risk that you can overdo that? i mean, $20 billion off market value of a company now, don't cry for amazon, shareholders don't cry for jeff bezos, but that is a dangerous precedent

set, one company because you don't like the guy. >> you put your finger on one to have key elements that makes donald trump who he is and we will see if it's successful or not. he does use external leverage to try to get his way on things and creates tremendous volatility in the process. we are seeing it with china and tariffs, we are seeing with the stock market recently and we are seeing it with amazon. the president's method here, though, he believes he can get a better good result as a result of cyber rattling and going after the cliff. business people sometimes do, trump's success in business is because he's willing to do these things, can he do it as now a president? >> he put a lot of businesses into bankruptcy, success is mixed as a baseman. he was good at marketing and that's where -- that's what concerns me about all of this stuff. where is donald trump's real, you know, where is his sweet spot? his sweet spot is taking an issue and manipulating it.

neil: does he care about the small businesses? does he care about small businesses, casinos? >> are you kidding me? does he care about the contractors he stiffed? i'm telling you, this is all about one goal and that's quashing the washington post. the business logic doesn't make -- >> he wants to make amazon pay a price for washington post coverage. neil: maybe if they made him a prime member -- [laughter] neil: thank you very much, you're the best. in the meantime we told you in the outset of breaking the news. the so-called caravan from honduras moving onward from méxico started out as few hundred, 500, close to a thousand, 2,000, words from the united states of the united states a -- president of the

united states, that former president of méxico on fox news about 4:30 p.m. eastern time, in case you want to know because it always goes back to me on your world. now this little business world and the implications of what the president is talk about and doing here because the group is going to make its way to our border, then what, let's talk to former cincinnati republican, close confidant of the president to have united states, good to see you. what do you make of that? the president was able to get the mexicans to intervene with the caravans, breaking down to avoid something that could be nasty, physically nasty on the border in a few days, what do you think? >> you know, i think what we are seeing and this ties with your last conversation with the panel, we are seeing trump policy, basically what we see as evidence that he's pulled

together a variety of departments, homeland security, the defense department, when he gets his people located over there at the state department, he has pompeo and bolton, a clear-trump policy, he understands that his responsibility is to do two things, is to keep america safe and help create a context where america can prosper and, again, it is unorthodox but now becoming more and more clear what his policy is and he doesn't see the cabinet departments as being individual of secretaries that run them. they are, in fact, part of an emerging trump policy where he uses all of the tool in the tool box to get a result, he understands there's a relationship between méxico's behavior and how we deal with

nafta and their emergence as a force to stop the nonsense of coming up to our border. that is to me a good sign and it should be settling to the markets because what they don't like -- the markets don't like is uncertainty. what we are starting to get is a clear picture of a trump policy. neil: all right, you know the president far better than i, when i hear news like this that the mexicans intervened the caravan, i always wondered what made them do that because they've been on first terms with the president and called a number of names and back and forth, i am wondering what might have gotten this going, do you think the president made assurance to the mexicans, for example, on the wall that they don't have to pay for it? >> well, no, i don't. i think what he did was he basically said, look, we are close to a deal with nafta and -- and it makes sense but it

doesn't make sense if you're aiding and abetting nonsense and this -- this march on our borders because in the final analysis, neil, as you know, for -- for a number of years i was ambassador to the united nations in charge of human rights portfolio and i worked with john bolton then and we, in fact, understood clearly that we were dealing with 193 nation states, those nations wanted folks to respect their borders and they wanted some adherence to the rule of law. this nonsense that's been perpetuated by anarchists that america should be borderless and rule of law can be turned on and off at will is something that the trump administration is -- is going to stop and he's communicating that to our allies and to our trading partners and he's basically saying when we have on our jersey, we are going

to keep it on, we are, in fact, are a team in this regard and that includes respecting each other's borders and the rule of law and each other's countries. neil: you never answered my question whether he made a deal, that's how good you are. i noticed that just now. [laughter] neil: i love having you on, thank you very much, appreciate it. >> always good to be with you, neil. neil: thank you, of course, related issues as well. the dow about 108 points now. we are trying to confirm what the president said that the caravan largely of honduran illegals would way into méxico has been broken up, the reason why that could be significant is they were worried about this large group, thousands strong by the time it would get to the u.s.-méxico border maybe becoming violent or becoming violent in reaction to them acting up. that does not appear to be a

worry right now but, again, no way to confirm what the president just said a few minutes ago. we are on top of that, the dow is up 108. spotify on fire.

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>> welcome back to cavuto coast to coast, i'm gerri willis, taxpayers who paid property tax last december as way of locking deductions may be in for a rude surprise, the irs may not allow those deductions. thousands of taxpayers in high-taxed states prepaid property taxes after tax reform legislation capt write-offs for state and local taxes at $10,000 per return for both single filers and married couples. taxpayers can only deduct tax liability they actually knew at the time and in many cases, that means taxes were only a few months of the year or maybe none at all. the irs warned december 27th, 2017 that not all prepayments would be deductible and in january, treasury secretary steven mnuchin threatened audits for taxpayers who didn't comply, not everybody agrees with the irs's interpretation, lawrence

axelrod, a partner is challenging the irs's position saying that prepayments by individual taxpayers are common, for example, the state income tax payments, and i'm quoting him here, the service which i used to work for in this case he says got it wrong, it's an ongoing debate, the irs referred to december 27th statement but offered no comment on this story, neil, back to you. neil: so when i wrote taxes in new jersey for the next ten years, that was apparently -- >> yeah, you shouldn't have done that. neil: i wish you had warned me about. thank you very much, gerri willis. spotify doing very well, this is a weird-kind debut for not so much strong return but not typical ipo. this is sort of direct market debut, a lot of people are saying it is death to traditional banks having role in this and pricey role at that going forward. making money charles payne, thank you for all the hard work

in my absence, connell mcshane. they looked a little down, i mean, do they have reason to worry charles: it's a juicy market for them, it's easy to do, you have a whole book of clients who are grappling -- >> don't tell all the 30-year-olds. [laughter] charles: sort of different with respect to the companies that are going public with a built-in audience. they already have a huge chunk of people and i think facebook was probably the prime example of that. facebook, remember how many times they had to readjust the ipo, made it bigger, larger, wider. neil: then dropped way down. charles: investment banker did their job. >> that was a horrible job. charles: again, it help ifs --

helps if you are literally tens of millions of people who use product that may want to buy stock. connell: you need to raise money and goal to raise money in initial public offering, that doesn't seem like that's the goal here. neil: what do wall street guys do? we are lining up the goldmans and morgan stanleys. >> they are the middleman. neil: that doesn't prevent investors from losing money, doesn't prevent people from selling. >> they price it so that it's attractive to the institutional clients who then turn around -- neil: i'm asking cynically if this was priced, jump above the asking? >> customer service. neil: i don't think people want it or need it unless it was charles involved. >> 25, 26, but to connell's point, spotify wasn't trying to

raise cash, i think they were trying to let some of their private investors cash out or some of their employees just get paid a little bit for all their hard work the past few years but i don't think the goal was to go out and raise a ton of money for the next project. they already have project up and running. neil: but if i'm thinking about going public, right, i don't know what the definition will be now, i can look at this company and say, hey, they did it and i don't have to pay these guys anything. charles: a lot different when you have tens of millions of users. [laughter] >> whoa, whoa, that's very private, charles. you make a final point in your final appearance. [laughter] charles: there used to be an attraction to wall street. neil: tie in construction, a little weird.

charles: i thought construction cavuto. charles: i -- neil: i know where you were going. a defense of the administration's position on -- on not only the trade war, whatever, but on amazon, explain, you seem to think that there's some wisdom to this that we might be missing. charles: well, no, i come through all of the postal service stuff and it's hard -- they won't tell us what the exact deal with amazon, we do know it was cut in 2013, we do know that they set their fixed cost which is 5 and a half percent but 25% of the business, that's where the subsidy comes in, defacto subsidy and amazon is smart to take advantage of it. neil: the post office cut a very lousy deal. but the post office was losing

money before amazon. charles: congress will not allow the post office to compete against fedex or ups, ironically what they have lied is let amazon grow enough where they will launch own version of fedex and ups. ultimately free market wills take care of this because they always have. neil: shouldn't the president let the free markets take care of this? >> if he has a chance to make a better deal for post, there's nothing wrong with that. connell: maybe the post office is better target than amazon. you get rid a day or two, amazon has to deal -- neil: the president's concerns with the post office? connell: i have no reason to believe it's not about the washington post. charles: i think there's legitimacy. we talked about the amazon effect, every year we say, x

amount of brick and mortar stores went out of business, we always blame amazon. president trump -- neil: before blamed wal-mart. charles: wal-mart was never able to operate at losses, amazon was able to operate for more than a decade losing billions of dollars because wall street -- neil: can i ask you this political question, if jeff bezos loved donald trump, would this be happening? charles: if washington post ever wrote at least one nice article about him once a year it might not be happening. it shouldn't be and i think he's trying to be careful on that but -- neil: i don't think he's trying to be careful at all. charles: it also could call the question should companies that are publicly traded have control big editorial board that may influence policies that help companies. >> they came out and said jeff bezos is a separate entity, but i understand what you're saying. charles: the question swings

both ways. >> some people have said as well that the president's background is in construction, a lot of his friends are in real estate including commercial reel state and they are some of the people in his ear because it's for their investments in malls or shopping centers and that's also part -- neil: bad blood with jeff bezos with donald trump for years, bezos has been critical. it's a free country. you might regret that point of view from a democratic president that may be targeting a company that you like because it's a slippery slope. charles: if they announce tomorrow they are going in any industry in the world, the biggest companies in the industry will lose 10% of their value. >> 60 million, 60 and 90 million amazon prime customers, 63 million people voted for the president, i'm just saying that consumers are consumers regardless of politics, they get

stuff cheap and stuff fast and it's convenient. neil: whatever the motivation, things will change, things are going to change at amazon, right? condoleezza rice in terms of connell: in terms of what? well, things change in terms of market valuation. i don't know if it'll change how they do business. >> at one point they were going to launch a qvc-kind of channel, high-profile thing to do, maybe they pulled because they want to be low key. neil: so you're saying the next step is cable news? >> i don't think cable news but to sell stuff. charles: it's not even just president trump, you have bernie sanders, you have both sides of the aisle and, again -- neil: he supports -- charles: we

have talked about the amazon effect for a long time. again, every time they enter in another industry, they put themselves up for antitrust legislation at some point. connell: 30,000-foot view, i think that in the early days to have administration, whatever you we wanted to say even for people who didn't like the president at all personally, they always came back to the fact that he was probusiness, probusiness environment, he will cut taxes which he eventually did, cut regulations a number of times, this story, it's tariffs, it's even the at&t-time warner, going after that with the justice department, you do start to ask questions about how probusiness the administration has been in the last few months. >> i also think worth pointing out with you saying that the stock has fallen so much, amazon is a key holding in a lot of working people's 401(k)'s pension funds. charles: 68% since inauguration, 75% since president trump was

elected at this moment, we could pull back, so if you're going blame the president for the last month, they might want to give him credit for the last year. i won't say -- you do separate politics from the votes because people who voted for trump aren't the wall street elites who are watching the shares of amazon as much as they think. >> might be getting amazon packages. charles: they'll still get them. neil: not now. thank you all very much, we call it the charles payne effect. the dow is up 216 points. charles: happens every time. [laughter] neil: we will have more after this including an update on donald trump's news conference taking some questions back and forth here with all the leaders of these three countries. they're all nato members and they're all going to be urging the president, hey, look after us, we don't like what this putin is doing after this how do you win at business?

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neil: all right, we are waiting the president's news conference with three of the baltic leaders, the leaders of -- talking about ways to continue the economic improvement going here as poll numbers pick up a tad, we have national taxpayer's union initiative director bryan riley and syndicate radio show. stacy, we begin with you, the president in economic message which seems to be, i don't want to overstate it, seems to be showing up in his own poll numbers that are ticking up a tad, is that what's going on here, do republicans sense that they've got something that will pick up steam by the mid-term elections, what? >> you know what, neil, on the heels of tax reform, you see the

president going around to rust belt states making promises who have seen industries destroyed by horrible policies from the previous administration, you actually have him stepping out ahead and doing things that even members of his own party don't like like the trade war, quote, unquote. we have been in trade war for decades where we have been on the losing end and president trump is trying to reverse that. i think that's reflected in the poll numbers and we are going to see even more of that as he continues to push the policy forward regardless of what the members of the party, party leadership, regardless of what he says, he's striking out on the people he made promises to during the campaign. neil: doesn't translate into getting full party support on some of the tough stance on amazon, more to the point, china, the trade tit for tat getting a little more heated, what do you think? >> the equivalent of flat-earth

trade policy. we didn't hire him to be the head of nasa. that's the equivalent of what we have running in the united states. we get richer, we can afford to buy more, our trade deficit goes up. it's as simple as that. i'm really concerned, the president's trade adviser said we can put tariffs up and nobody else will retaliate, took 30 second for the retaliation list to start coming out. self-destructive policy, might sound like we are getting tough about china and méxico. imagine what happens if we pull out of nafta, you can't build a wall high enough or past enough, so we are getting tough on americans, we need to promote more trade, more freedom just like we did with regulatory reform and tax reform and we are going to wrong direction on trade policy. neil: you would argue that, katie, one of the things the president is banking on that the chinese will realize in this case they need us more than we need, their response has been fairly muted, i'm not saying

that they were not responding to the president but they could have gone after other lucrative agriculture import into the country from america including soybeans, they didn't, so thought here that maybe the president will get his way and that this works, what do you think? >> neil, you're right. we have seen from foreign countries like china, like north korea, like russia even peculiar responses to the stances and the means with which our president expresses himself, so who knows. i'm not a fan of the tariff, i don't think they are going to be good for america but at the same time it seems that president trump's particular way of negotiating, if you way, has had unexpectedly good outcomes with foreign nations, so maybe china is being a little hesitant. i know that, of course, they want to, it's kind china and russia against the world and i don't know if they are going to keep positioning that way saying, hey, everyone else, we don't need america, it's not the

strongest. maybe they will say trump is hitting us where it hurts and we will back off. they date impose own tariffs, they didn't go for soybeans so we will see. neil: does anybody have any idea that the leaders of baltic countries, many urging that for president to send signal to the russians that they just can't storm into a country as much as they did ukraine and -- and we will just look the other way, what do you think about that, stacy? >> i mean, i just think that there's entirely different demeanor going into what i've been calling the trump doctrine, obviously we had the obama doctrine, took a while to develop, it was one of america posturing backwards for us to not be a strong for us to basically let other people lead and this instance, so they've already annex crimea, russia has, now they are looking at other baltic states and those baltic states gathered together with the president today and they made a strong united front

that that's not going to be something nato will tolerate under trump administration. they are really taking a hard look at how they deal with president trump as to how they dealt with obama. that's important, it's good for america and it's also good for them to start being more responsible for their finances which is another campaign promise that president trump made during the campaign. neil: all right, guys, i'm running out of time, do i appreciate taking the time as we wait to hear from the leaders meeting with the president of the united states, each will make a statement and respond to reporters of respected countries, everybody in the country will hone in on the president on what he had to say, what got to be almost a conga line, caravan from honduras which the president said have been broken by the mexicans, what could that signal about nafta and other stuff that will no doubt come up in press remarks a few minutes from now.

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neil: all right, await to go hear the president of the united states and baltic leaders gathering and talking to him all on the day that we are seeing stocks bouncing back, spotify making a smashing debut. market watcher alan, what do you think of the market so far? >> it's an interesting for sure, what i'm paying to is this technology disruptive technology because it's cutting the investment bankers, they took the ipo offline so to speak and you think about something like snap, the last ipo $85 million in fees, 25 million went to goldman sachs, morgan stanley, they are side-stepping those guys and could change the game when comes to ipo. neil: when you're following the caravan thing going on south of the border that the president was arguing that it was broken up presumably by the mexicans,

no way to verify that, but obviously indicate that is the mexicans did intervene here to break up what had become a larger and larger group of -- in this case, illegals seeking asylum from honduras, most of them. have you heard anything about this? >> part of annual pilgrimage to highlight the riskiness that people go through to find a better life. it kind of grew from there and with the president's tweets, i think the mexican government was under fire to stop this caravan, at least stop it in the southern part of their country and kind of disbanded it to be honest with you, neil, some of the refugees have been given humanitarian visa by the mexican government and the rest are kind of scattered, so i think the twitter war that the president waves, even though mexicans say they always monitored this

carefully, yeah right, i think the president has layed a marker and said we can't have this and i think it's having an impact. neil: we always talk about the wall, alan and all of this, does wall street care about the wall? >> the one barometer i'm paying attention to your last guest talked about, soybeans, if they put penalties, tariffs, if you want to talk about nafta, méxico is our number one corn customer, that could impact the green markets here in america, that was something i would look at to give us indication of how serious china is at, you know, meeting our tit for tat but looking at the stock market, i loved what happened last week, we closed on highs on week le basis, we gained a couple percent, we had interest rates going down, we had the dollar steady and former double top, it looks like there's less

volatility, my two-day rule, let's see where we are two days some sort of news out of washington, d.c. today. neil: fear index, very volatile, it's been all over the place. it's safe to say that this has been a volatile year that we've had double the number and 1% swings up or down than all of last year, i guess just get used to it. ashley: i don't have a 2-day rule but a 2-hour rule, by the time you stand up, the market has gone 200 points in either direction, neil. i think worry now is the one that will stick around for a while. i think once we get the job's report at tend of the week, if it's rosy picture, that will help tap down jitters and then we get into earnings in ten days from now for the first quarter and if they are as they are advertised with earnings up 10%, it could be a much better

picture for the market. neil: we are looking at the baltic leaders with the president of the united states. >> thank you. today i'm honored to host the president of estonia, the president of laftia and luthenia, thank you all for traveling to the white house for the very important discussions, we've just spent a long time together and it was very interesting, this summit proudly displays to the world america's deep and lasting friendship with the baltic nations, on behalf of the american people, thank you very much. and we are going to have another 100-year very long and beautiful relationship. this is your 100th year of independence, congratulations.

for a century the united states has stood with baltics with sovereignty and self-determination through decades of soviet occupation, the united states never refused to accept sovereignty of baltics republics. the same principls lie at the heart of america's approach to world affairs, honoringoring rif peaceful citizens and nations to protect nations in charge of own wonderful destinies, all three baltics are committed nato allies, i want to express gratitude for fulfilling your full obligations and meeting the 2% gdp benchmark for national defense this year. your commitment to burden

sharing is an example of really that other nato nations and partners all around the world will have to all get together and bear. some of them do not make the same commitment, hopefully they soon will. when nations are committed to peace and to security, they have to pay their share and we will all enjoy a much more, safe and prosperous future, baltic countries are also providing security assistance and training as part of the coalition to defeat isis. the coalition is liberated almost 100% of the territory once held by isis in syria demand iraq and we will not rest until isis is gone. in economic matters, our cooperation continues to develop and grow as you well know, we are excited about several new

opportunities about collaboration especially in science, medicine and technology. immediately following this summit, the department of commerce and the u.s. chamber of commerce will host a u.s.-baltic business summit to expand mutual trade and investment between our nations and they're all looking forward to seeing you, the baltic countries remain a key market for u.s. aircraft, automobiles, machinery and medical equipment and we welcome increase bilateral trade with all three nations based on the principal of fairness and reciprocity, finally enhancing cooperation on energy security, we are all collaborating to diversify energy sources, supplies and routes, throughout the baltic region including expanding exports of u.s. liquefy natural gas of which you've become a bigger and

bigger user. these are some of the many wonderful opportunities we can seize together. to all three baltic leaders today, thank you again for helping to celebrate and this is really a great celebration because it's a historic milestone. our friendship will continue to grow closer and cooperation will continue to bring about the greater, security and prosperity for our citizens and you have done terrific jobs as leaders, as presidents of your countries and we tell you that for your citizens, we are there for you as we begin the next 100 years of our partnership, the baltic republics can trust the united states will remain a strong, proud and loyal friend and ally, thank you very much. thank you. thank you very much. please. >> probably it's my turn. >> yes, whatever you'd like.

ladies first. >> so first we are thankful for the possibility to be here especially not only because of our investment in region but because alliance which we are with the united states by adopting the declaration, we say that article 5 is iron clad for all of us and the collective defense issues are important to all of us and we understand how participant nato is for all of us and why we during discussions much about reforming, further reforming nato, investments into defense, the amounts necessary to invest into our defense and, of course, together where it is necessary all of us and luethenia to fight terrorists around the world, we are in ukraine together, so we are

partners, allies and trustful allies and because of that, we assure that their reforms of nato which we are investing together and preparing together will be resultative as it was before but especially now because we see in united states leadership, we see the willingness of united states to see different nato, different quality of nato and i can be probably open, we talked to the president, i will joke with a little bit, joking about that we need leadership sometimes for decision-making and sometimes leadership to make leverage and pressure for the rivals to believe that we can make a decision and we think this kind of leadership in president trump and this is good because the leverage and pressure, there will be no additional spendings in our defense, in nato, no additional decisions for

rotating military forces of the united states in our countries, there will be no willingness to look into the matter of defense which we need very much, so from all this point of views, we trust that our partner and ally is investing seriously in future defense, not only our regions but the nato's territory defense and in the peace and security of the world as it was before. of course, the businesses are coming together. ally in military cooperation in those with economic operation and i'm very happy that today in our business forum, we will sign two agreements with two american companies on the -- on the liquid gas corporation, liquid gas station and factory, so-called floating boat, but we can be independent, all three baltic states on the gas supply

because of that and this gives us strength and possibility to make our own decisions not to depend on one supplier and american liquid gas will come on time and will make us more independent in our decision-making and diversifies our gas supply and this is about a real friendship, about a real cooperation between our region and the united states. and this comes also together with the trade matters, today we see discussions on the world level between united states and european union. we are together with the decisions that the trade needs to be useful and equally fair to all sides, there's no sense to go to the war, but decisions, if there's balances need to be found and we will support as ally of the united states. so together with international

obligations in military, together with cooperation in economy, together with the united states and european union in solving the trade dispute issues, we stand together and we hope as the president said, next 100 years we will be even better closer together and we will be able to achieve and make more. thank you. >> thank you very much. >> your excellency, president trump, my esteemed colleagues, president trump reaffirm our shared commitment to fundamental values. our long-lasting friendship and partnership we enjoyed nearly a century. the united states of america is our closest friend and ally. i appreciate that we have each

other's mutual support in endeavors as well as in the security challenges we are facing. today we are reflected on our many achievements and set a course for our future undertakings. we agreed to enhance our defense and security cooperation. the baltic states appreciate the united states' commitment deterrents policy in the region and assistance provided to our forces. we will continue to commit 2% of gdp towards the development of our military capabilities for the purposes of more strengthening nato's posture in the eastern flank and

contributing to international security. the balltic states and the united states acknowledged need to continue the successful existing it cooperation we encountered in modern-day security threats such as terrorism, cyber and informational warfare and nuclear proliferation. today all of us committed to placing greater emphasis on advancing our economic and trade and investment relationship. we recognize great potential in areas of innovation, modern technologies and digital economy. and we will explore possibilities for forging