swagger, right? even the notion that they could achieve beyond their station in life in which they were born. that feeling was fading in this country, people. but i want you the take a look at this chart, and you can see now how much more confident we are when we expect benefits from the financial markets and investments than anyone else. so i think american exceptionalism is back. and with that, i give it to ashley webster. ashley: it has always been there, charles, but a very nice summation, indeed. thank you very much, charles payne. all right, let's get going here. the biden administration zeroing in on guns earlier today as the president said he wants to end the epidemic of gun violence. but businesses and trade organizations are still laser focused on yesterday's big announcement that raising $2.5 trillion of corporate taxes to pay for a massive infrastructure plan. and, oh, yes, we're getting into it. the national association of manufacturers says that plan will kill a million jobs in the

first two years. our all-star tax panel will be here to debate the pros and cons. tax foundation president scott hodge and ya mcginnis, the president for the committee for a responsible federal budget. they'll be sharing their ideas. where do we go from here. well, markets slightly higher today, certainly aztec stocks have helped to power the nasdaq higher. we're up across the board. by the way, the s&p 500 taking aim at its second straight record close. all it has to do is to finish in the green. the national labor relations board is inching ever closer to actually counting those union votes of amazon employees in alabama. but the question is, why is it taking so long? we'll explain in a full report, and it could take even longer. and good news, the holiday road is reopening. the travel industry roaring back to life as americans get vaccinated by the millions.

brbo president jeff hirsh will be here to tell us how his if business is picking up after surviving the pandemic's devastating lockdowns. so much to talk about. let's get ready with this: at the rose garden today president biden rolling out his plan to end gun violence in the u.s. his new measures include federal policy reviews on ghost guns which are homemade firearms, also the use of stabilizing braces on pistols which helped modify the weapons into something resembling a pistol. and the justice department will publish model red flag legislation for states. how will the gunmakers start reacting to all of this at this hour? well, mixed. smith & wesson down slightly and vista outdoor up about a third of a percent at this hour. but the business world still more concerned with yesterday's news out of the white house as the administration looks to pay for the $2.5 trillion

infrastructure plan, yep, by raising taxes. let's go now to blake burman who's been trying to follow all of this, and he's at the white house. blake. >> reporter: hi there, ashley. the white house continues to say they believe there is a bipartisan way forward to get this american jobs plan across the finish line, and that is exactly what they might need because we saw an op-ed that was penned by the influential democratic senator joe manchin in which he says he will not, going forward, support the idea, the tactic known as budget reconciliation. that is the go at it alone strategy that we with saw democrats use to get the $3.9 trillion american rescue plan passed. one of the ways that the white house has signaled they are willing to deal is on the corporate tax rate. as we know, the president wants to raise that to 28%, but manchin, for example, is one of those who has said he wouldn't want to go higher than a 25%. the energy secretary, jennifer granholm, is one of the five cabinet secretaries that

president biden has tasked with selling the plan. she was in the briefing room today, and she was asked if an infrastructure package could work with a 25% corporate tax rate, raising it from 21 is. this was her response. >> what the president has said, this is a negotiation with, and he really does want to or hear from democrats and republicans about what would be acceptable to get this across the line. so there is room for negotiation. his point is that it has to be paid for. and so if it's not a 28%, what else is it. and we're very encouraged by those who have been bringing ideas forth. >> reporter: as for raising taxes, the national association of manufacturers came out against it this morning as they believe a rewrite of corporate taxes could lead to a million job losses over the next two years. the association president, jay timmons, saying, quote: workers will lose out on jobs ors growth and raises. we should be building on that progress, not rolling it back. ashley, that's their take.

but once again, the white house signaling they are open to dealing on this 28% corporate tax rate, and the bottom line is if they can't go forward with reconciliation and inaction is not something9 that the president will settle for, as he says, then they are going to have to come up with some sort of bipartisan compromise, and as you know, that will likely start with bringing that 28% number down. ashley? ashley: yeah. and how far down does it go. all right, blake burman, thank you very much. appreciate that. as president biden seeks to increase that corporate tax rate up to 28% to pay for his $2.5 trillion infrastructure package, i think it's certainly time for a tax rate debate. why not? let's bring in the tax foundation president scott hodge, also joining us is the committee for responsible federal budget president maya macguineas. thank you both for joining us. scott, let me begin with you. what's your stance on raising it from 21 to 28%? how much of a bad idea do you think that is?

gnawed you -- [no audio] ashley: all right, scott, we're not hearing you. let's go to maya while we try to figure out scott's microphone. and, maya, okay. president biden said, look, i am willing to negotiate when a reporter shouted at him could you go lower. from the your perspective, what is a fairer number if it's not 28%? >> right. so, well, the first thing that i would say is really good news is that the white house did put out the principle that we're going to pay for this bill, and that is a much, much better option than putting it on the national credit card which is absolutely busting at the seams. so then becomes a question of how do you pay for it. and the truth is the reason we're not very fiscally responsible in this country is because paying for things is difficult, and there are a lot of options, none of which people are going to love.

so so the kinds of options we have are raising taxes on corporations or high income earners, that's kind of -- [inaudible] and another is related to infrastructure, like a gas tax or a carbon tax. another option is cutting other spending. that certainly should being something that's part of the discussion. and the last bucket i'd point out is this is a very big bill, so we could scale back the size. great they're a paying for it, lots of different options to contemplate. on the corporate tax rate itself, listen, when we cut rates from 35% where they were, it was clear that the corporate rate in this country was way too high and harming our competitiveness. that said, bringing it down to the rate of 21 percent was much lower than people expected, and i definitely think there's room to bring it back up without doing major damage. if i were guessing, i'd bet it's going to end up around 25%, and they'll have to fill in that gap with other options. ashley: right. okay, we've reestablished content with scott.

maya just said, look, maybe in the end the compromise may come in around a 25%. what would you say to that? >> i'd still say it's a bad idea. raising the corporate tax rate is the most harmful way to pay for structure. not only is the corporate tax the most harmful tax for economic growth, but we know about half the economic burden of corporate tax falls on workers through lower wages, many of that hitting women and low-skilled workers the most. and so there are many other ways to finance infrastructure like user fees or other kinds of revenues that don't do the economic harm that raising the corporate tax will. and plus, we have to think of u.s. competitiveness as well raising the corporate tax a rate will make the u.s. less competitive and put us back into the stratosphere of having one of the highest corporate tax rates which will mean the u.s. will be a less attractive place to do business in and from.

ashley: all right, maya, the national association of manufacturers came out with a statement saying that the tax hike could, they say, lead to the loss of a million jobs in just the first two years. companies who are having to pay more will not put that money towards expansion, research and development and creating jobs, essentially. how do you respond to that? >> well, so i think the way scott just responded was exactly the kind of discussion we do want to have. if you don't the pay-for -- don't like the pay-for, say what kinds of things you would use instead. think it's really important that everybody come to the table. in fact, the biden plan so far doesn't pay for the full bill in a reasonable time frame, so we're going to need to do more or shrink the size of the bill which i think there's plenty of space to do if we want to get somewhere where we don't add to the debt. so i think it makes complete sense to evaluate these different options. scott and i both think user fees are a good possibility, evaluate

them on the economy but also on the distribution sector and how they're going to affect people. but the other component is adding this to the debt will also ultimate hi cause job loss and real damage to the economy. ashley: that is true. scott, i know president trump wanted to involve the private sector in some form or fashion. he never got that off the ground. is that manager you think could be workable -- something that you think could be workable? >> i think we a ought to put more emphasis on private sector the infrastructure investment rather than supplanting it with government infrastructure investment. when the congressional budget office looked at this, they found that government investment produced about half of the economic returns as private sector investment. so that creates sort of two problems here. if you're taxing the private sector in order to pay for government investment, not only are you getting less of a return, but you're also harming the economy doing that. what the congressional budget office recommended was cutting

other spending which i know maya and i could join hands in support of. and that's where you get the bigger economic returns. if you cut wasteful spending to pay for infrastructure, you get a better economy. ashley: all right rt we'll have to leave it there. scott and maya, thank you for joining us. our all-star tax panel participation. thank you both. gm firing its first shot across the bow as it enters the ev battlefield. our floor show traders are here to talk about the supercharged sector and the stocks packing the most juice for your portfolio. as we head to the brach, let's take a look at the big bore. we have been up across the board. the dow right now up just about a tenth of a percent. "the claman countdown" is coming right back. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ (upbeat music)

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or the next one is on me! only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪ ♪ ashley: ev makers pushing higher today after the department of transportation said joe biden's $2.3 trillion infrastructure plan includes $100 billion in electric vehicle rebates. that's a lot. along with $a 15 billion for

charging stations. of course, that is huge for companies like tesla and general motors which have already exhausted their allotments with the current incentive package. right now the system allows each automaker to sell 200,000 plug-in vehicles and offer a tax credit of up to $7500 for each depending on the size of the battery. but after that the credit drops to half for the next two quarters and then half again until it's completely phased out. this obviously couldn't come at a better time formotors. it just unveiled its late latest hummer ev suv, fy i, with up to if300 miles of range. the company just confirmed it will be pollution an all-electric chevy silverado and, by the way, gm announcing this morning it is testing a variety of battery technologies aimed at cutting everything v battery costs -- ev battery costs. that is a lot of news. all right.

well, to our traders, steven guilfoyle and scott bauer join us to talk all things ev. sarge, great to see you. my question is, how will this new ev rebate program help the overall space, do you think, and which names are you specifically seeing benefiting the most here? >> well, i tell ya, i'm not big into ev space, but i am in it to a certain degree. what i like, i like ford motor: they're almost perfect for this because when they finally get these autos to market, they already have the mustang, but they're going to be in that $30-40,000 range. they adjusted their fourth quarter earnings, announced a $22 billion in ev, and -- [audio difficulty] in addition to the 10 billion they'd already pledged. an announcement this morning, 73% improvement in sales in china which means they'll compete with tesla in china. so i'm already up in the stock, but i think it's good for another double from here. i also like oshkosh.

now, this is not really about a the rebates, this is measure about infrastructure and selling fleets. because they have the post office deal, all right? they're going to sell up to 165,000 vehicles to the u.s. post office over the next ten years. they already have a $482 million down payment on that deal, and joe biden's infrastructure plan -- oshkosh is great, they make all the military vehicles, the fire trucks finish. [audio difficulty] so oshkosh is a great ev/infrastructure play. and lastly, riveon if already has 100,000 electric vans delivered to amazon next year and the year after. ashley: yep. n oh, we're just hanging on, aren't we? [laughter] sargeing thank you. i think we should begin with an investment in your internet service. it is barely hanging on, but we'll keep our fingers crossed.

scott, to you, gm down today the after announcing further production cuts across several north american plants all because of this chip shortage. but it seems elon musk is weighing in suggesting things may be better for tesla. he's tweeting: thanks, tesla suppliers, for providing us with critical parts. is tesla better positioned, do you think, scott, to weather these chip shortages? >> well, elon's always going to give a dig when he can give a dig to anybody. [laughter] maybe their supply chains are probably a little bit better, quite frankly. you know, in terms of the new package, the ev package of the infrastructure deal though, the problem that i see with this, ashley, is unfortunate the credit, okay? it's for all evs. whether the car is priced at $30,000 or $900,000. and -- 100,000. and i'm not so sure somebody is

maybe not going to buy that car because they're not getting that credit. the automakers that i believe this will benefit the most are those automakers that are producing the evs that are in the average car price range of 30-40,000. like what sarge said also. so i actually think one of the automakers that can benefit greatly from this is lucid. if they can get their lower price model coming to market sooner rather than later, they can pub up that production timeline a finish push up that production timeline a little bit, that' one where i can see bigtime benefiting from this $7500 credit. ashley: very good. steven guilfoyle, better known sarge. sarge, great to hear from you, scott bauer as well. thank you, gentlemen, for chipping in today on evs. appreciate it. cloud-base withed file-sharing service box, well, collapsing somewhat9 into the

close as you can see, down 9.5%. a $500 million investment by kkr dashing hopes that it would make itself an acquisition target at the urging of tarboard. as you can see, shares down 9.63. prices for card board boxes are heading up thanks to pandemic demand. coming up next, jeff flock will tell us why your wallet could take a hit as shippers deal with those higher costs. checking the big board as we head into the break, as you can see, the dow still up about 50 points now, just under two-tenths of a percent. we'll be coming right back. ♪ ♪

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ashley: fox business alert, crypto the n peter thiel sending up a warning flare on bitcoin in today's op pop stocks. the tech entrepreneur saying even though he's an overall fan

of cryptos, it might be time to look at china's bitcoin investments as a potential, quote, financial weapon against the u.s. he says the digital currency could undermine fiat money including the u.s. dollar. weapon or not, well, check out bitcoin, up nearly $1500 at 57,700 and change. canopy growth growing bigger in canada's cannabis market. that's a lot of cs. after buying rival supreme cannabis country. one of the country's top pot brands would be just that. supreme shares, as you can see, it's up ten cents but the $435 million pricing tag on that deal also sending canopy shares down more than 5%. mean time, can by investor constellation brands also in the red today the, down more than 4

percent after issuing disappointing guidance in its latest earnings report. beer sales were strong, but concerns over margins in the coming year left investors feeling just a little flat. shares down, as you can see, more than $10. beyond meat, well, it's sizzling. the plant-based protein maker up today almost 3.5% after announcing it has expanded its food offeringsing in multiple retailers including target, albertson's and kroger. not to be the outdone, impossible foods may soon be headed to the public market. reuters reporting that the faux meat maker is exploring a potential ipo or spac deal in the next 12 months that could see the company valued at right around $10 billion. that's at lot of meatballs. a booming year for e-commerce, by the way, means a lot of boxes being sent out as everyone orders everything online which is now translating

boo record high prices for corrugated packaging which is a fancy term for a cardboard box. companies are now finding out they're worth, well, their weight in gold. so the question is, will consumers pay the price? jeff flock joins us live from elkhart, indiana, next to a huge roll of paper. jeff. [laughter] >> reporter: don't we always pay the price, ashley, somehow in the end? yes, giant rolls of the paper that makes -- and you're absolutely right. if you were here, they would love you, because you can't call it cardboard. it's corrugated material. those big rolls weigh about six tons, go into that machine behind it. it is a machine that is about, well, a football field long, right, andy? >> it is. hi. this is about 8 million square feet a day come off of this in corrugated sheets. >> reporter: this past year, ashley, to put it in

perspective, you made in this industry, not just you alone, but the industry turned out enough cardboard to cover the states of connecticut and new jersey completely with cardboard, an all-time record year for turning out corrugated material. >> that's true. 407 billion square feet of corrugate was made in the industry this year. >> reporter: this machine over here, ashley, is what turns the paper, basically, into cardboard. you see it flying off these rolls right here. can you see that, jeff? the rolls are turning, and it's just incredible how fast this goes. the cost, ashley's asking about the cost. the shanghai exchange has one of the key components of cardboard or corrugated material. 60% increase in the last five months. >> yes. we have seen the cost of our raw materials go up significantly over that period of time. in fact, our roll stock that you

were looking at earlier has gone up on average $50-60. >> reporter: i want to show people what we're talking about. can you hold that for one second? i just want to rip this. they say cardboard, ashley, this is corrugated material. you can see that. that has got -- you call it fluting? >> yeah. >> reporter: and then the fluting between it is what gives it the strength, right? >> that's correct. that gives you puncture resistance as well as stacking strength. >> reporter: and this stuff is worth its weight in gold right now, yeah? >> yeah. we'll charge you for that after it's over. [laughter] >> reporter: him and the ex-wives gotta get their share. [laughter] ashley: jeff flock, you are the very best. thank you so much. now i know everything there is to know about corrugated cardboard. something, indeed. it's always good. jeff flock, thank you so much. cruise stocks down today but still sailing to massive gains

year-over-year as the industry is fighting to get back to business along i'd the rest of the travel industry -- alongside the rest of the travel industry. and for home sharer vrbo, 2021 demand is up already. coming up next, we're checking in with the president on just how big the post-pandemic travel boom can get. i'm going to try and spit it out. the closing bell rings in about 29 minutes. the dow, s&p and nasdaq all positive. we're coming right back. ♪ ♪ the best price on every trade, which saved investors over $1.5 billion last year. that's decision tech. only from fidelity. obsession has many names. this is ours. the lexus is. all in on the sports sedan. lease the 2021 is 300 for $369 a month for 36 months.

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levels in 2023. the report saying in part, a year ago we would have thought that a full domestic recovery in this time frame for the u.s. was almost impossible. but the combination of pent-up demand, economic stimulus and access to vaccines is making a difference. that is good news. this, of course, as vacation company vrbo says 2021 has been the best start to a year they've ever had. how about that? here to talk the news, we welcome in vrbo president jeff hearst. jeff with, does that surprise you, that you've had such a strong start? it's just this pent-up demand, people want to go somewhere fun. >> it doesn't surprise me. we've been seeing it for a while, and as the pandemic wore into the summer last year, what we saw was a lot of people were trying to get together the, and they realized that vrbo was the

perfect way to do this partially because we've been this for over -- doing this for over 25 years. and what i see is that this trend is really leading from leisure recovery domestic, drive-to, and a lot of that's just the wheelhouse and what vrbo's known for. i'm really encouraged the see a lot of the other use cases like air travel and resorts and more conventional come along with us. ashley: yes. you rent out homes for people, correct? we know that the steps that hotels take to keep their -- as much as possible -- keep their properties germ-free. how can you guarantee that homeowners are going to do the same thing if i want to rent their home in. >> you know, this is a very professional category, and so homeowners have been renting homes through vrbo for 25 years, for decades before that. so early in the pandemic what we took the stepped to do was launch a lot of education for

property managers and homeowners around the world on our expectations of how they could provide the safest environment possible, and that included step by step instructions, different filters and descriptions on our site so people can have the right expectations of what's been done in the home prior to their arrival, and we've been really pleaseed with the result ares. and based on how many people are trying and referring us as a site, we think that our guests have been too. we think we're off to a great start on that front. ashley: is as you look at the trend in booking, jeff, are there any particular places that people are headed? are they wanting to stay away from crowds? maybe that mountain cabin would be a popular option? >> yeah. there's a few notable changes from what we would have thought of as pre-pandemic. in general, there's more drive-to the occasion though we're starting to see more people comfortable with air travel and those route coming back. in general, there's a preference for old homes, and, you know,

certainly overwhelmingly there's more domestic travel than before. and a lot of what i think is the lasting positive of in that people have discovered how much beauty and great options there are within a three or four-hour drive, so they're experimenting more, trying new things, new places and really probably creating a new, more sustainable type of travel. ashley: you know, after a year of lockdown, now that a we're reopening, has there been any impact on pricing? have people who want to rent out their homes had to drop the price a little to encourage, you know, some business? >> you know, we really haven't seen as much of that. i think, if anything, what we've seen is that it's a category that provides a lot of value. you know, you can get multiple people under the same roof, it might save you from having to rent multiple hotel rooms. so what we're observing is people are actually choosing to stay longer. i think a lot of the flexibility in people's work schedules and

for a long time school schedules meant that people could go to a place for, you know, three days or a weekend, and in some cases even a month. we launched filters to help you understand discounts. so we're probably seeing people spend more on lodging but, fortunately, get a lot more value from it. ashley: that's true. they're saving money on the airfare many many cases. jeff hurst, thank you so much for being here. we do appreciate it. >> my pleasure. ashley: let's move on -- our pleasure, believe me. apple outlining its defense in one of the most epic antitrust battles in tech, and the vote counting could soon begin, by the way, in amazon's historic union vote. we've got a live update on where things stand here in the final hour of trade on this thursday. and as we head to the break, we can see that the dow up 36 points with about -- with under, now, 20 minutes until the close. "the claman countdown" is coming

right back. ♪ ♪ act now!

♪ ashley: well, apple is now reportedly getting hit by the global chip shortage that is rocking the auto and tech industries. japan's nikkei reporting that apple is facing delays on macbook and apple ipad production because of the crunch on semiconductor supplies. the tech titan also opening up its playbook, by the way, for its upcoming court battle with fortnite creator epic games, apple denying epic's monopoly allegations when it comes to the gaming transaction market saying in a filing that it faces stiff competition from both nintendo and xbox maker microsoft who both also limit the software

that can be run on their consoles and charge fees to developers. shares of apple, epic investor tencent, microsoft, as you can see, they're all moving higher today. all right, some breaking news for you, the public vote tally in the fight to unionize an ammon warehouse -- amazon warehouse began, but an arduous process lies ahead in bessamer, alabama. lydia hu is here to tell us what's next as the votes are being counted as we speak. >> reporter: hi, ashley. yeah, the votes started to be count canned around 3:40. and like so much of what's happening these days, it's being made public through a zoom link. unfortunately, we can't show you that process, but i can tell you able to see it, and it's a room where you see agents from the national labor relations board that are going through hand counting each vote one by one,

calling out whether it's a yes or no vote and placing them in the respect i boxes. and there's also an agent or a representative, i should say, from both amazon and the union there to watch along with many people that are tuning in to watch this as it unfolds. now, it's unclear exactly how long this process is going to take, but it is taking longer than usual because the voting happened through mail and not in person as usually that happens. now, the vote was actually ended a week ago, and since then the national labor relations board sorted through the votes with representatives from amazon and the union just to review the names and suggests, not how the finish signatures, not how the votes were cast. that a gave both sides a chance to contest. if an employee no longer works for the warehouse, contested votes were set aside. the union says that hundreds of ballots are being challenged by amazon. the union, which is the retail wholesale and department store union, also says that more than 3,200 votes were cast, roughly

5,800 amazon workers could participate. now, after the votes are counted here today, like i just explained, one by one, hand counting to tally up how many yes votes, how many no votes have been cast, then at that point the national labor relations board will turn to address the votes that have been challenged. we also just learned during opening remarks that it is a majority of the votes that are needed to win here, and if there's a tie, then the union will not be able to unionize the workers here at the bessamer, alabama, plant. now, there's a lot on the line here. labor organizers are hoping that a win here will inspire thousands of workers from other companies across the country to also organize and create unions at their respective companies, and for amazon if the union wins in bees her, that will be the first -- bessamer, that could bring about costly changes to the business there, ashley. ashley: yes, it could, but it could be a while before we know

what the result of that vote was. all right. lydia hu, thank you so much for that update. all right, coming up next, today's countdown closer has some top picks for a grand slam in your portfolio. that's a big, big clue. and, yes, we're showing video of denny's anyway. let's check the big board. the dow up 32 points heading into the final ten minutes of trading. we're going to be right back. ♪ ♪ ♪♪ you can spend your life in boxing or any other business, but one day, you're gonna take a hit you didn't see coming. and it won't matter what hit you. what matters is you're down. and there's nothing down there with you but the choice that will define you. do you stay down? or. do you find, somewhere deep inside of you,

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problems urinating, vision changes, or eye pain occur. take a stand and start a new day with trelegy. ask your doctor about once-daily trelegy. and save at trelegy.com. ♪♪ ashley: the closing bell rings in just about eight minutes. markets holding on to slim gains but near session highs. tech paring the nasdaq, but the s&p 500 could mark its second straight record close. any gain will do the trick, as they say, and it is up now, 15 points on the s&p. as the fallout over major league baseball moving the all-star game from atlanta, georgia, continues, it's clear the league did not hit a home

run on this one. charlie gasparino has more details about who else was involved in the blame game now. charlie. >> yeah. there's a lot of finger-pointing going on here, and i'm getting this from sources close to baseball commissioner bob manfred. here's his side of the story on why he decided to move the game out of atlanta to denver amid this controversy over the georgia voting rights law, being attacked by president biden, by activists like lebron james, like stacey abrams, a top voting rights activist in georgia, former gubernatorial candidate, almost became governor. a lot of people credited her with turning georgia blue during the presidential election and the two senate runoffs with her get out the vote efforts. here's what we know from people inside major league baseball, then i'm going to to give you stacey abrams' side of the story. mlb commissioner, according to sources close to him, feared

activists would turn the atlanta all-star game into a circus over the tate's voting rights debate, and that was the main reason why he decided to go to denver. he just said let's get out of here, make a at the same time about the law that's marginally positive, marginally attacks it from the standpoint of voting rights, and let's just not be part of the circus. at least that's what i'm getting from people close to him. he faced intense pressure from progressive voting, progressive voting rights activists to denounce the law and maybe even, at least on his side of the story, believed that they wanted, some of these activists wanted him to endorse h.r. 1, that's that federal legislation passed the house that's supposed to nationalize elections that republicans say, that republicans are against, democrats are pushing. here's what we know, stacey abrams, aforementioned, and lebron james, the basketball star turned voting rights activist, both met with mlb

officials to advocate -- i should point out these are representatives of lebron james who has a voting rights group. from what i understand, the least political decision, manfred believes, was to move the game out of the state so that he didn't get involved in the wish list of some of these activists. i've been speaking with stacey abrams' pr person all dayed to. he's pushing back hard that stacey abrams is the reason why manfred decided to pull out of atlanta. they said they told mr. manfred to stay in the state but to endorse efforts to knock down the georgia voting rights law here is a comment from him. in a single one-on-one conversation with mlb senior adviser she, abrams, urged him to keep the all-star game in georgia and to speak out against the law when they do.

i can tell you that people on the other side, the mlb side, believe that she wanted a lot more or for them to get more political in supporting various voting rights including, possibly if, h.r. 1, and the quickest solution from the mlb's side was let's just get out of town. abrams is saying, no, we just wanted him to support our effort. it's still odd that, you know, baseball becomes, you know, a lightning rod for georgia voting law. so many fans, i just can't believe they're having this conversation right obviously. atlanta not having the all-star game costing the city, as much as $100 million. back to you, ashley. ashley: i think baseball misread the whole thing. charlie gasparino, fascinating stuff, more on behind the curtains. thank you very much. spring weather here, time for new beginnings and change. today's closer says change is

happening fast. the main street market narrative is not just keeping up. he says he has got picks that are. miles lewis, royce investment partners portfolio manager with 11 billion under management joins us now. miles, why isn't the market keeping up with the narrative? explain that quickly? >> i think there is change happening all around us. the way we live, the way we work, societal, social justice issues government, there is a lot of change to happen and narrative continues to be buy what worked last 10 years. megacap growth, tech stocks, large cap, bonds. when history says works develop 10 years it doesn't deliver very good forward returns. there is mentality buy the dip, not a regime change. we believe we're more on the

cusp of a ridge game change for lots of fundamental reasons -- regime. ashley: we have your picks on the screen. why did you have these ones, miles? >> let's start with company like graftech international. this is electric vehicle play that is cheap. they make graphite electrodes which is used in production of steel for electric arc furnaces. the primary input for the electrodes is sodium needle coke. 90% goes into electrodes. the other 10% goats to lithium-ion batteries. as demand for e investments go puts pressure on coke for benefit of company like gr grafftech.

ashley: denny's. you can't argue with that. >> denny's a interesting business. 96% asset franchise. throws off a ton of cash. the management used cash to shrink down the share count. it is down 40% over the last 10 years. fundamentallies we think denny's is interesting unfortunately a lot of restaurants are not going to survive the pandemic. national restaurant association says 17% of restaurants won't make it that is competitive landscape improves for companies like denny's. should have better same-store sales growth. one of the high consumer names not back to pre-covid levels. we think it is interesting. ashley: one word, miles, looking ahead, you seem a little cautious. are you more bearish or bullish? >> i'm bullish on small cap value stocks, bullish on small caps and bullish on the economy. ashley: can't say fairer than that. miles lewis, thank you so much

for joining "the claman countdown" today. we really do appreciate it. [closing bell rings] ashley: as we head into the break stocks closing at session highs. yes, i will say it now, a second straight record for the s&p 500 that will do it for "the claman countdown." larry kudlow coming up next. ♪. larry: hello, everyone. welcome back to "kudlow." i'm larry kudlow. thanks for being here. so stocks today finished higher across the board. the s&p 500 hitting another all-time high. today's jump followed comments from federal reserve chair jay powell who said the economic rebound from the pandemic still has room to grow and he says inflation will not be a problem. well, okay. hope he's right but as the economy booms the threat of rampant overspending and higher taxes from joe biden's washington looms large in the background. the biden white house is proposed increasing the corporate tax