Andrew Ross Sorkin
Appearances
The Daily
How Trump Wiped Out $10 Trillion in Wealth in 3 Days
If you don't, and the pain of moving is high, you may try to play this out and see what happens.
The Daily
How Trump Wiped Out $10 Trillion in Wealth in 3 Days
Because from a negotiating position, and the president talks about this in his book, The Art of the Deal, this is what they describe as anchoring. It's called an anchoring technique. which is to say that you state your position and you hold your position. And the moment you break from that position, it becomes a lot harder. And so you're 100 percent right.
The Daily
How Trump Wiped Out $10 Trillion in Wealth in 3 Days
The second that they start announcing that they are taking a pause or that they're willing to do a deal at a lesser number or whatever it is.
The Daily
How Trump Wiped Out $10 Trillion in Wealth in 3 Days
They've undermined their own case. The business community has a phrase that they've been using all weekend, which is what is the off ramp, which suggests that there is one and there might not be an off ramp.
The Daily
How Trump Wiped Out $10 Trillion in Wealth in 3 Days
Well, look, if you just look at how much money has been lost, we're talking about trillions of dollars with a T. But in percentage terms, you can look over just even the last week, we're down 10%. Peak to trough from the sort of heights of where we were near the election to now, you could argue we're over 20% off, maybe more, depending on how you do the math.
The Daily
How Trump Wiped Out $10 Trillion in Wealth in 3 Days
Poof. It's a tremendous amount of wealth poof in the sort of broader scheme of the universe. But to make it feel personal, let's just say you had a portfolio and you were a retiree and 20% of your wealth went poof overnight. And it went poof overnight because of a... man-made crisis.
The Daily
How Trump Wiped Out $10 Trillion in Wealth in 3 Days
You know, most of the crises that I've come in to talk to you about, whether it's in 2008 or it's the pandemic or whatever, there's been something that has happened ostensibly beyond our one human's control. Right. This is a panic that has been brought on by a particular person with a particular decision around, in this case, tariffs.
The Daily
How Trump Wiped Out $10 Trillion in Wealth in 3 Days
Well, let's go through a couple of specific stocks and then let's talk about why it's impacting virtually every company in America and frankly the world.
The Daily
How Trump Wiped Out $10 Trillion in Wealth in 3 Days
So the easiest example is to look at a company like Apple. Its stock has dropped, by the way, about 18% in the last five days alone. Wow. That is about $700 billion of value destruction, $700 billion wiped out. And you might say to yourself, why? Well, Apple's a company that manufactures a lot of its goods in a combination of places like China, increasingly in places like Vietnam and India.
The Daily
How Trump Wiped Out $10 Trillion in Wealth in 3 Days
In fact, Apple moved a lot of its manufacturing out of China to places like Vietnam and India, in part because of pressures from the U.S. government over the last several years in the relationship between the U.S. and China. And one of the reasons they did that was because there was always a concern that perhaps there would be tariffs in the future or national security issues.
The Daily
How Trump Wiped Out $10 Trillion in Wealth in 3 Days
Mostly aimed at China. Mostly aimed at China. There was never an expectation that if you were manufacturing your iPhones in India or Vietnam... that all of a sudden you are going to have to pay every time you shipped those phones into the United States something on the order of a 50% plus tariff, which is what we're talking about here.
The Daily
How Trump Wiped Out $10 Trillion in Wealth in 3 Days
That was my Apple phone, probably built in China, ringing, which would be tariffed if I bought a new one tomorrow. And so all of a sudden, if you're Apple, you are either going to have to do one of two things.
The Daily
How Trump Wiped Out $10 Trillion in Wealth in 3 Days
Either you're going to have to charge the American consumer ostensibly 50% more for the phone than you did before, or you're going to have to eat some of that cost, which is going to ultimately cut into your profit and therefore cut into all sorts of other things you do, which is to say, how are you going to think about hiring next year? What does your research and development budget look like?
The Daily
How Trump Wiped Out $10 Trillion in Wealth in 3 Days
Are you going to advertise as much as you did last year? And by the way, if the price point for the phone is higher, are there as many people who are going to buy it? And therefore, all of the economics of everything you do... Just went sideways. Just went sideways. And all of the interactions that you have with other businesses just went sideways.
The Daily
How Trump Wiped Out $10 Trillion in Wealth in 3 Days
And so the downstream effects, not just at Apple... but everywhere just cascade.
The Daily
How Trump Wiped Out $10 Trillion in Wealth in 3 Days
And it is falling. And why is it falling? Not because it does business in China. In fact, Meta does no business in China. But Meta is reliant on advertising. And there are going to be a lot of companies that are going to likely scale back how much they're going to spend on advertising at places like Meta. Meta's also in the business of building data centers all over the country.
The Daily
How Trump Wiped Out $10 Trillion in Wealth in 3 Days
They've already said they're gonna invest billions of dollars to build these data centers for new AI features. Well, those data centers just got a lot more expensive. So either they're gonna have to build less, which means they're gonna grow slower, or they're gonna have to build the same amount, but it's gonna cost them a lot more. And that's going to also eat into their profits.
The Daily
How Trump Wiped Out $10 Trillion in Wealth in 3 Days
And therefore, their stock is down because technically you would say to yourself, well, they're worth less now.
The Daily
How Trump Wiped Out $10 Trillion in Wealth in 3 Days
Across the board. And we're just talking about the most obvious examples. I'll give you less obvious examples. Please. So if you're a McDonald's or you're a Starbucks doing business, not just in China, but all over the world, there are now questions, demonstrable questions that they're asking themselves about whether consumers are going to buy their goods.
The Daily
How Trump Wiped Out $10 Trillion in Wealth in 3 Days
They're going to come into the store with the same Really?
The Daily
How Trump Wiped Out $10 Trillion in Wealth in 3 Days
Even a McDonald's or Starbucks is starting to see the effects of it. Not just even the last week. It's actually been something that's been something they've been concerned about now for several months.
The Daily
How Trump Wiped Out $10 Trillion in Wealth in 3 Days
These companies have been worried about what— Tariffs mean to the relationship that the United States has with the rest of the world. What does the the American dream halo effect that was over all of these American brands in places like China, in places like Europe? Well, that polish is coming off. Because citizenry in these places are saying, we're upset with these people.
The Daily
How Trump Wiped Out $10 Trillion in Wealth in 3 Days
We may not want to go to a Starbucks. We may not want to go to a McDonald's. We want to support our own local company. In fact, I keep hearing actually that some of the big consumer brands are talking about future advertising plans that are much more local, meaning don't focus on it being an American brand. Hmm.
The Daily
How Trump Wiped Out $10 Trillion in Wealth in 3 Days
Whatever love people had for the sort of soft power of America and whatever they liked about and thought about our country and our businesses and our industry, there are more concerns about them than they used to be.
The Daily
How Trump Wiped Out $10 Trillion in Wealth in 3 Days
Now, it may right now be on the margins, but longer term, I think there are bigger questions about whether the toothpaste is now out of the tube, no matter what the tariffs ultimately turn out to be. And how do you get that toothpaste back in the tube if you can't?
The Daily
How Trump Wiped Out $10 Trillion in Wealth in 3 Days
I think I talked to over two dozen CEOs over the weekend, and I would tell you that virtually all of them had tried to call the president, Howard Lutnick, Peter Navarro, or somebody else in the administration across the board. They have been rushing to try to get in his ear. But I don't think that CEOs are calling him saying, Mr. President, you have made a terrible, terrible error.
The Daily
How Trump Wiped Out $10 Trillion in Wealth in 3 Days
That's what they think. They think it's a terrible, terrible error. I don't know of a CEO who does not think it is a terrible, terrible error. Some of them like to use the phrase unforced error. However, I think that the phone call is a little different. The phone call is, Mr. President, let me tell you what's going on with my company right now.
The Daily
How Trump Wiped Out $10 Trillion in Wealth in 3 Days
Let me tell you about all the problems that this is creating. Let me tell you about all of the employees I was hoping to hire and be able to put out a press release and say that you were responsible for it.
The Daily
How Trump Wiped Out $10 Trillion in Wealth in 3 Days
Help me help you. I think that is the way... The CEO community is trying to position themselves with this president because I think if you go straight at him, publicly or privately, the phone call ends quickly.
The Daily
How Trump Wiped Out $10 Trillion in Wealth in 3 Days
But I want to stop you for a moment because he then put out tweets this morning. effectively apologizing for some of his earlier comments about Howard Lutnick, the Commerce Secretary.
The Daily
How Trump Wiped Out $10 Trillion in Wealth in 3 Days
And I think that's indicative of what so many... senior executives are thinking about, which is, what can I say publicly, especially if I want to have access privately?
The Daily
How Trump Wiped Out $10 Trillion in Wealth in 3 Days
The whole idea that if you had a lot of money, you were somehow protected, or that you would feel compelled and feel emboldened to stand up, so far has not been the case.
The Daily
How Trump Wiped Out $10 Trillion in Wealth in 3 Days
There's no question that Elon Musk differs from the president on tariffs. But I think he, unlike so many of the other executives in America, feels like he has a special license to create some daylight on certain types of issues. And so I think in many ways, Elon Musk is just closer to the Scott Bessons of the world who say this is a
The Daily
How Trump Wiped Out $10 Trillion in Wealth in 3 Days
great way to negotiate with other countries to get their tariffs to go to zero.
The Daily
How Trump Wiped Out $10 Trillion in Wealth in 3 Days
In this very moment, I would tell you the majority of business leaders is saying, you know what, I'm going to wait this out. I'm going to play chicken with the president. I'm going to see what happens with the stock market. If the stock market continues to go lower, it will likely put more pressure on the president and Congress and the Senate to somehow undo these tariffs.
The Daily
How Trump Wiped Out $10 Trillion in Wealth in 3 Days
Maybe the courts get involved and say that the president doesn't have the powers to enact these tariffs to begin with. And if that's the case, why should I be investing in manufacturing in America if they're not going to be these tariffs in six months or even two years or three years or five years from now?
The Daily
How Trump Wiped Out $10 Trillion in Wealth in 3 Days
You use the word mess. In the business community, they call this uncertainty. Uncertainty is the enemy of business. It's the enemy of investment. Nobody invests into an uncertain market, into an uncertain situation. And so you as a CEO need to make a bet.
The Daily
How Trump Wiped Out $10 Trillion in Wealth in 3 Days
If you think that there are tariffs here and that's a politically popular position, even after a Trump administration, you might bring manufacturing back to the U.S. solely to avoid the tariffs.
The Daily
Ring-Kissing, Lawsuits and a Looming Shutdown
You know, I think Tim Cook is actually a great example of it. Through Trump's first term, Tim Cook clearly created a relationship with Trump and, as a result, stayed out of the crosshairs despite all of the back and forth with China and everything else. And so I think there is a view that he is persuadable. He is transactional.
The Daily
Ring-Kissing, Lawsuits and a Looming Shutdown
And if you can create a relationship with him, at least you will have the opportunity. It's not clear that all these CEOs are going to succeed at whatever they're asking for, but they're getting a seat at the table. And from a practical perspective, that's all they can ask for today. Now, I think they also worry about what happens later. But I think the view is we'll worry when we have to worry.
The Daily
Ring-Kissing, Lawsuits and a Looming Shutdown
But for now, we're going to try to befriend this person. Maggie?
The Daily
Ring-Kissing, Lawsuits and a Looming Shutdown
I have so many thoughts, if you'd indulge me for a moment. Please. So it is very factual that during the first Trump term, Amazon was targeted by Trump in part because Trump was unhappy with Bezos' ownership of the Washington Post.
The Daily
Ring-Kissing, Lawsuits and a Looming Shutdown
That's just an empirical situation, and they demonstrably were targeted by the president over and over and over again. Bezos also owns Blue Origin, which, by the way, is going to compete with SpaceX, has enormous billions of dollars in government contracts. And so Jeff Bezos – and he said this quite publicly – as an owner of the Post is quite conflicted.
The Daily
Ring-Kissing, Lawsuits and a Looming Shutdown
From a perception perspective, if optics are how you're considering this, he was very open that he believes that he's probably not the best owner in that context. He will tell you, he told me at the deal book summit that he believed he was making a principled decision about the decision not to endorse a candidate and also accepted that the timing of it was terrible. I don't know.
The Daily
Ring-Kissing, Lawsuits and a Looming Shutdown
You're going to have to decide whether you want to believe him or not. On the Disney story, or I should say on the ABC story.
The Daily
Ring-Kissing, Lawsuits and a Looming Shutdown
So I think it's actually much more complicated than it's being portrayed by some.
The Daily
Ring-Kissing, Lawsuits and a Looming Shutdown
I think they're very different situations because the truth is that I think that as Disney and ABC looked at this case, they saw depositions that were going to have to be taken. That we're likely going to get into the public that might have had unattractive facts. The media is clearly under a lot of scrutiny.
The Daily
Ring-Kissing, Lawsuits and a Looming Shutdown
And I think even if you thought that ABC would, quote unquote, win the case on the law, on the law, there was a potential that they would even lose the case in the public mind.
The Daily
Ring-Kissing, Lawsuits and a Looming Shutdown
That, plus if they actually lost the case and then were to try to appeal the case, they would have to appeal the case to the Supreme Court. Now think about the Supreme Court for a second. 6-3, right, in terms of the politics of that court. You could potentially undermine what's called New York Times versus Sullivan. Famous First Amendment.
The Daily
Ring-Kissing, Lawsuits and a Looming Shutdown
1964, which granted effectively the press enormous, almost expansive. What's the word?
The Daily
Ring-Kissing, Lawsuits and a Looming Shutdown
And so there's a question. Do you want to go through that entire process and potentially either lose in the public mind or lose in court and then potentially really lose on behalf of, frankly, all of journalism? Or do you want to settle? Got it. That would be the defensive description of why Disney or ABC did that.
The Daily
Ring-Kissing, Lawsuits and a Looming Shutdown
This is about the heights of power. This is demonstration of raw power. Now, it might be raw power in the context of a honeymoon, but he now has power, obviously, in the White House. He has power in the Senate. He has power in Congress. And he has power within the industry. And as a collection, walking into the inauguration, he clearly is feeling that sense of power.
The Daily
Ring-Kissing, Lawsuits and a Looming Shutdown
Once he's in the job, it may get more challenging. It usually does.
The Daily
Ring-Kissing, Lawsuits and a Looming Shutdown
This, to me, is the beginning of the movie that we've all been waiting to see and wonder how the drama plays out, which is to say that we've all seen Elon Musk around the table with President-elect Trump.
The Daily
Ring-Kissing, Lawsuits and a Looming Shutdown
But we haven't really known. In fact, I think a lot of people have been skeptical about just how much power he may or may not have. Well, he used it, and we saw it.
The Daily
Ring-Kissing, Lawsuits and a Looming Shutdown
He took to Twitter, or I should say X, and said this bill should not pass. Full stop. His partner in Doge, the Department of Government Efficiency, Vivek Ramaswamy, also took to Twitter and to TikTok. after having read 1,500-plus pages of the bill and said this bill should not pass.
The Daily
Ring-Kissing, Lawsuits and a Looming Shutdown
Look at the list of CEOs who are either shelling out big money or meeting with Trump in person or both. We're talking about CEOs from TikTok, Google, Apple, Netflix.
The Daily
Ring-Kissing, Lawsuits and a Looming Shutdown
Because of exactly how much it was larded up with stuff, specifically pointing out that Congress was effectively giving itself a pay raise for the first time in 14 years. There was what they call pork in this bill. And... Elon Musk said, no, Moss, we're not doing this. And Trump said, we're not doing this.
The Daily
Ring-Kissing, Lawsuits and a Looming Shutdown
So Rand Paul this morning suggests that Elon Musk should become the Speaker of the House. You laugh, but I think to some extent he was serious with that suggestion. By the way, you don't apparently have to be elected to that role, interestingly enough. So to the Elon Musk piece of it real quick.
The Daily
Ring-Kissing, Lawsuits and a Looming Shutdown
You know, I do think this was the first demonstration of his quote unquote power in a true political sense in that for a very long time, he has made lots of proclamations on X, but has mostly been screaming into the wind. But now he clearly has the ear of the president elect. But more importantly, he's able to take that and the power of being able to galvanize the
The Daily
Ring-Kissing, Lawsuits and a Looming Shutdown
this entire community behind him, I think changes the dynamic. And so I do think this is sort of that first demonstration. What that really means, I don't think we really know. But, you know, we've all talked about, you know, will he be able to do things? Is it just on the margins that be able to do things through executive actions and the like?
The Daily
Ring-Kissing, Lawsuits and a Looming Shutdown
Or is it through, you know, will he actually be able to persuade Congress to do things? Well, this is actually a persuasion, if you will, of Congress to do something. So I think this is sort of the first example that we're all watching and trying to understand.
The Daily
Ring-Kissing, Lawsuits and a Looming Shutdown
You know, Trump never publicly talked about true hardship in terms of what his policies would create. However, his new partner in crime, Elon Musk, actually did. Elon Musk took to X and said, if we follow through these policies, there will be a temporary hardship. Used the word hardship, interestingly. I paid attention to it. I don't know if most voters were paying attention to it.
The Daily
Ring-Kissing, Lawsuits and a Looming Shutdown
But for a lot of the policies that we're all talking about, the president wanting to enact, it is almost impossible to believe that they can be enacted without actually some form of temporary hardship. Now, Elon Musk and President-elect Trump would suggest to you that there is temporary hardship now and it's a better world on the other side.
The Daily
Ring-Kissing, Lawsuits and a Looming Shutdown
But there's a real question about how politically palatable it is for the American public to go through, quote, temporary hardship.
The Daily
Ring-Kissing, Lawsuits and a Looming Shutdown
Well, look, most of corporate America going into this election, in truth, was not a supporter of President Trump. This was a book, you would call it, if you can't beat him, join him. And so you have many of the top 20 companies in America, CEO of Amazon, CEO of Google, Alphabet, Apple. The list is extensive. And all of them are going crazy. to Mar-a-Lago in truth to kiss the ring.
The Daily
Ring-Kissing, Lawsuits and a Looming Shutdown
They think of it as practical. They don't think of it as hypocritical. You know, back in 2016, I think a lot of CEOs didn't go down to Mar-a-Lago because they were skittish. They were skittish in part because their employees were skittish. They were skittish in part because I think the country broadly was truly skittish. That's not to suggest the country isn't broadly skittish today, but I think
The Daily
Ring-Kissing, Lawsuits and a Looming Shutdown
They see Trump as somebody who likes the relationship. And it's almost in opposition to President Biden, who did not take the meeting. President Biden was not meeting with CEOs in America, didn't want to meet with CEOs in America, wanted to meet with union leaders in America, but not CEOs. And so they all see this as an opportunity.
The Daily
Ring-Kissing, Lawsuits and a Looming Shutdown
To effectively get in front of the president and hope not that they can persuade him of something today, but that as the debate over tariffs goes on, for example, that they will be able to make a call later.
The Daily
Ring-Kissing, Lawsuits and a Looming Shutdown
And if you're Tim Cook at Apple and you're worried about tariffs in China where you manufacture a majority of your iPhones, you're hoping that you're going to be able to pick up the phone and call him in a couple of months and say, you know what? I have an idea about creating a carve out for, you know, a certain type of electronics product from a certain region in China.
The Daily
Ring-Kissing, Lawsuits and a Looming Shutdown
And we can come up with an explanation for why that particular area won't have the same tariff as other parts of China.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Megyn Kelly Details the Curious Case of Carlos Watson, and Shocking Downfall of the Disgraced Media Mogul | Ep. 969
Your co-founder had a phone call with Goldman Sachs as you were trying to raise money. and effectively took them off of a Zoom and then apparently started to impersonate with a fake email address as well, somebody from YouTube. What happened?
The Megyn Kelly Show
Megyn Kelly Details the Curious Case of Carlos Watson, and Shocking Downfall of the Disgraced Media Mogul | Ep. 969
Your co-founder had a phone call with Goldman Sachs as you were trying to raise money. and effectively took them off of a Zoom and then apparently started to impersonate with a fake email address as well, somebody from YouTube. What happened?