Morning Brew Daily
World Braces for Trump's Tariffs & Practice Flirting with Tinder’s AI
Wed, 02 Apr 2025
Episode 552: Neal and Toby preview “Liberation Day” and what it means for the global economy as Trump gets set to announce sweeping tariffs from the Rose Garden. Then, Hooters files for bankruptcy and the facial recognition technology that banned a fan from Madison Squarer Garden. Next up the guys explain Tinder’s new AI where you can practice flirting. Then finally the headlines you need to know to start your day. Subscribe to Morning Brew Daily for more of the news you need to start your day. Share the show with a friend, and leave us a review on your favorite podcast app. Checkout TaxAct for more! Listen to Morning Brew Daily Here: https://link.chtbl.com/MBD Watch Morning Brew Daily Here: https://www.youtube.com/@MorningBrewDailyShow 00:00 - April Fools Recap 03:00 - World Bracing for Trump Tariffs 09:35 - Hooters Files for Bankruptcy 13:45 - MSG Surveillance 18:30 - Tinder AI 23:00 - Headlines Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: What are the highlights from April Fool's Day?
Then Hooters filed for bankruptcy but thinks it can stage a comeback with a more family-friendly vibe. It's Wednesday, April 2nd. Let's ride.
Another April Fool's Day, another year of brands making mostly harmless, sometimes clever pranks online. Here are some of the highlights and lowlights from yesterday's shenanigans. The state of New Jersey said it had finalized plans to construct Mount Jonas, a replica of Mount Rushmore with the faces of the New Jersey-bred Jonas Brothers, Kevin, Joe, and Nick.
Duolingo and That Obscene Owl announced they were launching a five-year world cruise with where you visit 195 countries and learn to speak like a local in all of them. Perhaps the prank that made the most waves, Tiger Woods, who ruptured his left Achilles a few weeks ago, said he had miraculously healed after sleeping in a hyperbaric chamber and would be playing in the Masters next week.
None of those were real, sadly, but they put a smile on your face. Toby, did you see any brands that took it a little too far yesterday?
Honestly, we did maybe. In case you didn't listen to the show yesterday, Neil and I carried out a little prank ourselves saying we were shifting the show from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. based on listener data and rebranding as Afternoon Brew Daily. And boy, did you guys get on us. YouTube comments were going nuts. Spotify comment section was in a tizzy. And even my mother was confused.
She called me yesterday saying, to congratulate Neil and I on the better sleep that we would be getting shifting to this afternoon schedule. And I had to tell her, mom, listen, for 15 more seconds, it was a prank. But yes, hope we didn't get you too badly. And if you turned a yesterday show off too early, sorry for the heart palpitations that Neil and I gave you.
Now a word from our sponsor, TaxAct. Neil, I woke up in a cold sweat last night. Oh no, let me guess, tax anxiety again? It was terrible.
I was being chased by a giant angry tax form. You really got to stop taking melatonin before bed. But good news, Tax Act has expert assist, real live tax experts, 100% credentialed and based in the United States, ready to answer all your tax questions.
Or as I like to call them, heroes. They might not wear capes, but oh boy, do they save you a lot of time and money.
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Chapter 2: What tariffs is Trump planning to announce?
File now at TaxAct.com and make sure you beat that April 15th deadline. Well, it has finally arrived. Liberation Day, President Trump's name for his announcement of sweeping tariffs on the U.S. 's trading partners. It is a historic inflection point that will reverse a decades-long shift toward globalization led by the United States after World War II.
Yes, Trump has imposed tariffs before, and so have many other presidents, but the size of the package being discussed is unlike anything we've seen in modern history, likely raising American trade barriers to their highest levels since the 1930s, 90 years ago. Remember Smoot-Hawley from AP U.S. History? Yeah, that is what this is being compared to. We are entering a new era of protectionism.
Trump and his economic team say the tariffs are necessary in order to rebuild the American manufacturing base, raise loads of money for the government by collecting import taxes, and rebalance American trade deficits with the rest of the world. While tariffs may raise prices in the short term, Trump argues, it'll leave the country better off in the long run.
There has been short-term turmoil already, even before Liberation Day. With all the uncertainty around tariffs, the S&P 500 posted its worst first quarter since 2022, and consumer sentiment has fallen off a cliff. Speaking of uncertainty, the big outstanding question is, what tariffs will Trump announce today?
The president initially signaled reciprocal tariffs on other countries, which means, in his words, Whatever they charge us, we charge them. But earlier this week, reports emerged that Trump was considering another plan, a blanket 20 percent tariff on virtually all of the three trillion dollars in goods the U.S. imports.
So, Toby, we don't know exactly what Trump is teeing up, but in either scenario, he's taking out driver.
I don't have a crystal ball and we don't know what exactly is coming down the pipeline. But the best thing to do before these are rolled out is look back through history. It's the closest thing we have to a cheat sheet for today. And I'm going to go back even before Smoot-Hawley to the 1800s.
And a lot of what happened then is actually resembling what is happening in today's potential trade war history. And regardless of the era, it does seem like the consequences of tariffs have been similar. I mean, there's been retaliation. There's been a tough time, especially for agricultural interests. There's been higher consumer costs.
A lot of the things that we've been talking about happened back in the 1800s. And I want to point to the McKinley tariff that was imposed in 1890. It imposed levies of roughly 50% on almost all imports. And it was a policy that was aimed at protecting domestic industry, something we've heard a lot of. And we saw several nations, including Canada, retaliate with tariffs of their own.
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Chapter 3: Why did Hooters file for bankruptcy?
generally good for a lot of industries and companies just look at Nike you know Nike is a global company that has headquarters in Beaverton Oregon they don't make their shoes there they make their shoes in factories that are spread throughout Southeast Asia because in Oregon you have talent that can do things like marketing and branding and you have the CFO there and that's where
Sort of the high level decisions are made, but it doesn't make economic sense to make actual sneakers in the United States. That is better done where labor and land is cheaper in Southeast Asia. And so that's been, you know, the era, you know, Nike just encapsulates the era of globalization that we've been having for the past 30, 40, 50 years with lower tariffs.
And that looks like, you know, that concept, that general economic philosophy is going to be reversed today.
And the one thing that we have to say ahead of this announcement is that it doesn't have to end badly. And actually, a bunch of economists recently got together, organized by the Center for a New American Security, and basically did a board game simulation of exactly what would happen if these tariffs were rolled out at the scale that we think they're going to be rolled out at.
And despite a lot of people saying that, oh, this is going to cause an all-out trade war, things eventually did settle down. And again, this was basically just like a very big board game of Catan, essentially. Like, I trade with you, you trade with me. Like, how do we react to each other? And through multiple scenarios, it actually did end up simmering down, and there was a favorable path forward.
So that is just one thing to keep in mind, that even as these are rolling out, there is a pathway towards, you know, not an all-out trade war and not something that, you economy. Pour one out for another classic American restaurant chain. This time, it's Hooters of America, the owner of the iconic restaurant chain known for its wings that is filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
Like many fast casual chains, Hooters has been struggling with falling foot traffic and financial shortfalls in the recent years. But its bankruptcy isn't goodbye, and it isn't even really a see you later either. The company has no plans to close any locations and is using the filing to restructure how they operate.
The big change is transitioning from a company-owned chain into a franchisee-owned one, where the original founders of the business can exert more control over the direction of the brand. For many years now, the Hooters brand has been owned by private equity firms and other groups with no history or experience with the Hooters. brand. Neil Kiefer, CEO of the franchisee group Hooters Inc.
said in a statement, and Kiefer thinks that those PE guys led the company down the wrong scantily clad path. Instead, Kiefer and co. want to take Hooters in a more PG direction, which includes ending bikini nights at the restaurant and working to make it a more welcoming destination for a family night out. Neil, this new group is calling it a re-Hooterization. Is there anything left here to
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Chapter 4: How is facial recognition technology used at MSG?
I mean, you could go down the list of all these companies that filed for bankruptcy. TGI Fridays, Red Lobster, Rubio's Coastal Grill on the border. They all filed for bankruptcy because people just aren't sitting down at these chains anymore. The only one that is doing OK is Chili. So they are facing headwinds More generally, they're facing inflation, higher labor costs.
Restaurant prices are up 30 percent in the last five years, which is way more than already soaring inflation. They are seem to be adopting a very similar playbook to the new CEO of Red Lobster, which is focusing on fresh ingredients, better service, investing in stores. So, yes, Hooters filed for bankruptcy. It's not going away. We'll see if this turnaround plan works.
Here's a wild story involving a vindictive NBA owner, cutting-edge technology, and a T-shirt. Last week, a man named Frank Miller was going through security at New York's Radio City Music Hall for a concert with his parents when he was stopped by security guards who whisked him to a separate part of the venue where he was handed a piece of paper titled Trespass Notice.
The letter explained that Miller had been banned from every venue owned by Madison Square Garden Entertainment, which includes Radio City Music Hall. But why was he banned and how did security at Radio City even identify him as he was in line?
Miller thinks the venue ban likely stems from an incident in 2021 when one of his friends went viral for wearing a shirt to a Knicks game that said ban Dolan. A not so nice message referring to James Dolan, the owner of the team and the CEO of Madison Square Garden Entertainment. Miller, a graphic designer, was the person who created that shirt.
And even though he wasn't at the game that day four years ago, he believed that Dolan's team identified him in social media posts surrounding the incident. And get this, use facial recognition technology deployed at MSG venues to pick him out of the crowd at Radio City and block him from entering. Toby, there's good reason to think that is exactly how it went down.
Yeah, Miller said that originally he found it comical that this happened, but then he realized that his mom was crying in the lobby and it was a bigger deal than he originally expected. It was their anniversary that they were going to it for. But he said, one, it just shows how powerful memes are because of this shirt. was affecting his life all these years later.
But then, too, talked about the surveillance state as well, which is something that MSG has definitely come under fire for in recent years. One of the other instances that this reminded me of is that at a time when James Dolan, the owner of the Knicks, was kind of locked up in some lawsuits with some different law firms, he basically put
every single attorney from a particular law firm on a ban list, not even the people that were actively engaged in litigation against MSG and himself. So he had this full attorney exclusion list and this mom was on a trip, a Girl Scouts trip with her daughter and wasn't even working on any case and also was thrown out of MSG. And that set off a firestorm back when that happened a few years ago.
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