Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: Hey Max Schafkin here, co host of elon Inc. You're
Speaker 2: about to hear a pilot of a new show that
Speaker 2: I've been working on for the past few months. It's
Speaker 2: called Everybody's Business. It features me and the great business
Speaker 2: and financial journalist Stacy Vanick Smith, plus just a huge
Speaker 2: contingent of some of the smartest, most interesting journalists we know.
Speaker 2: These include Lucas Shaw, Amanda Maul, brad Stone, Randall Williams.
Speaker 2: Each week, we're going to be taking the big business
Speaker 2: stories that everyone is talking about and we're going to
Speaker 2: spin them forward with fresh reporting, with analysis, with smart takes.
Speaker 2: It's a little bit like elon Ink, but a much
Speaker 2: broader look at the world. We've been working on it
Speaker 2: for months and just having a lot of fun, and
Speaker 2: we think you're going to enjoy it too. The show
Speaker 2: officially debuts on May sixteen. It'll be in its own
Speaker 2: podcast feed, but for now, for the next few weeks,
Speaker 2: it'll be here in the e lining feed every Friday,
Speaker 2: and we really hope you'll listen and let us know
Speaker 2: what you think.
Speaker 1: This is Everybody's Business from Bloomberg BusinessWeek.
Speaker 3: I'm Max Chafkin and I'm Stacy Vanixsmith. Hey, Stacy, Hello,
Speaker 3: I have a question for you, Max.
Speaker 1: What is your question?
Speaker 4: Fine morning? Are you feeling liberated?
Speaker 2: Well, I mean I am, because yesterday was Liberation Day.
Speaker 1: Was liberation now, but I am not sure what I
Speaker 1: feel liberated from.
Speaker 2: It almost feels like I'm liberated from any sense of normalcy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, reality, Yes, I feel like a lot of people
Speaker 3: are feeling that way. I think that has to be
Speaker 3: the theme of our show this week, liberation, because, of course,
Speaker 3: the big economic news like you just said, or maybe
Speaker 3: even kind of like an economic bombshell. It felt more
Speaker 3: like President Trump on Wednesday aka Liberation Day, unveiled our
Speaker 3: country's new tariff policy and it was pretty shocking. Markets
Speaker 3: are panicking, companies are panicking, countries are panicking.
Speaker 4: I am panicking also too. We can talk about that.
Speaker 2: I am not panicking, Stacy, but I'll tell you on
Speaker 2: the rest of the show, we're going to continue the
Speaker 2: liberation theme.
Speaker 1: We're going to talk about.
Speaker 2: The prospect that TikTok might be liberated from China.
Speaker 3: Yet one person's liberation is another person's acquisition.
Speaker 2: Indeed, and I've got an underrated story about liberating ourselves
Speaker 2: from the constraints of how we think about baseball bats
Speaker 2: that has loomed.
Speaker 4: So large in my mind for so many years. I'm
Speaker 4: glad to know that. But first, of course, you know,
Speaker 4: this is everybody's business.
Speaker 3: We wanted to see how everybody was feeling about the
Speaker 3: tariff news out of the White House this week, so
Speaker 3: we had our producer Stacy Wong and Magnus Hendrickson go
Speaker 3: out into the streets to ask the people, are you
Speaker 3: worried that tariffs are going to cause prices to go up?
Speaker 5: I am worried about prices going up.
Speaker 6: Yes, I'm very concerned about prices going up.
Speaker 1: I think it just feels like out of my control.
Speaker 2: On a scale of like one to ten, I'll probably
Speaker 2: say like middle of the.
Speaker 1: Pack, five. I haven't really thought of it that much.
Speaker 1: I expect to be surprised.
Speaker 5: I'm like, Okay, well, prices are growing up.
Speaker 2: I need to make some adjustments in life.
Speaker 5: I work in real estate construction. This affects especially like
Speaker 5: lives of New Yorkers. Have you been hoarding anything?
Speaker 7: Oh?
Speaker 1: No, honestly, I've thought about it.
Speaker 3: I am currently in the process of planning a wedding, so.
Speaker 6: Right now, I don't have a lot of purchasing capacity, and.
Speaker 3: Living in New York City, we have very little space
Speaker 3: to hoard anything.
Speaker 6: Toilet paper, beans, finny fish, the residual pandemic hoarding.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, I mean, do you think people people are
Speaker 2: really hoarding beans and toilet paper?
Speaker 1: That's crazy.
Speaker 3: I mean, if I sort of thought about it, I
Speaker 3: started to think about what products I really love that
Speaker 3: are from overseas that might get enormously more expensive in
Speaker 3: the next couple weeks.
Speaker 2: Honestly, like listening to that, I just feel deficient because
Speaker 2: I did not make any purchasing changes, no rewarding hallowing
Speaker 2: the incredible economic uncertainty, the chaos regime or whatever to
Speaker 2: just wash over me.
Speaker 4: All right, Max, let's get into it.
Speaker 3: Liberation Day tariffs The numbers that got unveiled this week
Speaker 3: were pretty shocking, I think, higher than anybody thoughts.
Speaker 2: Let's just listen to a snippet from this incredible event,
Speaker 2: my fellow Americans.
Speaker 7: This is Liberation Day waiting for a long time. April second,
Speaker 7: twenty twenty five will forever be remembered as the day
Speaker 7: American industry was reborn, the day America's destiny was reclaimed
Speaker 7: and the day that we began to make America wealthy again.
Speaker 3: L Day, Stacy L Day, A liberation Day, make America
Speaker 3: wealthy again. I mean, I hesitate to point this out,
Speaker 3: but like we are already the wealthiest country in the world.
Speaker 4: I don't even know what to say. I'm at a loss.
Speaker 4: I'm at a loss.
Speaker 2: Stacy's having trouble articulating here because what is happening is
Speaker 2: so weird and so surprising and so outside of the
Speaker 2: norms of what somebody who follows the economy, like having
Speaker 2: nothing to do with politics, expects out of a government.
Speaker 2: It's it's like we've instantly gone back in time. I
Speaker 2: don't know what, like one hundred and twenty years or
Speaker 2: something to.
Speaker 1: Do the time of mercantilism? Is that baby?
Speaker 3: So let's take a look at what exactly happened on
Speaker 3: Liberation Day. Let's let's look at these numbers. Thirty four
Speaker 3: percent tariffs on goods from China, twenty percent tax on
Speaker 3: anything from the EU to twenty four percent tax on
Speaker 3: goods from Japan. Those are our top trading partners, along
Speaker 3: with Canada and Mexico.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the other thing, Stacy like, thirty four percent
Speaker 2: of good of tariffs on goods from China. But that's
Speaker 2: on top of tariffs are already there. So that's fifty
Speaker 2: four percent.
Speaker 3: Most of the stuff we import from China. That is
Speaker 3: fifty four percent tax on a.
Speaker 1: Lot okay stuff.
Speaker 2: And not only that, but over the past decade or so,
Speaker 2: a lot of companies have moved manufacturing away from China
Speaker 2: because they saw this coming.
Speaker 1: They moved it to places like Vietnam now there or.
Speaker 4: Apple moved a lot of its operations to India.
Speaker 2: Yeah, big tariffs on those countries as well. So the timing,
Speaker 2: it's not immediate immediate, but it's going to happen in
Speaker 2: the next couple of weeks.
Speaker 1: Basically, yes, I was really, really shook.
Speaker 3: I was not expecting the numbers to be as high
Speaker 3: as they were. And I've talked to economists of all
Speaker 3: political stripes for a lot of years, and I have
Speaker 3: to say, no serious economists thinks that like large scale
Speaker 3: protects of tariffs are a good idea.
Speaker 4: It's bad for an economy.
Speaker 3: I mean, it would be like finding a doctor that
Speaker 3: said smoking was good for your health, Like it just
Speaker 3: doesn't really exist. I think you can find economists say
Speaker 3: in certain situations like very targeted tariffs.
Speaker 2: But can you just explain quickly why, because like you've
Speaker 2: spent a lot of time supporting on the economy, why
Speaker 2: are they so against it.
Speaker 3: Well, tariffs are at tax essentially, right, I mean, this
Speaker 3: is the tax. JP Morgan actually came out saying this
Speaker 3: is the largest tax like the USS and since nineteen
Speaker 3: sixty eight. So if you think of it like a tax,
Speaker 3: it's pretty simple. So basically, you are taxing the things
Speaker 3: that we import. Two thirds of our economy is consumer spending.
Speaker 3: That is the load bearing beam of the US economy
Speaker 3: is you and me buying stuff. So anything that gets
Speaker 3: in the way of that really threatens to compromise our
Speaker 3: whole economy. So when prices go up by fifty percent,
Speaker 3: even twenty percent, thirty percent, we've all been through inflation
Speaker 3: from COVID. Those prices go what people buy less, which
Speaker 3: means companies sell less, they make less money, They stop expanding,
Speaker 3: which means they stop hiring, which means they can start
Speaker 3: firing people, which leads to economic contraction.
Speaker 4: And then like we're in.
Speaker 3: The situation of at least like darkness and dragons, except like,
Speaker 3: I'm not sure we can afford dragons.
Speaker 4: It's bad.
Speaker 1: It's bad, yeah, I mean.
Speaker 2: Writing in his Odd Lots newsletter this morning, our colleague
Speaker 2: and fellow Bloomberg podcaster Joe Wisenthal said it was one
Speaker 2: of the craziest days he could remember. You saw the
Speaker 2: stock market kind of tip in real time as they
Speaker 2: figured out just how.
Speaker 1: Big Trump had gone.
Speaker 2: There had been all these reports kind of over the
Speaker 2: last couple of weeks and even beyond that, about is
Speaker 2: it just gonna be a little tariff, is this a
Speaker 2: negotiating thing.
Speaker 4: And is it gonna be kind of vague?
Speaker 2: You had all these contingents both within the White House
Speaker 2: and maybe on Wall Street, who I think we're kind
Speaker 2: of wish casting, right, and of just hoping somehow they
Speaker 2: would be able to bring Trump around to the consensus view,
Speaker 2: the one that you just expressed, which is that, of course,
Speaker 2: tariffs are bad for our economy, as can instructed, it's
Speaker 2: like a massive tax on consumers. Trump had this weird
Speaker 2: moment during the event where he talked about groceries.
Speaker 1: He's like, I love that word groceries.
Speaker 5: Oh my god.
Speaker 1: It was a very strange.
Speaker 4: It was very long.
Speaker 1: It's like a policy designed to make groceries.
Speaker 4: More expensive moments of poetry.
Speaker 2: Many of these things that are being tariffed are things
Speaker 2: we do not grow in the United States. So that's
Speaker 2: why everyone was hoping it would be less bad.
Speaker 1: And here we are. It's sort of what the normy
Speaker 1: business types feared.
Speaker 3: I was watching the announcement here at Bloomberg in the newsroom,
Speaker 3: and here at Bloomberg, everybody's got like five computer screens.
Speaker 3: They're all covered in various charts and graphs at all moments.
Speaker 3: And I looked out across the newsroom and all the
Speaker 3: charts were read, Like as Trump was talking, all the
Speaker 3: charts were read.
Speaker 4: But this is where I was sort of hoping you.
Speaker 3: Could offer a ray of light, Max, because you have
Speaker 3: covered the people in this administration Trump, Trump's interactions with
Speaker 3: business for a long time. And I I thought, maybe, like,
Speaker 3: is this typical Trumpian blusters? This is shot across the bow,
Speaker 3: throw us some hope.
Speaker 2: I'm also just by nature like disagreeable, and my tendency
Speaker 2: when like all of these economics are like this is bad,
Speaker 2: I'm like.
Speaker 1: It must be good.
Speaker 2: Then I think there are two ways you can go here,
Speaker 2: and but they don't agree with one another. So one
Speaker 2: is this contingent I just talked about, which is like
Speaker 2: Scott the Scent, the Treasury Secretary, the CEOs of major banks,
Speaker 2: probably like many of the business journalists people like us
Speaker 2: who write about the economy and share this kind of
Speaker 2: consensus view is that Trump is actually not going to
Speaker 2: go through with this. Like the stock market is down
Speaker 2: as we speak on Thursday morning, but it's not down
Speaker 2: that much.
Speaker 1: It's like down four or five percent.
Speaker 2: You're talking like he just broke the world, and the
Speaker 2: S and P five hundred.
Speaker 4: It's a little bit that way when I was watching it, Yes.
Speaker 1: I know.
Speaker 2: So my point is clearly there are many people who
Speaker 2: think this is yet another negotiating post. We saw this
Speaker 2: with the situation with Mexico and Canada where he announced
Speaker 2: these huge tariffs and kind of basically pulled many of
Speaker 2: them back. You have people in Trump's inner circle already
Speaker 2: signaling that this is sort of a starting point of
Speaker 2: a negotiation that is not the ending point of a negotiation.
Speaker 4: He's making him an offer they can't refuse.
Speaker 1: And maybe that could work.
Speaker 2: The other thing, and this is a sort of different
Speaker 2: reason which you might feel optimistic, is like, look, there
Speaker 2: are things about this economy that you describe this consensus
Speaker 2: view that are very bad, like a world, a world
Speaker 2: where we just buy all this cheap crap and pay
Speaker 2: huge sums of money to ship it often by air,
Speaker 2: creating huge climate consequences around the world. Like it is
Speaker 2: not good for the world. It's arguably like a bad
Speaker 2: way for us to go through life. And maybe like
Speaker 2: this kind of consensus view did that to us. And
Speaker 2: if we were able to like move towards a world
Speaker 2: where more of our stuff is made locally, like that
Speaker 2: would be a stronger and more sustainable country. I could
Speaker 2: almost believe that the problem is that the other point
Speaker 2: I just made kind of undercuts it because businesses don't
Speaker 2: really believe.
Speaker 1: This is going to happen.
Speaker 2: Even now, We're not going to see like shoe factories
Speaker 2: or whatever open in the United States because no one's
Speaker 2: going to invest years and years and years to set
Speaker 2: up a whole new supply chain when they could just
Speaker 2: wait till the next election or till when you know,
Speaker 2: Trump changes his mind.
Speaker 3: Also, wages are really high in this country. I read
Speaker 3: a great article in Forbes about how much an iPhone
Speaker 3: would cost if it were entirely made inside of the US,
Speaker 3: and the estimate was between thirty and one hundred thousand dollars.
Speaker 3: So moving manufacturing back to the US and you know,
Speaker 3: making everything here, yes, you're right, it would be sustainable,
Speaker 3: but things would get massively more expensive. That's why we've
Speaker 3: outsourced in the first place, and it's made all kinds
Speaker 3: of goods affordable. I think you make a great point
Speaker 3: that maybe our economy is over dependent on US consumers,
Speaker 3: and in fact, sixteen percent of the global economy is
Speaker 3: Americans buying stuff.
Speaker 2: But I just want to say that kind of thought
Speaker 2: experiment and you just gave. Even somebody who's for these
Speaker 2: tariffs is not like, oh, yeah, we should pay one
Speaker 2: hundred thousand dollars for an iPhone. Now, they're just saying
Speaker 2: you should pay fifty percent more for some of these components.
Speaker 2: You should ask consumers to pay a tax for the
Speaker 2: downstream consequences of this supply chain. Like I only, that's crazy.
Speaker 2: We talk about that with environmental stuff all the time.
Speaker 2: I think a lot of these businesses and economists and
Speaker 2: so on don't think the idea of a carbon tax, for.
Speaker 1: Instance, is crazy, which also is just a massive drain
Speaker 1: on consumer spending.
Speaker 3: So yes, but then you put things way out of
Speaker 3: reach of a lot of people, especially lower income people,
Speaker 3: middle income people. Suddenly cars and smartphones are out of
Speaker 3: reach for them.
Speaker 4: That is not a great situation, I would argue, Okay,
Speaker 4: I want to.
Speaker 1: Stop defending this for a second.
Speaker 2: We have to talk about this formula, the science that
Speaker 2: produced these tariffs, the.
Speaker 3: Science that produce these tariffs. Actually, there was a formula
Speaker 3: that was used so that you take the trade deficit
Speaker 3: for the US in goods with a particular country, you
Speaker 3: divide that by the goods that that country imports.
Speaker 2: Wait, yeah, you take it's the train deficit divided by
Speaker 2: imports divided by two.
Speaker 1: For some reason.
Speaker 2: Okay, listeners, if we got that wrong, send us an email.
Speaker 2: Everybody's at Bloomberg dot net. But you know this is
Speaker 2: weird because number one, they talked about reciprocal tariffs. And
Speaker 2: you might think, oh, so that means like, if one
Speaker 2: country is charging a twenty percent tax on imports from
Speaker 2: our country, will.
Speaker 1: Charge yes, twenty percent on theirs. That is not what's happening.
Speaker 2: We're basing this on like how much stuff do we
Speaker 2: export to them? If we export a lot to them,
Speaker 2: the tariff's going to be lower. Yeah, and now maybe
Speaker 2: that makes sense from a negotiating perspective, but it's just
Speaker 2: kind of crazy because it creates all these weird situations
Speaker 2: where these like very poor countries are gonna have huge tariffs,
Speaker 2: gonna be all the harder for them to grow their economies.
Speaker 3: And also, like US consumers buying stuff is also like
Speaker 3: one of the biggest parts of is economy, Japan's economy,
Speaker 3: but also of Vietnam's economy, Mexico's economy. It's going to
Speaker 3: be a really tough situation for us and for everyone
Speaker 3: in the world. Like I can't think of a country
Speaker 3: that's not affecting all right.
Speaker 1: One other thing on this formula.
Speaker 2: And again this is speculation, but there are people suggesting,
Speaker 2: and I think this is plausible that the formula was
Speaker 2: created by chat gpt, because we're true. If you plug
Speaker 2: like how would you do a tariff into some of
Speaker 2: these chatbots, they give like these kind of similar formulations.
Speaker 2: And if this is true, which it very well might
Speaker 2: may not be, I think that it is maybe the
Speaker 2: first step in seeing the limits of AI.
Speaker 1: AI.
Speaker 3: Yeah, AI should not be setting tariffs, but I did
Speaker 3: want to end on the kind of a positive note,
Speaker 3: which is I did find a few silver linings in
Speaker 3: our tariff situation, and I brought them in to the studio.
Speaker 2: Are these like a good old fashioned American made products
Speaker 2: or what?
Speaker 4: No, quite the opposite. So one of them is this.
Speaker 1: It's a can of coke. It's like a tall boy
Speaker 1: of coke.
Speaker 3: It's like it's a can of diy coke. It was
Speaker 3: the only one I could find at the Dwayne read.
Speaker 3: President Trump apparently drinks twelve of these a day, twelve.
Speaker 3: But there was an exemption on aluminium steel, okay, which
Speaker 3: is really good because aluminium steel are literally in everything
Speaker 3: from buildings to home appliances to cans of coke.
Speaker 4: So that is one silver lining okay.
Speaker 3: And then there were a couple when you calculated out
Speaker 3: the formula, a couple countries that came out looking pretty okay.
Speaker 3: One of them flowers flowers from Columbia.
Speaker 1: So Columbia exempt or what ten percent?
Speaker 5: Okay?
Speaker 3: So these flowers, this is Dwyane Raid, so they're nineteen
Speaker 3: ninety nine, so they will you know, we're talking about
Speaker 3: like maybe twenty one dollars or twenty two dollars.
Speaker 1: Are there any other products, Stacy, Yes, that are are final.
Speaker 3: I think you're going to be very excited about this one.
Speaker 3: It's a bag of something idiot. It's Eastern candy Cadbury.
Speaker 3: So the UK ended up looking okay in all this.
Speaker 3: It's like the only moment where Brexit seemed like a
Speaker 3: good economic idea was on Liberation Day. Because because they
Speaker 3: don't you has like twenty plus percent tariffs, the UK
Speaker 3: got off with a ten percent tariff, meaning that chocolate
Speaker 3: from Cadbury and products from the UK, the prices will
Speaker 3: go up less than the prices for other things.
Speaker 4: We can eat our feelings a little bit.
Speaker 1: Drink them and get ourselves flowers.
Speaker 2: It's not.
Speaker 1: Okay, Stacey.
Speaker 2: Do you remember like when we were younger and more innocent,
Speaker 2: like two months ago, and the.
Speaker 1: Big source a couple of days ago of.
Speaker 2: Business uncertainty was TikTok, like wood trump band, TikTok, the
Speaker 2: very popular, very large social media Well, people probably missed
Speaker 2: it with all the excitement of Liberation Day. But two
Speaker 2: days from today, as we're recording, this is Liberation Day,
Speaker 2: park Dood.
Speaker 1: It's the day that TikTok.
Speaker 3: I think you have to pay a tax if you
Speaker 3: use friends to sell itself.
Speaker 2: It's the deadline for the Chinese owners of TikTok Byte
Speaker 2: Dance to sell it assumingly to a US owner. There's
Speaker 2: been a lot of news here and I want to
Speaker 2: talk about it, but because it's kind of related to
Speaker 2: the conversation we had, but also just because this is
Speaker 2: a huge story in its own right. And we have my
Speaker 2: favorite technology journalist Bradstone, who also is my boss, the
Speaker 2: editor of Bloomberg Business Week.
Speaker 1: Yes, indeed here with us virtually today. How are you doing, Brad?
Speaker 6: Hi?
Speaker 5: Guys happy TikTok almost TikTok.
Speaker 2: Liberation Day is part liberation part two?
Speaker 1: Is that right?
Speaker 5: That sounds right?
Speaker 1: So Brett, just to.
Speaker 2: Catch us up, like, where do things stand with TikTok
Speaker 2: right now?
Speaker 1: So April fifth? What do we expect to happen or
Speaker 1: what has to happen?
Speaker 5: Well, it may happen before then.
Speaker 6: It almost seems like as we speak right now in
Speaker 6: the Oval Office, there are discussions, led in part by
Speaker 6: Vice President jd Vance, evaluating some of these deals to
Speaker 6: buy the US arm of TikTok, And there is reporting
Speaker 6: that there is a coalition led by some very Trump
Speaker 6: friendly allies, including the venture capital firm Entries and Horowitz, Blackstone,
Speaker 6: of course, Steve Schwartzman, who sort of famously endorsed Trump
Speaker 6: during the campaign, Silver Lake, other large private capital investors
Speaker 6: to buy TikTok's US business, and then I guess licensed
Speaker 6: the algorithm from bytem Still a couple of questions about
Speaker 6: how that will work.
Speaker 2: So I encountered this story in the This Morning and like,
Speaker 2: honestly one of the crazier deal stories I've ever read.
Speaker 2: So Brad, you you hit part of it, which is
Speaker 2: that you have this collection of like Trump adjacent venture capitalists,
Speaker 2: like people who are either have like donated huge sums
Speaker 2: of money to Trump's campaign or are like in at
Speaker 2: mar Lago pretty much on the regularly, like Mark Andresen.
Speaker 2: So that's fifty percent of this proposed deal. And I
Speaker 2: did mention Oracle right right, there's this line, and there's
Speaker 2: a line in a story out of nowhere Oracle, co
Speaker 2: founded by Trump ally Larry Elson, would secure TikTok's US
Speaker 2: data as part of the deal. So like somehow Oracle
Speaker 2: gets the data, the algorithm goes someplace else. There's also
Speaker 2: a line in this story which I enjoyed. One person
Speaker 2: caution that the situation remained fluid, and that was possible,
Speaker 2: the White House would abruptly change its plans, which like, do.
Speaker 1: You have to write that I know a Trump's story anymore?
Speaker 3: Can't we just like that's just the paragraph you can
Speaker 3: cut and paste into any story right now?
Speaker 6: But my question if bite Dance is remains a twenty
Speaker 6: percent owner of the business and is in some way
Speaker 6: licensing the algorithm to these US investors, these new owners,
Speaker 6: then how are we resolving the privacy questions the war
Speaker 6: gaming of Is TikTok a safe kind of social network?
Speaker 6: If it's partially owned by the Chinese government? How are
Speaker 6: we resolving any of the fundamental issues that Donald Trump
Speaker 6: identified I think rightfully identified almost eight years ago. Does
Speaker 6: this deal really resolve it? I think that's still an
Speaker 6: open question.
Speaker 4: And Bye Dance has said that they are not going
Speaker 4: to sell right.
Speaker 6: I think they've they've softened it a little bit, particularly
Speaker 6: with this still ambiguous maybe understanding that they would retain
Speaker 6: They're not selling the algorithm, they're merely licensing it.
Speaker 5: That was the sticking point.
Speaker 2: Can we just quickly talk about some of these other bids,
Speaker 2: I mean, Brad, first of all, there's this Frank mccor
Speaker 2: former owner of the La Dodgers crypto bid. I think
Speaker 2: that's still around, and I think no one anyone is taking.
Speaker 1: That seriously, maybe besides Frank mccorn. I'm not sure that
Speaker 1: sounds right.
Speaker 6: He wanted to put it in some equivalent of like
Speaker 6: an open source, public trust source the algorithm make it
Speaker 6: a little bit more accountable. That does not seem to
Speaker 6: be where the current conversation is going.
Speaker 2: I have to say, speaking of accountability, Brad Jeff Bezos
Speaker 2: swooping in at the last minute with a letter to
Speaker 2: Vice President jd Vance, I believe, offering that he could
Speaker 2: take it over himself.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 6: Well, the deal comes from Amazon, right, And I don't
Speaker 6: know how Jeff Bezos kind of propelled this is. I mean,
Speaker 6: I think a Milania Trump forty million dollar documentary that
Speaker 6: Amazon is funding does feel like a Bezos project. But
Speaker 6: you know Amazon, Amazon does have a record of trying
Speaker 6: to come into these deals to give itself.
Speaker 5: Some optionality to be part of the process.
Speaker 6: I mean, I'm old enough to remember when Amazon was
Speaker 6: rumored to be buying AMC theaters or Dish networks. But
Speaker 6: here it would make a lot of sense. I mean, Amazon,
Speaker 6: you know, sees a shopping is becoming social. It experimented
Speaker 6: with its own short form video service called Inspire, which
Speaker 6: it had to shut down. TikTok shop is massive, like
Speaker 6: thirty billion in gross merchandise sales last year. And then
Speaker 6: you've got to remember Amazon's becoming an advertising juggernaut, and
Speaker 6: they would basically be unifying like the number three and
Speaker 6: number four players behind Google and Meta, So that makes
Speaker 6: a lot of sense.
Speaker 5: It was sort of immediately dismissed.
Speaker 6: I mean, the thing is that you know jd Evance
Speaker 6: to the extent that he is leading this project is
Speaker 6: you know, sort of shared some of the antitrust values
Speaker 6: with the Biden White House, and it's really hard to believe,
Speaker 6: you know, despite however many dinners. Jeff Bezos has had
Speaker 6: a mar a lago that the Trump administration would hand
Speaker 6: over this valuable asset to a big tech company like Amazon.
Speaker 2: Now, there was a potential other buyer who came up
Speaker 2: a couple months ago, which which made a certain sense,
Speaker 2: which is Elon Musk. And the reason, I know that's
Speaker 2: crazy side why not, But beyond the fact that hey,
Speaker 2: he runs a lot of businesses, he's close to Donald Trump,
Speaker 2: Musk was seen and This is how it was reported
Speaker 2: at the time as someone that Beijing that the Chinese
Speaker 2: government which is going to have to prove this deal
Speaker 2: because it would be the sale of a major, very
Speaker 2: valuable Chinese company, basically the force sale of a major
Speaker 2: Chinese asset into US hands. Do we think that Beijing
Speaker 2: could get comfortable with either of these deals, Brad? I mean, like,
Speaker 2: I don't know about Bezos. Maybe that's one of the
Speaker 2: reasons these the venture capitalists sort of make sense. Like
Speaker 2: a lot of these guys have track records of doing
Speaker 2: business in China, and maybe it's easier to kind of
Speaker 2: get with a consortium where the Chinese company still has
Speaker 2: like a substantial stake in the whole enterprise.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 6: I mean, I recall from earlier this year that Elon
Speaker 6: made a public statement that he was not interested in
Speaker 6: buying TikTok. I don't know if we take that at
Speaker 6: face value. I think for the Chinese government, right the
Speaker 6: options are limited. I mean, it has become clear or
Speaker 6: now for many years that they were going to be
Speaker 6: forced to divest this asset, and I think what they're
Speaker 6: negotiating for now is less a particular buyer and more
Speaker 6: of the ownership stake and that crucial control over the algorithm.
Speaker 6: And if Trump is willing to allow that, which you know,
Speaker 6: as I said before, feels like it defeats the whole purpose,
Speaker 6: then the Chinese government, I think, is going to come
Speaker 6: out of this feeling like it had a minor win.
Speaker 7: Well.
Speaker 3: Also, I mean, maybe it could be part of a
Speaker 3: bargaining chip in like renegotiating.
Speaker 4: Some of these tariffs on China.
Speaker 3: I mean, would you have to pay a tariff if
Speaker 3: you bought TikTok, because really expensive. But maybe, I mean,
Speaker 3: I don't know, could this be a bargaining chip in
Speaker 3: a larger conversation.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think for sure, right, like, TikTok is
Speaker 2: a major asset. It's not only valuable in the sense
Speaker 2: that like it's a lot of money and those are
Speaker 2: jobs and so.
Speaker 1: On, but valuable in a kind of cultural sense.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is like a really important Chinese cultural export,
Speaker 2: which is of course part of the reason why a
Speaker 2: lot of conservatives and even Donald Trump, you know, back
Speaker 2: many years ago, forced this conversation in the first place.
Speaker 2: I mean, the weirdest thing about this story is Trump
Speaker 2: suggested banning TikTok. Biden went ahead and did it. And
Speaker 2: then Trump, probably not entirely coincidentally, after receiving a massive
Speaker 2: donation from a TikTok investor, just totally changed his position.
Speaker 3: Well, he also got an account and the account did
Speaker 3: really well, and I think that actually may have tipped
Speaker 3: the scale too. He mentioned it like explicitly a couple
Speaker 3: of times. Yeah, you get that little dopamine hit.
Speaker 4: It's hard to say no.
Speaker 5: Actually, zone.
Speaker 2: Zone. All right, let's move on to our final segment. Brad,
Speaker 2: we're gonna have you stick around for this. This is
Speaker 2: where Stacy or I will find an underrate story of
Speaker 2: the week and present it to the others. And I
Speaker 2: want to start with, you know, just a great moment
Speaker 2: in television history.
Speaker 1: Let's give a listen, guys kidding, it's not about muscle.
Speaker 2: In simple physics, calculate the velocity V in relation to the.
Speaker 3: Trajectory T in which G gravity of course remains a constant.
Speaker 1: It's not complicated. Stacy, had you seen that one?
Speaker 3: I mean this is from Seinfeld, clearly George Costanza giving Baseball.
Speaker 2: Lessons, Season eight, episode nine of Seinfeld the Abstinence, to
Speaker 2: be specific.
Speaker 5: He works for the Yankees.
Speaker 1: You remember that the plot of this episode.
Speaker 2: I'll just to refresher memory. I'm sure it'll come back
Speaker 2: to you in a second. But George stops having sex
Speaker 2: and becomes a genius. And among the genius discoverers he
Speaker 2: has is he figures out the physics of home runs
Speaker 2: and is in the scene teaching Yankee Grades, Derek Jeter,
Speaker 2: and Bernie Williams how to hit a.
Speaker 1: Baseball how to hit a baseball. So I'm bringing this
Speaker 1: up because.
Speaker 4: That's a little old for an underreait.
Speaker 1: This is happening right now in real life. Torpedo bats.
Speaker 2: These are a new invention on innovation in the world
Speaker 2: of baseball. This is a bat where the barrel is
Speaker 2: like sort of closer to the handle. It was invented
Speaker 2: by a sort of obscure coach on the Miami Marlins,
Speaker 2: an MIT physicist. So we got the physics in there,
Speaker 2: and he hired an MIT physicist. The baseball team did yes.
Speaker 2: His career trajectory is just frankly amazing. He was an
Speaker 2: MIT physics PhD. He worked as a minor league coach
Speaker 2: for a while in the Atlantic League, community college coach,
Speaker 2: and then he hits it big in the majors and
Speaker 2: he invents the torpedo bat and these things. Brad, I'm
Speaker 2: sure you're aware of this because you're a baseball fan.
Speaker 2: It's like some people believe this is like breaking the
Speaker 2: game of baseball. This is the world will never be
Speaker 2: the same.
Speaker 6: I don't think it will break the game of baseball,
Speaker 6: because I think the game of baseball is already broken.
Speaker 5: I'm really bummed.
Speaker 6: I feel like this season, I mean there's there's almost,
Speaker 6: to my mind, no drama. I mean, the competitive balance
Speaker 6: has never been more lopsided. The Dodgers are going to
Speaker 6: win the World Series again. The formerly Oakland A's are
Speaker 6: playing in like a stadium in West Sacramento, not even
Speaker 6: Sacramento Sacramento, but occupied by a team called the river Cats.
Speaker 4: By the way, because emotionally.
Speaker 6: And my team is the Cleveland Guardians. They're off to
Speaker 6: a terrible start. But more importantly, you can't watch the
Speaker 6: games on TV, like baseball's lost all its TV contracts.
Speaker 6: Oh and by the way, the league's probably going to
Speaker 6: strike again next year.
Speaker 5: Right. They've never been able to figure.
Speaker 6: Out things like a salary cap and so yeah, torpedo
Speaker 6: bats again. It's like some teams hacking the game and
Speaker 6: to me more evidence that than maybe Ma's Opening Day.
Speaker 8: Everybody ano they're great spring and major League baseball, but
Speaker 8: I just feel like, you know, particularly compared to basketball,
Speaker 8: the NBA and the NFL, major League baseball has lost
Speaker 8: its way.
Speaker 3: Okay, maybe the torpedo bat is the moment that turns
Speaker 3: it all around and brings people back to the great
Speaker 3: sport of baseball.
Speaker 1: I'm with you, Stacy.
Speaker 2: This is great news, a great innovation. Like I said,
Speaker 2: dreams can come true. You can be an MIT physicist
Speaker 2: and get a job as an assistant coach for one
Speaker 2: of the worst teams in baseball. But I do think,
Speaker 2: like I think, this is very exciting. I love the story.
Speaker 2: I love the fact that the Yankees. I'm not a
Speaker 2: Yankees fan a Mets fan, but they hit like nine
Speaker 2: home runs when they were using these bats.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, what do the bats do that's so special? Like,
Speaker 3: why are they better than a regular bat? I mean
Speaker 3: they looking at them, they're.
Speaker 1: It's so stupid. It's like as stupid as George Cassandra.
Speaker 2: Basically, the ball hits closer to your hands, so why
Speaker 2: not put the big part of the.
Speaker 1: Bat closer to your hands. That's it. That's it.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's physics, that's what that's what an MIT degree.
Speaker 2: So these bats you can buy them now, the Torpedo
Speaker 2: Pro Reserve. You can buy these for two hundred nine dollars.
Speaker 2: And the best part of all Stacy made right here.
Speaker 2: No tariffs, No tariffs all right.
Speaker 1: Brad Stone, thanks for being here.
Speaker 5: Thank you guys.
Speaker 4: The show was produced by Stacy Wong.
Speaker 3: Magnus Hendrickson is our supervising producer, Amy Kean is our editor,
Speaker 3: and Brendan Francis Newnham is our executive producer.
Speaker 4: Sage Bauman heads Bloomberg Podcasts.
Speaker 3: And if you have a story that you think should
Speaker 3: be our business, send us an email. It's at everybody's
Speaker 3: at Bloomberg dot net. That's everybody's without an apostrophe, everybody's
Speaker 3: at Bloomberg dot net. And if there's something that you
Speaker 3: buy that you're worried that tariffs are going to affect,
Speaker 3: we definitely want to hear from you. Send us an
Speaker 3: email or a voice memo. We would love to know
Speaker 3: what's on your mind. Thank you for listening. See you
Speaker 3: next week.