Trump Announces New Tariffs on Key Trade partners

We are delighted to have our very own NTD's Don Ma here with us. Don, you have the business news. What's the latest? All right. Delighted. I mean, I haven't heard that before. Such an honor. It's an honor. Okay. Let me talk about the airline industry first. A Senate subcommittee criticized airlines today for the rise in the cost in seat assignment and luggage fees. Lawmakers have called the executives to testify on December 4th. The Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations Chair Richard Blumenthal will convene a hearing titled, The Sky's the Limit, New Revelations About Airline Fees. Senior executives from American Airlines, United, Delta, Spirit Airlines, and Frontier are expected to attend. Blumenthal's report disclosed the five carriers collectively earned $12.4 billion in revenue from seat fees between 2018 and 2023. The senior senator from Connecticut cited United as an example, which earned $1.3 billion in seat fees for the first time last year. He added that Congress should require airlines to provide more detailed fee disclosures. Meanwhile, the Commerce Department said it was finalizing a $7.8 billion subsidy for Intel. It's a dip from the $8.5 billion announced in March after the California-based chipmaker won a separate $3 billion grant from the Pentagon. The subsidy will support nearly $90 billion in manufacturing projects in Arizona, New Mexico, Ohio, and Oregon. Intel has already met some initial project milestones and will receive at least $1 billion in funding before the end of December. The grant is the largest of any under the Chips and Science Act. Congress passed legislation in 2022 to boost domestic semiconductor output. The $52 billion in funding includes $39 billion for production and $11 billion for research. About 7.5 million people in the U.S. could be getting access to pricey obesity drugs. The Biden administration is announcing a plan today to expand Medicare and Medicaid coverage for weight loss drugs, including GLP-1 medications. For some, out-of-pocket costs could drop by 95 percent. The plan could cost $35 billion over nine years. It's unclear right now who would be eligible and how much the plan would cost people. It's also unclear if the proposal can be finalized before President Biden leaves office in January. Weight loss drug makers Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly are seeing their shares rise on Biden's announcement. Here's more. Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly shares rose on Tuesday. Investors were excited as U.S. President Joe Biden proposed expanding coverage of anti-obesity drugs for millions on Medicare and Medicaid. Novo called the move an important step forward for patients. The firm further said the coverage could become effective in two years. The stock paired initial gains of as much as 4.9 percent to trade more than Current rules for the Medicare and Medicaid government health insurance programs cover the use of Azempic and Wegovy for certain conditions like diabetes. But they don't cover obesity as a condition on its own. The White House said the proposal could lower out-of-pocket costs for weight loss drugs by up to $95. And it would expand access to millions of Americans. U.S. rival Eli Lilly also saw its shares jump up over 4 percent in early trade. Walmart is planning on rolling back some of its diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. The retailer is the latest company to backtrack on the diversity initiatives in the face of possible backlash. Walmart said it plans to end racial equity training programs for staff and evaluating programs designed to increase supplier diversity. The company is also reviewing its funding of Pride and other events. It's also monitoring its online marketplace to remove sexual or transgender products marketed to children. Walmart also said it will not extend its Center for Racial Equity. Walmart joins Harley-Davidson, tractor supply company John Deere and other companies in revising or pulling back on their DEI programs and other social policies. Walmart is the largest private employer in the U.S. A bankruptcy judge delayed a hearing yesterday regarding Alex Jones' efforts to stop The Onion from buying InfoWars. The ruling keeps the sale on hiatus for at least another few weeks. The Onion won the website at a bankruptcy auction, but Jones claims fraud and collusion tainted the process. A trustee overseeing the auction denies the allegations. Jones declared bankruptcy after he was ordered to pay nearly $1.5 billion to relatives of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. He had repeatedly said the 2012 tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut was a hoax staged by actors to increase gun control. Judge Christopher Lopez has rescheduled an emergency motion hearing to disqualify The Onion's bid for mid-December. Warren Buffett is one of the world's richest men. The 94-year-old shared his most detailed plan yet on how he wants his wealth distributed after he dies. Buffett is the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway. In a letter to shareholders, he said he hopes his three children will live long enough to act on Buffett's wishes to donate to certain philanthropic causes. But Buffett said if his children aren't able to determine the fate of his fortune, he has designated three people to serve as potential trustees. The names of those trustees were not made public. Buffett is currently worth about $150 billion, according to Bloomberg. He's giving away some of his money while he is still A ransomware attack is forcing Starbucks to go manual in its employee scheduling. And the company says it's in manual mode to ensure its workers get paid properly. The hack disrupted a third-party software system that Starbucks uses to track and manage its baristas' schedules. Store leadership has advised their employees on how to work around the outage. The coffee chain says it will make sure everyone is paid for all hours worked. Several companies have been disrupted by the hack of Blue Yonder, an Arizona-based cloud services provider. In the United Kingdom, two of their top four grocery chains are taking steps to deal with the Blue Yonder outage. A report in the Los Angeles Times says California is creating such high quantities of solar energy that major commercial operators are being forced to curtail production. It's an issue shining a light on the state's plan to fully move into carbon-free electricity sources. According to the Los Angeles Times, in the last 12 months, solar farms have cut production of more than 3 million megawatt-hours of solar energy. That's either from a state directive or to prices falling due to the overabundance. The reduction equates to enough power supply for more than half a million California homes on average over the span of a year. The curtailed production has more than doubled since 2021. An energy expert tells the LA Times the situation results in more than half of available solar power going to waste on some days. The solar energy glut results in higher electricity bills for California residents paying for its generation but not using it. An energy consultant says solar power oversupply means traders can buy excess at such low prices they go negative. Electricity rates in California come in at about twice the national average. Only Hawaii's rates are higher. EV John Tesla will likely be excluded from new California tax credits for electric vehicles. That's according to Governor Gavin Newsom's office. Here's a closer look at why. Tesla's electric vehicles would likely not qualify for California's new state tax credits. That's under a proposal in the works if President-elect Donald Trump scraps the credit for EV purchases. The update came from the state's Governor Gavin Newsom's office on Monday. It prompted Tesla shares to close down 4% and fall another 1.2% in after-hours trading. Tesla CEO Elon Musk, a close Trump advisor, sharply criticized the idea of barring the automaker from EV subsidies. He wrote on X in response, Even though Tesla is the only company who manufactures their EVs in California, this is insane. The state faces financial headwinds with an estimated $2 billion budget deficit next year. EVs account for 22% of California's car sales. But Musk and Newsom have clashed over a number of state policies. These include the shutting of a Tesla factory during the pandemic and California's approval of a bill on transgender children. In 2021, Tesla moved its headquarters from California to Texas. Musk said this year that his other companies, such as SpaceX and social media platform X, will follow suit. Electric vehicle maker Rivian wins preliminary approval for a federal loan worth $6.6 billion. The loan comes from the Energy Department's Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing Program. The money will go towards the construction of Rivian's new plant near Atlanta. Rivian halted development of the plant in order to save money. If the loan gets final approval, construction will continue. Rivian said cars built in the new factory will support international sales of American electric vehicles. The project is expected to get into gear by 2028. Until then, production will continue at its plant in Normal, Illinois. Rivian said it still has to meet certain conditions for the loan to proceed. The Thanksgiving travel period is here. The TSA expects a record number of people to fly from today through Monday. It predicts Sunday will be the busiest air travel day in the year in terms of passenger count. But the FAA seems more focused on today. Here's more. I'm not so worried about the TSA. I'm more worried about the FAA. The TSA predicts this will be the busiest Thanksgiving air travel period ever during the busiest travel year ever. Today, the FAA expects to have the most airplanes in the sky. Its administrator says that could make staffing a struggle. If we are short on staff, we will slow traffic as needed to keep the system safe. The founder of The Points Guy says inclement weather could compound the FAA's issues. He suggests travelers check for delays and cancellations and factors that might cause them before leaving home. He says many airlines allow passengers to change flights even before storms hit. That way they can avoid headaches at the airport. It never hurts to ask. If you're starting to say, you know what, I don't want to travel this weekend. He suggests looking at more than just departure and arrival locations when checking weather. Getting that intel, seeing where your plane is coming from can give you that inside scoop to say, hey, look, and try to call the airline and switch to a different flight that day. And if passengers do get stranded, new regulations might help. If your flight is delayed three or more hours domestically or six or more internationally, just know that you're owed a full refund. Tariffs and more tariffs. President-elect Trump is threatening 25 percent tariffs on all goods from Canada and Mexico and an additional 10 percent on all goods from China. Here's what we import from these countries. President-elect Trump made a fresh round of tariff threats on Monday. He warned that he could impose a 25 percent tariff on goods from Mexico and Canada and an additional 10 percent tariff on goods from China. These countries are the U.S.'s top three trading partners. Last year, the U.S. imported 475 billion dollars worth of goods from Mexico, 427 billion from China and 418 billion from Canada. From these countries, America buys agricultural products, lumber, livestock, petroleum products, cars and car parts, computers, electronics, beverages, medical equipment, home appliances, toys, sporting equipment, furniture, plastics, clothes, medical equipment, pharmaceuticals and chemicals. If the tariffs are implemented, everything could become a lot more expensive. 25 percent, 50 percent, 10 percent, who cares? They're just numbers to Trump and I think he's throwing smoke in the air. Former National Security Advisor John Bolton says Trump is just making threats, but he believes Trump is serious about waging a real trade war. If it's handled properly, which I think Donald Trump will definitely handle it well, it makes all kinds of sense. Billy Bush is the president of Bush Family Brewing and Distilling. He says tariffs are a double-edged sword that America has to be careful with. They could cause inflation and trade wars, but could also decrease inflation and stimulate domestic industries. Our economy will do much better if we can keep our production growth here in the United States. Trump has not provided additional details about his tariff plans. After President-elect Trump announced the tariffs on China, the Chinese yuan fell to its lowest level against the dollar in four months. The offshore yuan fell 0.3 percent to around 7.27 per dollar, and the onshore yuan fell 2. During Trump's first term, the yuan weakened 5 percent after the first round of tariffs on Chinese imports and then fell another 1.5 percent. A year after, when trade tensions rose, Trump's recent announcement was for adding an extra 10 percent tariff on goods from China. He also said during his election campaign he would impose tariffs of 60 percent or higher on Chinese goods. Meanwhile, Google said it has blocked over 1,000 websites with pro-China fake news in the past two years. Here's the report. Google found these news websites claim to be independent or based in any one of dozens of countries. But in fact, they were spreading similar narratives, all aligned with China's political interests. Therefore, the search engine categorized them as part of one network nicknamed Glass Bridge. According to Google, four entities were manipulating these websites. All four have connections to China. Google said it hasn't confirmed whether the Chinese regime is writing checks to these entities. This marks one of the latest alerts from U.S. tech giants. Pro-China fake news outlets are extending their reach beyond social media. NVIDIA is working on an AI technology that can generate combinations of speech, music and sound from text input. What's different from previous AI technology that generates speech or music from text is that NVIDIA's Fugado model is supposed to generate a desired mix of voice, music and sound together and even create sounds that have never existed. The technology is not open for public testing yet, but it would be a jump in the advancement of AI for audio applications. The hardship for developers is figuring a way out to interpret a text command of any kind and transform it into a sound that a user wants to hear. The next questions are how this technology will impact music production, movie scoring and sound effects creation. Thank you so much. Now, I think the interesting thing we missed Eli Lilly got up 5% today on the announcement that Medicare and Medicaid may cover these obesity drugs. I was asking Fiona earlier, younger people are the interest in this. She said it's a super popular topic among young people even. Now, RFK Jr., he said that he would prefer if he gets in as HHS secretary to instead of giving people these weight loss drugs, give them three organic meals a day. He says it would actually be cheaper for the federal government to do this than give those weight loss drugs. I think healthy eating and exercise is the way to go in terms of losing weight, of course, also leading a healthy lifestyle of drugs. For certain people, I guess it could help but at the end of the day, you got to put in the work. Yeah, I think nothing beats a healthy lifestyle. Healthy eating, absolutely. Moving, getting your heart rate up. I think many people nowadays are too static. It's always sitting, whether it's work, whether it's on the car, whether it's at home on the couch, just get up, take a walk or something. Now, Kevin Hogan did a segment recently on RFK and he covered obesity rates around the world. America does have a problem. It's not just stereotypical, it actually has a problem. So, it'll be interesting to see if RFK gets in and whether he will actually, maybe, look, we talked about it during the break, how administrations, they bring in certain rules, then the next administration comes in and they just reverse these rules, right? So, it'll be interesting to see whether we see something like that coming up. Well, I think it's more about the mindset. Some people want to take the shortcut while other people want to put in the effort. So, I mean, we'll see but my bet is that people are more leaning towards the easy path but I don't know. I hope you're wrong, Don, at least on that. Talking about weight loss, what about plans for Thanksgiving? You know, I don't have much plans but from my report earlier, it's going to be busy. So, for those who are thinking of traveling, you got to pack your patience. Well, I know you're going to be here, right, reporting on the Thanksgiving Day Parade. Right, I'll be here on Thanksgiving. Those are my plans. I haven't told anyone yet, don't say anything. I'm going to try and get out of here early on Thanksgiving Day. Don't tell the producers, I haven't told them. Yeah, to our viewers out there, don't tell anyone. Okay. Hey, Don, Ma, we appreciate it. Thank you as always. Thank you, Don.