‘Bad Morning At The White House!’ CNBC Anchors Roast Trump As Stocks Tank Amid Tariff Threat
CNBC co-anchors Becky Quick, Andrew Ross Sorkin, and Joe Kernen roasted President Donald Trump as stock futures plunged on new trade war threats.
On Friday morning, Trump suddenly dropped another pair of shoes in the trade wars with a series of Truth Social posts.
First, he threatened to slap a 25 percent duty on iPhones made in China. Then, he posted a bombshell threat to drop a 50 percent tariff on goods from the European Union, which was instantly followed by steep drops in major stock futures indices.
On Friday’s edition of CNBC’s Squawk Box, Quick read out Trump’s post and quipped, “you can see it’s been a bad morning at the White House,” as she and her co-anchors called out the promised trade deals that have yet to materialize:
BECKY QUICK: Trump — the president saying, “The European Union, which was formed for the primary purpose of taking advantage of the United States on trade, has been very difficult to deal with their powerful trade barriers that taxes ridiculous corporate penalties, non-monetary trade barriers, monetary manipulations, unfair and unjustified lawsuits against American companies and more, have led to a trade deficit with the US of more than $250 billion a year, a number which is totally unacceptable. Our discussions with them are going nowhere. Therefore, I am recommending a straight 50% tariff on the European Union starting June 1st, 2025. There is no tariff if the product is built or manufactured in the United States. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”
This in combination with the Truth Social earlier attacking Apple for making its products that are sold in the United States outside of the United States.
You add that up and you can see that it’s been a bad morning at the White House in terms of thinking these negotiations are getting somewhere —
ANDREW ROSS SORKIN: Well, that’s always been the big question, everyone said we can have all these deals — we still haven’t seen just about any of them.
JOE KERNEN: I thought India was supposed to be done, Japan.
BECKY QUICK: You can see that the FTSE in Italy is the biggest decliner of the European averages. It’s down by about 1.9%. And then here are the declines that you see in the United States.
Dow futures down by 470 points. S&P futures off by 67. The NASDAQ down by close to 300.
Joe, you mentioned that treasury yields were coming down. I guess that’s what would happen if you thought you were approaching a recession more rapidly.
JOE KERNEN: 446 now.
BECKY QUICK: 446 now.
JOE KERNEN: Wow.
BECKY QUICK: The 30-year sitting right at 5% — we’ll continue to monitor this.
Watch above via CNBC’s Squawk Box.
