What Trump could do if he's serious about trying to make companies 'eat' tariff price hikes

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What Trump could do if he's serious about trying to make companies 'eat' tariff price hikes

President Trump has taken aim at at least four retailers in recent weeks over possible tariff price hikes with an effort that, for now at least, is largely about applying public pressure to CEOs. "I'll be watching", he told Walmart, with harsh words also directed toward Amazon, Ford, and Mattel. There are also hints Trump could do more than just watch with additional tariffs threatened in one instance and an array of additional tools at the president's disposal if he decided to escalate further.

Options range from things like industry-wide investigations by the Federal Trade Commission, other government investigations into specific products and company profits, pushing for new Capitol Hill legislation on the issue, or even price controls via executive order. Yahoo Finance reports.

📈 Morgan Stanley turns bullish on U.S. stocks. Here’s why it says the market lows have already been made: Wednesday’s setup is looking weaker for equities as surging bond yields start to rattle some nerves ahead of an important auction later.

Flying in the face of this fear is Morgan Stanley and a bullish call of the day that sees the bank shift to an overweight on U.S. stocks and bonds. “Slow-but-not-dire growth makes us neutral on global stocks and constructive on fixed income, but with a strong regional preference for the U.S. across assets,” said a team of strategists including Mike Wilson. MarketWatch reports.


💻 Musk says Tesla, xAI expect to keep buying chips from Nvidia and AMD: Elon Musk said Tuesday that he expects Tesla and xAI will continue buying chips from semiconductor giants Nvidia and AMD, and possibly others.

Musk’s artificial intelligence company, xAI, which now owns social media platform X, has already installed 200,000 GPUs at its Colossus facility in Memphis, Tennessee, the Tesla CEO told CNBC’s David Faber on Tuesday. XAI is also planning a 1 million GPU facility outside Memphis, Musk said. He did not specify how many chips the company had already ordered and by which date they may be installed. CNBC reports.


⚠️ Trump tariffs live updates: US and China trade truce becomes fragile as the war of words continues: The trade truce between the US and China appears fragile, as both sides trade barbs and neither fully trusts the other to uphold their end of the deal. China’s Commerce Ministry announced on Wednesday that it would take legal action against any organisation or individual assisting the US in discouraging the use of China’s advanced semiconductors.

Earlier, the US Commerce Department had warned that using Huawei chips anywhere in the world would violate US export controls—before later removing the reference. Yahoo Finance reports.


🔍 Google outlines its big plans for the future of search: The very basic meaning of what it means to ” Google” something – typing in keywords and sifting through links, images and information snippets is nearly behind us, according to Google.

The search giant laid out its vision for the future of searching the web on Tuesday, introducing a flurry of updates that aim to shift Google’s ubiquitous search engine from being a box for processing keywords to a system of “digital agents” that can crawl the web and answer questions based on a person’s real-world surroundings, tastes and preferences. Google’s AI push comes as publishers – particularly independent ones – have already raised concerns about how the prominence of AI-generated answers could threaten their businesses CNN reports.


🤖 Alibaba says it can slash AI training costs by 90% with newly launched ZEROSEARCH: Alibaba Group has unveiled ZEROSEARCH, a groundbreaking framework designed to dramatically reduce training costs for large language models, potentially transforming the economics of artificial intelligence development.

What Happened: Alibaba Group announced on X that its new ZEROSEARCH technology can cut AI training costs by nearly 90%. The framework enables LLMs to simulate search behavior without making actual Application Programming Interface calls to search engines during the training process. Benzinga reports.


🛒 Target sales fall sharply in 1st quarter and retailer warns they will slip for all of 2025: Sales at Target fell more than expected in the first quarter and the retailer warned they will slip this year as consumers, worried over the impact of tariffs, pull back on spending. Sales fell 2.8% to $23.85 billion, which is less than the $24.23 billion Wall Street expected, according to FactSet, and down from the $24.53 billion the company reported during the same period last year.

Target said Wednesday that it now expects a low-single digit decline in sales for 2025, and earnings per share, which excludes the gains from the litigation settlements in the first quarter, to be anywhere from $7 to $9. Yahoo Finance reports.


💿 OpenAI's biggest data center secures $11.6 billion in funding: A data center in Texas that startup Crusoe is building for OpenAI has secured $11.6 billion in funding to expand from two to eight buildings, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday.

The data center — expected to be the ChatGPT parent's largest — will use up to 50,000 Nvidia Blackwell chips per building, according to the report. The funding, a mix of debt and equity, will increase the total amount secured for the project to $15 billion. Yahoo Finance reports.

(All pricing and percent gains are based on Early Pre-Market from 4:00 AM to 7:00 AM Eastern Time)
Benzinga reports.

1) $CFSB: CFSB Bancorp
Total gain: +66.91%

2) $GCL: GCL Global Holdings
Total gain: +52.77%

3) $EDBL: Edible Garden
Total gain: +40.83%

4) $JL: J-Long Group
Total gain: +13.85%

5) $XTIA: XTI Aerospace
Total gain: +12.66%

*Estimate and Actual numbers represent Earnings Per Share in US Dollars

TGT: Target
1Q 2025Before Market Open
Estimate: 1.650
Actual: N/A

SNOW: Snowflake
1Q 2026After Market Close
Estimate: 0.210
Actual: N/A

AMSC: American Superconductor
4Q 2024After Market Close
Estimate: 0.100
Actual: N/A

Time (ET) / Report / Period

12:15 pm - Richmond Fed President Tom Barkin and Fed Governor Michelle Bowman take part in Fed Listens event

"Cycles will always occur, and their impact will always be powerful. The best we can do is to recognize where we stand in the cycle."

- Howard Marks

Sourced in:
"The Most Important Thing: Uncommon Sense for the Thoughtful Investor", by Howard Marks, published in 2011

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