Market Domination host Julie Hyman sits down with top experts to take a closer look at the key issues impacting Wall Street as investors await Tesla's (TSLA) first quarter earnings release. The International Monetary Fund's (IMF) chief economist discusses expectations for a slowdown in global growth. Raymond James downgrades Amazon (AMZN) to Overperform from Strong Buy, with the analyst behind the call explaining the downgrade.
To watch more expert insights and analysis on the latest market action, check out more Market Domination here.
Hello and welcome to Market Domination sponsored by Tasty Trade. I'm Julie Hyman live from our New York City headquarters. It's a big day here. Stocks are rising ahead of a crucial earnings report from Tesla. Here's a headline blitz getting up to speed one hour before the closing bell rings on Wall Street.
The way I look at this stock is a year or so ago, the stock traded as low as 140, and at that time its fundamentals were much better than they are today.So even though Tesla's way down, I think it can go lower. I don't think they will have anything positive to say today. And of course Elon Musk and company will try to dissuade you into thinking they're no longer an EV company, so don't look at their cars, but they're an autonomous taxi company.
There's obviously going to eventually be turnover starting in a couple of months at the Fed. There's questions about who might be going, who's replacing him, Is it Scott Besson? Is it Kevin Warsh? Who comes next? Um, so that's definitely a very popular topic of conversation, and it's kind of a constant rebalancing of investors who are just trying to find some sort of foothold amongst the tariff uncertainty that is looking like it's going to be with us for months, if not years now.
My view is we're in the first inning of these negotiations. Maybe we haven't even started the game because what the US has consistently failed to do is articulate exactly what it wants from our key trading partners. There's very clearly a willingness on the part of Europe, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, India to see what we want to see if it's possible to do a deal.
We got one hour to go until the market closed. Taking a look at the major averages there and even if we are in the very early innings or haven't even started the game, as you just heard Brad Sester saying there, um, markets are optimistic and that in part was sparked today by some reporting that Treasury Secretary Scott Besson in a closed door meeting with investors in Washington made some comments that he was optimistic that the US and China would be able to de-escalate. What was that?Based on, is it any concrete meetings? It doesn't seem like it, or at least he didn't say it was, but he just said it can't sort of continue like this. The market was already rallying into those comments and then sort of took another leg higher after those headlines came out. Right now the Dow is up by about 993 points, about 2.65%. The S&P 500 up 2.5%, and the Nasdaq composite up 2.7%.As we continue this sort of whipsaw day by day following on the tariff headlines and trying to read the tea leaves into what is going on now, not only are we seeing a rally today that's pretty decent in magnitude, it is also broad based. I can't remember the last time I saw everything on the Nasdaq 100 heat map green. Everything is up on the Nasdaq 100, and in particular, Tesla, which fell yesterday, by the way, if you look at the two day chart.You see it's still down over the two day period, but it is rebounding a little bit today going into its earnings after the close of trading. We're going to get more on that in a moment as we see those shares rise, but it's not just Tesla, right? It's everything else here within large cap tech and it's not even just with.Large cap tech, I just checked a moment ago, only 15 stocks in the S&P 500 are down today. Everything else is either a little changed or up, and that goes for the groups in the S&P 500 as well. Financials, consumer discretionary, energy, and utilities are leading, and it is indeed a big day for the auto industry and the broader market. Tesla reporting first quarter earnings after the closing bell. Joining us now, Yahoo Finance senior Aits reporter Pras Subramanian with what he is looking for today. Hey Pras.You know, we're going all out here today with this Tesla Economics, the special earnings special here, right? So basically, obviously it's an earnings special, but it's not really about the earnings, right? It's really about the story of Tesla. Look, the company had a really bad quarter, as, as, as we noted here 2 good days here, but, but sort of not doing so quite so well down 40% year to date, right? Uh, what's up with Elon MuskIs he coming back? Is he staying in DC? He has to come back for his special government contractor status, right? He has to come back. That's a big question you want to see. Look, we had bad, bad, bad deliveries for Q1 demand concerns there. Is it all tied to Musk? Is it tied to a product portfolio that's sort of aging? Are we going to hear more about that cheap EV? And what about Robotaxis, right? That's the big bet. That's why the.Trading at a huge multiple even today. It's all about that autonomy. Are they able to sort of solve that? Is there any updates on that? And I heard you in the headline blitz one of the guests talking about how we're not going to hear much from Tesla about these things. It's going to be about just what the long term story is, but I think for investors they need more than just everything's fine, look the other way. 2026 is a big year.Prost, can't wait. We're gonna talk to you again, of course, as we get closer to the numbers. Thank you.The International Monetary Fund estimating that a half percentage point will be shaved off of economic growth this year. That means 2.8%, down from a prior estimate of 3.3%. It's all according to the IMF's New World Economic Outlook. Joining us now with more is Yahoo Finance's Jennifer Schonberger. Hi Jen.
Thank you Julie. For more insight on today's world economic outlook, I want to welcome into the program IMF chief economist Pierre Olivier Gin. Pierre, thank you so much for sitting down with me. It is always great to see you. Thank you. You warned today that tariffs and uncertainty around tariffs will lead to a significant slowdown in global growth in the near term. What is the risk of a global recession as well as a recession here in the United States?So we are seeing a significant slowdown in growth. We're projecting 2.8% in 2025, 3% in 2026. That's down 0.8% points accumulated over these two years at the global level. This is not a global downturn. This is not a global recession. What we're seeing is an economy that is going to grow at a slower rate.But we're also seeing a risk of a recession increasing, and when we do our calculations, we run our models, what we find is that at the global level that probability of a global downturn, if you want, has increased from a little bit more than 15% back in October to about 30% now. So that's a significant increase, but we're not there yet. We've run a number of scenarios looking at the different tariff announcements April 2nd, April 9th with the pause, etc.All of them lend us towards this 2.8% that I just mentioned for growth, so this risk of a global downturn is if things were to take a turn for the worse.And if we are looking at the US, since you asked me also about the US, so for the US growth is also going to be slowing down quite a bit to 1.8% in 2025. Again, not a recession, but the odds of a recession have also increased. They've more or less increased from about 25% to close to 40%. So again.If something were to happen that would take a turn for the worse, then we could have a recession, but we're not there in terms of perhaps taking a turn for the better. We're hearing that Treasury Secretary Scott Besant is saying that there will be a de-escalation between the US and China in the very near future. He's saying the goal is not to decouple from China, though he does admit that it will.be a slog when it comes to negotiations. He talked about the prospect of trying to get a comprehensive deal in the next 2 to 3 years. Of course this also hinges on China's side as well. What are your thoughts on that? Is that helpful or given the length of time, could we still see some sort of decoupling between the two economies? Is there damage that could still be done?Well, it's certainly something that goes in the right direction, very much in line with what we are calling for. One of the things we're seeing right now is not just the fact that we have potentially very elevated tariffs, in particular between the US and China, but there is also tremendous uncertainty.So if you're a business and you're thinking about where to expand, where to grow your markets, where to source your products or your inputs, it's very unclear at this point for many of them, and that uncertainty is something that is hurting economic activity in the US and in the world. So anything that will go in the direction of providing more stability, more clarity and predictability in terms of the trading environment will be very, very welcome. Now the question is what will happen.In that during that period, the time when things are negotiated, if we get tariffs that remain elevated or if we still have uncertainty, that would still weigh down on growth. So we would certainly call for all the parties to sit around the table, figure out how they want to handle this, and bring back a certain amount of predictability in the trading environment. Do you think we're in the midst of a reordering of the global trading system, and does the US still sit at the forefront of that, or is this a system that's going to look different?We're probably going to see a system that looks quite different from what we used to have. I think what we're seeing right now is the combination of a process that has not started in the last few months. This has been years in the making. The trade tensions have escalated. We've seen the proliferation of trade distorting measures between countries, whether it's subsidies or industrial policy or in some cases tariffs. So there is a need to rethink some parts of the system, make it better, make it work for everyone.Do you think that we could see tariffs and non-tariff barriers actually come down and perhaps this boosts global growth? We see a leveling of the global trading field or on the flip side, do you think countries just continue to turn inward, moving away from globalization, a trend that we have been seeing in recent years and becoming more protectionist? Well, if we end up with a place where we have fewer non-tariff barriers, we have fewer tariffs.And countries can recognize that trade is something that offers better opportunities for everyone and implement the kind of policies which we actually described in our report that address some of the domestic imbalances, things that would help the US economy maybe have smaller fiscal deficits, the Chinese economy rebalance its demand towards domestic demand as opposed to external demand.The Europeans do public infrastructure investment that would boost their productivity. All of these things would deliver a world where we have higher growth, we have fewer trade imbalances at the aggregate level, and then that's a better world, a world that turns inwards or remains inwards as is as it's already taken a turn in that direction, is a world that is a world that has lower activity, lower standards of living.In the short term, in the medium term, in the long term, Peter, typically in periods of stress and uncertainty we see a flight to safety into the US dollar and US Treasuries. We're not exactly seeing that play out this time. There were rumors that perhaps China was dumping US Treasuries. Treasury Secretary Bessin poured cold water on that. My question though is, are we on the precipice of a loss in confidence in the full faith and credit of the United States?We've seen some adjustment in portfolio composition. I think we have to see and take a step back and look at where we're starting from. In the last few years, US markets have done tremendously well. The US economy was performing better than its peers. In fact, in our report we document that it.Went back above the pre-pandemic trends well ahead of other advanced economies and other countries in general, so the US economy was doing very, very well. That attracted a lot of capital into the US that strengthened the dollar during that time. We're seeing a bit of a reassessment around that. Growth is slowing, uncertainty is up. There are these trade tensions. Portfolio managers are responding to this valuations are adjusting, bond prices are adjusting. The currency is adjusting. All of this seems fairly reasonable.It seems fairly orderly. We're not seeing dislocation in currency markets. We're not seeing dislocation in bond markets. So all of this seems to us to be par for the course if you want. What's the prospect for further devaluation of the dollar?I think it will very much depend on the relative performance of the US economy relative to its trading peers. It will depend on the uncertainty about policies in the US versus what's happening in the rest of the world. The US will remain, and the US dollar in particular remains one of the key currencies in the international monetary system and we expect.To so I want to ask you about the US Federal Reserve. What is your outlook for monetary policy here in the United States? The Fed has penciled in two rate cuts this year. They have said they need more clarity on the president's policies. They see higher inflation, lower growth here, as you do as well, and that sort of erred on the side of holding rates.Steady at the same time, President Trump is calling for lower interest rates. Does the IMF believe that we need preemptive rate cuts? What's your outlook? Well, we're seeing the shock of this escalated trade measures in the US as a supply negative supply side shock. What does that mean? It means lower levels of activity.And higher prices. So it's the kind of news that you don't like if you're a central banker because you're trying to achieve full employment and you're trying to keep price stable, and here we find a situation where both of these things are harder to achieve. So from the point of view of the Federal Reserve trying to assess the extent to which there are inflation pressures that could reemerge in the US economy and how persistent they might be.is going to be absolutely critical. In our report we're projecting that headline inflation in the US will remain at 3% in 2025. It was 3% in 2024. We expect it will remain at 3% when before our previous round of projections we were back at central bank target 2% for 2025, so we're full percentage point above in that situation.It's very natural that the Federal Reserve would pause, see where things are going. If the shock to inflation is transitory and then inflation resumes its inflation path, then they can resume their rate cut process. But we're just coming out of the worst inflation episode in decades. People are pretty scarred by the inflation they've experienced in the last few years.And it could be the case that the inflation expectations that businesses and households have start moving in ways that are not favorable from the Federal Reserve point of view. They have to be very, very, very vigilant on this, and that's why they have to remain firmly committed and be able to implement policies that will bring back inflation to target. And before I let you go, Pierre, President Trump has grown frustrated with Fed Chair Jay Powell.He has talked about the threat of firing Powell before his term is up in May 2026. If the president were to move forward with that, what are the consequences of that decision as far as markets, as far as confidence, as far as the impact on the economy? Well, one of the great things in the inflation surge and decline we've seen in the last few years, we actually have written extensively about this.Is the fact that inflation expectations remained anchored even though people were kind of shocked by the levels of inflation they saw because they had never seen that in a lifetime, they remain confident that the Federal Reserve would be able to achieve price stability.And that really helped the inflation process to come down very, very quickly. So that anchoring of inflation expectations is key. Now where is that inflation anchoring of inflation expectation coming from from the credibility of the Federal Reserve, the fact that it can be trusted to do what is necessary to bring price stability, and where is that credibility?Well, in great part for many central banks all around the world, it's coming from central bank independence, so it's important to preserve that. Pierre, we'll end on that note. Thank you so much as always
for your excellent insight.
So appreciate it. My pleasure. That's Pierre Olivia Gris, chief economist of the IMF. I'll send it back to you.
Jennifer, thank you so much. Appreciate it.We're just getting started here and coming up at 4 p.m. it's Yahoo Finance's special coverage of Tesla's first quarter earnings report. We'll be getting the instant analyst reaction to the results. And at 5:30, take a dive into the earnings call to hear from CEO Elon Musk directly. You can scan the QR code below to stay up to the minute with all of Tesla news today. Stick around. In the meantime, we've got much more market domination still to come.President Trump's so-called Liberation Day tariffs are wreaking havoc on the markets, and the ripple effect is making its way into earnings season. Many companies are pulling 2025 guidance entirely because of the uncertainty, including companies like Walmart, Delta, and Frontier Airlines, to name a few. We're tracking the latest when it comes to corporate guidance in 2025.Some examples today we're seeing some more tariff talk on earnings calls. Kimberly Clark trimming its full year guidance, warning that tariffs could boost its cost this year by $300 million. It's the maker of brands like Kleenex and Huggies, and it said that most of its products are made in the US, but 20% of its cost base is exposed to tariffs, and there the calculus has changed and.Is changing quickly. 2/3 of its additional costs this year stem from that 145% tariff imposed on China, as CEO Michael Shu said on the earnings call, quote, I think what's changed is the breadth and degree of the tariffs and also the countries involved, as everybody knows, it's a very volatile environment and there's been a lot of change back and forth and continues to have change.At the same time, he said the company does not plan to raise prices for consumers but will rather tweak its supply chain. 3M CEO Bill Brown also talked about adjusting supply chain locations in order to navigate the tariff landscape. The maker of Post-it notes and Scotch tape maintained its full year forecast but said it is possibly tariffs. It's possible tariffs could hit adjusting.Adjusted earnings per share by 40 cents as Brown said on the call, tariffs are going to be a headwind this year, but we thought it would be prudent to hold the impact outside of our full year guidance while we digest the new policies and fully develop and qualify mitigation plans. And then defense contractor RTX similarly held its full year forecast but let investors know about.Potential effective tariffs for a total possible impact of $850 million. That breaks down to $250 million related to Canada and Mexico's sourcing, $250 million to China, $300 million from the rest of the world, and $50 million from the tariffs on steel and aluminum. Still, RTX said demand for its products and services for now remain intact.Well, stocks are higher ahead of the closing bell following what was a bruising start to the week on Wall Street. For more on how investors should be positioning themselves amid the volatility and ahead of key earnings season, let's welcome in Marta Norton, empower chief investment strategist. Marta, it is great to see you again. You just heard me talk about some of the companies that are either cutting forecasts or saying they might have to cut forecasts, uh, because of tariffs. So as we get into earnings season in earnest, how are you thinking about that issue and the effect it's going to have on earnings overall?Well, it's so interesting, Julie, because one of the things that investors, along with myself, have been pointing to as we enter this earnings season is that we're looking backward at a period where tariffs weren't really in play, so there's some staleness to the data, but the real focus would be guidance. And to the points that you've been making, well, we are getting some guidance, it's clear that the uncertainty is still there and underlined for a lot of these company management teams, and they can't particularly offer the clarity that necessarily invest.would want in terms of how the tariffs are impacting their business and a real stress on the fact that the duration of these tariffs, the scale, the breadth, all of those remain question marks, which makes it hard to really handicap where the economy where company earnings are going from here. So if that's the case, um, and, and I say this of course recognizing that we're still we're seeing a big rally today even in the face of that. But if that's the case, how do you as an investor decide whether you want to invest in the company if they don't even know what's gonna happen in the future?Sure. Well, I think one thing that investors can do is key off kind of historical scenarios when we think about where earnings could land, where they are today and where they could land. Now, of course, we don't have a great corollary to the type of trade environment that we're in today where there's been this kind of sea change in the level of tariffs, at least within the US. But I think one thing that we can look at is, say, you know, looking at assuming thatwe see the growth that analysts currently forecast for companies or assuming we see no growth or assuming we see an earnings pullback of something along 10% with it, which is what you might see with an average recession. How do valuations compare to those different scenarios? And I think with that scale in mind, you can get a sense for whether um investors are really pricing in the full range of scenarios.And at least our analysis is that the price movement that we've seen thus far at a broad market level has captured some of these worst case scenarios. In fact, it's not until earnings fall by 10% that we see valuations move back to kind of stretched levels. So I think from that perspective, there is some margin of safety that investors can turn to as we're facing this uncertain climate.Marta, I do want to ask you about the action that we're seeing today, right, because we had this report that Treasury Secretary Scott Besson had made some more optimistic comments about China and the US de escalating, although it seemed to be not necessarily based on any actual talks, but the market, um, the market was rallying ahead even ahead of that report, to be fair. But you know, how do we know what's really going on and, and what do investors know in terms of what they should be trading on?Well, it's, it's a great question. And I think as we look at the price action yesterday, and then, of course, today, we saw a pretty meaningful sell off concerns around, you know, the relationship between Trump and Jay Powell. And then we see this recovery today. That kind of bounce back isn't unusual, of course, after a, a, a crushing blow like we had yesterday. And then, of course, as we see news, whether it's, you know, JD Vance's conversations andIndia, or whether it's Bescent and his conversations around some expectation for a trade deal with China, that's getting really at the epicenter of investors' concern, which is what does trade policy look like? And to your point, there's nothing concrete that they can point to, but there is a tone that they can hang their hat on, at least for the day to day price movement. But it also underscores the fact that we are in really volatileAll times and so anything that enhances economic or policy uncertainty is going to be something that could be a driver of market losses, and anything that seems to alleviate, at least for the moment, concerns around what trade policy could look like is going to be an accelerant for the market. And we're just in this period of volatility where we're trying to divine things based on on comments without necessarily substance.Uh, now, Marta, Empower is a 401k and retirement, um, fund management giant, and you know, I know when we checked in with you last time we asked, and I, I'm curious again, are you seeing any kind of change in behavior among 401k holders or especially the folks who are getting closer to retirement? Are you seeing them rebalance portfolios in a way that indicates that their concern about what's going on?I would say that what we're predominantly seeing is a massive amounts of engagement. So a lot of folks calling in, wanting clarity, wanting, um, I don't know, some sort of guidance in terms of how markets look, what's happening, but not necessarily action so far. So for a lot of investors, there might be a pick up on the margin in terms of activity within accounts, butBroadly speaking, people are holding the line, but looking for reassurance. And I think that's an interesting point, especially when you consider the broader retail investor market. And a lot of the news that we're seeing for retail investors more broadly is still a tendency to buy the dip. And so there suggests that there's still some resilience among retail investors, though, on the institutional side, maybe.A bit more, you know, uh, caution or or leeriness when you see how positioning has shifted for institutions. Marta, it's really funny that you say that people are really engaging because sort of one of the old laws of investing is at times like this, don't check your 401k. It sounds like people are not listening to that, but I, I mean, do you subscribe to that? Do you think it is, it causes more anxiety for people to check it often?Well, I, I do think, you know, that day to day, uh, investigation of how our account is performing can, uh, I guess, I guess appeal to investors' base instincts and make them want to sell at the wrong time. But I don't think engagement generally, just a, a desire to be informed is necessarily a bad thing. So to the extent that people are looking for information, they want to understand what's happening in their portfolios, they want to check in on their financial plan.I don't think that's a bad thing at all. It's when they start to take that action and their fingers hovering above the button. So I guess my guidance in this environment is, hey, let's not look at the day to day volatility or the day to day shift in account balance, but let's stay informed as to the conditions that we're in so that we can set proper expectations because I think one of the critical fears.Getting into this environment is, hey, we had 20 plus returns in 2023 and 2024. That's the new norm. And so properly understanding what the conditions are can help people better set those expectations for the climate that's ongoing right now. That seems very reasonable. Thank you so much. Good to see you. Good to see you.Now time for some of today's training tickers. Yahoo Finance's Alexander Canal is going to be here with me to check in on shares of some defense names, as well as Halliburton and BP. Let's start with those US defense contractors out with earnings today, issuing some concerns and warnings about the effect of President Trump's tariffs. RTX Corp, formerly known as Raytheon Technologies, emphasizing a potential $850 million hit and reduced profits from new levies on metals and on China. Northrop Grumman saying today in its earnings.that profit margins may narrow and then Lockheed Martin of the three is the sole gainer today. It reaffirmed its forecast for the year. Of these, Northrop is the worst performer Alley. It's actually the worst performer in the S&P 500 today, but it's really interesting what these companies had to say. Yeah, and with that company in particular, definitely the most cautious tone, I would say on the street out of the three, considering we did see that earnings missed that lowering of the forecast even without some of these tariff impacts. But a mixed bag when we hear.About the tariff impact, RTX is one with that 850 million estimate wide range there 250 million projected from tariffs on Canada and Mexico, $250 million from China, 300 million from other countries, and then $50 million on new US aluminum and steel import taxes and the commercial unit, that's the one that's going to bear the brunt of these costs, the defense unit relatively insulated. Man did say on the call that they're looking at options like price increases, although like we've heard from other companies, that's not going to totally offset.Some of that tariff impact and then the company like Lockheed, they didn't provide exact tariff figures in that reiterated guidance, although analysts have said they are largely insulated from a lot of this due to the fact that they have contracts within the US, strong domestic supply chains, so not as exposed to some of those more international trade disruptions. Yeah, I'm finding it really interesting as we get into earnings season, the granularity with which different companies and how they're deciding to do it closing, you know, here's the specific tariff from this, here's.May move things around so it's been, it's been interesting. Another example is Halliburton because that company also talked about the tariff impact. It warned investors that tariffs will have an impact of 2 to 3% per share during the second quarter, with 60% of the hit affecting its completions and production unit. The company also reported adjusted earnings per share in revenue for the first quarter that fell year over year. This is the world's biggest producer of hydraulic fracturing services or fracking as we call it, and other oil.Field services, and this is a company that is, you know, it's got drilling so it's importing things that it is either using to construct or enact some of these services. Yeah, and steel and aluminum tariffs, that's something that's definitely going to impact the cost of a lot of this equipment on the call management stressed the importance of greater clarity to really understand what the impact could be, what levers they could pull to potentially offset that. But digging into the report itself, I thought it was.Interesting to see such weakness in North American drilling activity. I mean, we're down 12% year over year. Several factors there. We have tightened capital budgets obviously with the macro uncertainty, everything that could come out with tariffs, also the volatility in some of these commodity prices also weighing there. But international operations was actually able to provide some relief, 6% revenue increase in the Middle East and Asia along with growth in Europe, Africa, but clearly for a company like Halliburton, which you were just laying out, a lot of challenges ahead that they're going to have to.throw in a lot of uncertainty in the macro right now, yeah, definitely for all of these companies. And then let's talk about BP. Those shares are getting a boost. Activist hedge fund Elliott Management announcing via a regulatory notice that they will now hold just over 5% of the voting rights in BP. That makes Elliott BP's second biggest shareholder after BlackRock at 9.2% and head of Vanguard at just under 5%. And Elliott tends to be a not a quiet and meek.Shareholder but is pushing for changes at BP. Yeah, and some of those changes include increased annual free cash flow by 40% to 20 billion by 2027, reduce annual cap X to $12 billion down from the current 13 to $15 billion divest from solar and offshore wind operations, and focus on more traditional oil and gas operations. And this pretty much aligns with the recent strategy shift that we've seen from this company, this fundamental reset, but the reaction on the street has been mixed because on the one.And there is this further retreat from those climate pledges that they made in 2020, but on the other hand, we're seeing shares tick up a little higher today. Perhaps this means increased profitability for the future, but that will likely come at the risk of some of those climate goals. Yeah, it's the shift in BP over the past few years has been really interesting as it went from, it went to Beyond Petroleum if you recall that campaign and the company pushing into that then following the ouster of the CEO for personal behavior, then a new CEO and then.This pivot away from those climate goals, so we'll see how far they take it in the other direction for their identity. Yeah, thanks, Sally. I appreciate it. Coming up, we're under a half hour away from Yahoo Finance's special coverage of Tesla's first quarter earnings report. We'll be getting you instant analyst reaction to the results at 5:30 to take a deep dive into the earnings call to hear from CEO Elon Musk. You can scan the QR code below to stay up up to the second with all of Tesla's news today. In the meantime, stick around, much more market domination still to come.Solar stocks are popping after the US said it intends to slap tariffs as high as 3,521% on panel imports from four Southeast Asian countries. Yahoo Finance's Innes Ferri joins us now for more. You always have to do a double take when you see a number like that. Yeah, it's absolutely staggering figures, Julie. The tariffs announced by the Commerce Department would be the highest seen so far on solar panels, and those levies can be as high as you just.At more than 3,500% on products operating out of Cambodia, for example, to imports coming from firms in Thailand that would carry levies up to around 800% tariffs on Malaysian and Vietnamese companies are not as severe, but still those can go into the couple 100%, and they come on the heels of a one year investigation into companies that are based out of Southeast Asia and which the Commerce Department says.Have been receiving subsidies from the Chinese government and dumping their products in the US, making American-made products uncompetitive. That's why you're seeing the solar stocks going up today. Now this has been going on for years because trade industry groups are saying, look, Chinese companies have been setting up shop in southeastern Asia to get around tariffs on Chinese-made panels, and a separate trade agency has until June 2nd, by the way, to say whether there's been injury or damage.To the solar industry and if so, then the Commerce Department would carry out those levies that were announced yesterday afternoon. But look, you are seeing now the clean energy stocks, a lot of these solar companies that are just surging on this. You have Sonova that's up more than 26% for solar is up 10%. You also have solar edge, excuse me, also more than 7% higher. Now these stocks have been really volatile.Over the last year, a lot of this has to do with interest rates. Remember that solar energy companies want interest rates to be lower so that the lending can be less so that, for example, residential people can be are able to buy solar panels for their rooftops so that companies can invest. They want that but also at the same time you have tariffs on Chinese companies and so you saw for example, I'm going to pull up just.Sonova that that deals with a lot of residential look over a two year span you are seeing that this stock is down 98% over the last two years and last year when Trump won the White House, you saw that the stock really tanked because the Trump administration has been talking about walking back a lot of green energy and going to fossil fuels. So this is an industry that has been very volatile over the last year or so. I, thank you, appreciate it. Thank you.Small businesses paying the price for the tariff whiplash on imported goods arriving in the US, with small businesses accounting for 85% of total capex in the economy, a small business problem is reflecting a macro problem for the US economy. Here was a look at the mounting risks. Elizabeth Gore, co-founder of Hello Alice and host of Yahoo Finance's upcoming new podcast, The Big Idea. Good to see you. Good to be with you. So obviously this is an issue that small businesses are.Grappling with like large businesses are, but small businesses don't have lobbyists in Washington, or at least not, they don't individually. They might collectively. So sort of how are they dealing with this? Well, we talk about macroeconomics, but think about something going up 144% at a sandwich store, at a small electronics store, at a construction company. Most small businesses have about 3 months of cash in the bank, so.Even if they're the best planners possible, no one could have foreseen that this would impact so quickly. And, and quick is the key word here because if this was something that they could have had months and months to plan for, maybe, but even then they're either gonna have to pass this cost over to their customer, you, when you get that cup of coffee in the morning, or they're gonna have to eat it, which is just not plausible. And to talk about a voice, small business owners are busy running their life.Lives their stores and it's very difficult to unite together and and head to DC and at hell else we try to do that and what we're trying to say is just let's make sure and delineate between large corporations and the impact this is having on Main Street, right? We had a really interesting conversation with the owners of a shop called Brooklyn Tea, which I love Brooklyn Tea. Oh, you know it, this is great, um, and this is I want to play for you what they had to say about how they're.Trying to navigate what's going on right now. Thank you.
The way small businesses can function against big businesses is building these relationships, so we have relationships with these small farmers in China right now, right? And so we have to now make new relationships and new places and abandon our current relationships and you know they don't want us charge us more either because, you know, person to person they don't wanna charge us more we don't wanna pay more so we're kind of stuck in this limbo of you know what do we do?
I mean, what's really interesting in that is that these are personal relationships that small businesses have with their vendors. These are not between governments, right? And, and look, people like, uh, the co-founders over at Brooklyn Tea, they're providing jobs to their community. They're doing sustainable wages. They are actually donating back to their community and then they're also fine to pay taxes. They understand small tariffs, but that type of, of fundamental change in a small business.is going to collapse. Hopefully not them because they have the best tea in the business, but it will collapse many businesses and we're just coming out of COVID, the small business hit there, then we've got inflation. So we have to really fundamentally understand how this is going to impact Main Street. Now, um, everybody is in DC, as I said, lobbying in prison. There's talk about some kind of farm relief bill. There's talk about exemptions for some large businesses. Is there any talk? So I was there yesterday and had a lot.A lot of conversations and, you know, the House and Senate Senate small business committees, um, the SBA and, you know, our encouragement one is, again, I keep saying this is to delineate the difference between a medium or large enterprise and a small business. How is this impacting them? Can we look at, uh, better small business grants to come out? Can we look at supply chain tax credits? Can we look at small business tax credit for company under 40 employees? There are a lot of things that these tariffs are going to continue.Where we can help bridge this gap. Is there anything already in the big beautiful tax bill specifically aimed at small business? So our hope is that there was, there was similar objectives during, uh, the presidential race of an immediate $50,000 tax credit for small business for certain sizes. We're big fans of that. We'd love to see that move forward. We also cannot underscore how important federal small business grants are, whether they're from the.SBA whether they're from other departments, those need to continue. They are critical. All right, we'll see, Elizabeth. Thank you for having me to see you. And for more on navigating the world of small business, be sure to catch Yahoo Finance's upcoming podcast, The Big Idea hosted by Elizabeth Gore, premiering this week on April 24th at 12 p.m. Eastern. Elizabeth is gonna take audiences on a journey with America's entrepreneurs, revealing lessons learned to grow their businesses and thrive. You don't want to miss it.Time now for what to watch Wednesday, April 23rd, sponsored by Tasty Trade. US Treasury Secretary Scott Besson is speaking tomorrow at the IIF Global Outlook Forum. Wall Street will be listening closely for any clues from Besson about the economic outlook as tariff uncertainty weighs on corporate America on the.another big batch of earnings coming out tomorrow, including Boeing, IBM, and Chipotle. Boeing will announce results for the first quarter in the morning. Analysts expect the planemaker to turn a corner in the 1st quarter, driven by rising deliveries. Investors will be listening closely for any commentary on the company's guidance for the full year.And taking a look at the Fed will be getting a lot more commentary tomorrow from various Federal Reserve officials. This comes after President Trump commented on Truth Social, calling Fed Chair Jay Powell a loser and suggesting he lower interest rates immediately.Moving over to housing, monthly new home sales data coming out in the morning. Economists forecast sales will rise in March to 684,000 on a month over month basis. The increase would make it three straight months of gain, signaling some stabilization in the housing market despite elevated mortgage rates.Coming up we'll speak with the analyst behind a recent Amazon downgrade tied to tariffs and AI investments. That's next when we return.Raymond James downgraded shares of Amazon from Strong Buy to outperform setting risks related to tariff headwinds and massive AI investments. The firm also cut its price target on the stock by nearly 30%. Joining us now, the analyst behind that call, Josh Beck, Raymond James, managing director of equity research. Josh, thanks for being here. So, um, we're getting.Earnings from Amazon shortly here and so there obviously there's a lot of scrutiny on tariffs and what the impact is going to be. So what are you focused on in terms of, I guess let's take the retail side of the business first and sort of the sell through from items that get shipped from China. What's the direct impact there?Yeah, well, well, well, thanks for having me on. So I think everybody is going through this exercise with the Mag 7 and, and really a lot of tech stocks. What do China tariffs mean to the business? Amazon is, um, certainly an interesting, uh, story. In the retail business, there's a couple of different exposures that they have. Uh, the first party business is really where they're selling either their own products, Amazon Basics, or wholesale agreements with other.Brands like Nike, for example. A lot of those goods end up being China source, so there's certainly a concern, and one of the main reasons that we cut our numbers is you could see inflation on the cogs. And obviously, that pressures gross margins and can pressure operating margins. So I think that's certainly, um, of really high interest to uh, to investors. The other one, you know, I spoke with a lot of investors yesterday, um, is really the, the third party business. So this is where a smallerThe seller is effectively using, uh, Amazon as a distribution platform. And in this case, um, you know, the way that it flows through the P&L is really, uh, a certain amount of take rate on the amount of sales of that third-party seller. So there's been a lot of questions that I've, you know, been gathering on what could Amazon do maybe to help provide relief, uh, to these smaller sellers? Could they offer them a concession on fees? Um, you know, how could they kind ofHelp them remain whole because it is really important for Amazon broadly to have high utilization of their massive utilization of their logistics and shipping network. So those are really, I think, front and center advertising as well. Many first party and third party sellers advertise on the platform. So within the retail business, those are really the main main exposures to keep an eye on. So when you add all of that up, what's your best guess for the potential hit here that we could hear about from Amazon?Yeah, so, you know, we ended up taking down our out here. So, so just to be clear on the timing. So a lot of this is really a second half issue. So obviously the tariffs started to to work their way through in April. You have certainly a freight time from China. You have inventory that you can pre-buy. Probably start to run through that towards the end of Q2. So this is really much more of a second half issue. So what we did is weCut our second half numbers and we cut our 2026 numbers. Uh, our e-bit, which is really what a lot of investors focus on because they do guide to this metric at least one quarter at a time, um, by about 12 billion, 1213 billion. And as a result, we're about 12% below the street, uh, for 2026. So I think a lot of investors feel like the multiple is quiteundemanding at this level. It certainly has come down a lot this year, but the biggest, biggest question to them is when have the numbers been de-risked? You know, I still feel like the street numbers are too high, so we're waiting for that to happen. I think the main thing investors want to hear on this call is whatIs Amazon doing to diversify their supply chain and how quickly can they do it and at what cost? So that will really be, I think, the most important item on the call, right? And for people who are watching, they're reporting on May 1st is when that report is due out. So you are not aon the stock to be clear. And so I wanted to get for you to just explain a little bit more to viewers, when you're going to an outperform from a strong buy, what does that mean effectively if I'm an investor or a potential investor and I'm trying to figure out what to do with the stock?Yeah, so at Raymond James we have a, you know, a four-tiered rating system. A lot of times it's a three-tiered system. So strong buys are reserved for companies where you see greater than 15% upside and you more or less see things playing out in that direction, um, you know, pretty clearly. In this example, you know, we feel like the multiple is de-risked, but we do still see risk to numbers themselves. What we'd like to see isA message from the company that, right, they are investing, there is probably some further investment cycle that the street needs to think about and see numbers de-risk. And then I certainly think it's an interesting long term story for investors. They have great drivers in terms of what they're doing with AI in their cloud computing business. This is a multi-billion dollar business growing triple digits. Uh, it could easily be a $5 to $10 billion dollar business. So there certainly is a really interestingI think probably undervalued at the moment asset in AWS, but we'd like to see things de-risked, you know, if we felt like the numbers were more reasonable, I think you could see us maybe revisit the framework, but at the moment we see a little bit of risk to the numbers next year. So we're kind of looking for that to, you know, to get right size. Gotcha, Josh, thank you so much for joining us. Appreciate it.Well, we're wrapping up today's market domination. Don't go anywhere. We'll have special coverage of Tesla's latest earnings report on the other side, including instant analyst reaction and a live listen in to the earnings call as Elon Musk will address investors following the results. Stay tuned.