After the Sell-Off, Apple's $500B U.S. Expansion Plan, Musk and the DOGE Backlash 2/24/25

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Carl Quintanilla (0:44)

Market Moving Insight and Analysis join Jim Cramer, David Faber and me, Carl Quintanilla on the opening bell hour of CNBC Squawk on the Street. Good Monday morning. Welcome to Squawk on the Street. I'm Carl Quintanilla with Jim Cramer, David Faber, all back at post night of the New York Stock Exchange. The Bulls are going to try to get something back after the worst day of the year, Friday, cutting the S&P's year-to-date gain in half. Big week of earnings with NVIDIA and Salesforce watching Ukraine, German elections and the House budget. Our roadmap begins, though, with Apple's anti-tariff play, announcing plans to spend $500 billion to greatly expand domestic chip and server manufacturing in the US, echoing a similar move during the first Trump administration.

David Faber (1:24)

Plus, of course, on Friday, all the talk is the AI trade cooling. A note from TD Cowen later that day suggested Microsoft is cutting AI data center spending. That certainly helped that sell-off, but we've got the response in part from Microsoft's AI-IR, which could change the view on AI. And a doge pushback, Elon Musk demanding federal employees document their work or risk termination. Several agencies, though, now reportedly telling the workers, ignore the request or at least wait to reply.

Carl Quintanilla (1:58)

Let's begin, though, with the markets. Looking to bounce back from Friday's sell-off, the Dow and the NASDAQ now in negative territory since Inauguration Day. Jim, in fact, since Inauguration Day, the US is the worst performing G7 ETF.

Jim Cramer (2:12)

Yeah, look, I can't help but think the money is being made in Europe. Overnight you come in, it's like, holy cow, they're doing pretty good. Japan's good. Thank you, Warren Buffett, for verifying that. China, obviously, on fire, plus 20 percent. And us? Well, if the president, the first president, cared about the Dow, I think if you looked at the averages, David, what you would say is people are very confused, particularly in the Russell 3000, which is a small business. And they're just certainly less happy about things. And they're taking out that lack of happiness on the market. Yes, Friday, I thought Friday was a really bad day. I mean, I came home, I wanted a cocktail, I spent a long time.

David Faber (2:55)

You're not alone. I mean, last week was a rough week.

Jim Cramer (2:58)

Yes, it was.

David Faber (2:59)

Any number of people I speak to.

Jim Cramer (3:00)

Oh, just to say, you were in Miami Beach, it was rough. See, it was minus 20 here.

David Faber (3:06)

No, it was beautiful there. It was beautiful there.

SPEAKER_6 (3:09)

So, how could it be rough?

David Faber (3:10)

It was rough in the markets, my friend.

Jim Cramer (3:11)

Oh, okay.

David Faber (3:12)

It was a rough day in the markets.

Jim Cramer (3:13)

The seas were angry. But candidly, no one could point to anything in particular.

David Faber (3:20)

Well, we're going to get to it in a moment. Oh, we'll get to the Cowen stuff. Maybe the Cowen stuff. Just this overall, we'll spend a lot of time on that. But I get it. And oftentimes what you hear, Jim, is all the guys I talk to, their hedges didn't really work and everything you were short, actually, is what all the computer driven and algorithmic driven firms moved to and so you're losing on both sides. Just not good.

Jim Cramer (3:46)

Yeah, but I mean, Carl, what you would look at is until last week, if interest rates were down, it's bye bye bye. Last week interest rates were down, we sold housing really hard off of Toll, which by the way, Doug Hewlett would tell you, he didn't really mean that to happen, so to speak. We sold off retail, we sold off restaurants, to the point where we started thinking whether, other than where David was, and I start thinking, you know what, we're making excuses for what is a period where people are saying, huh, I thought we were going to get tax cuts. Now we hear about his tariffs and doge and emails that say, you got to tell us what you did this week and what the heck is going on in our country versus Germany where they're rearming, versus China where they turn pro-business. Is this new administration anti-business?