Inflation Watch and Tech Rebound, Joe Tsai Interview, Cleveland-Cliffs CEO on Steel Tariffs 3/12/25

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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 Wednesday morning. Welcome to Squawk on the Street. I'm Carl Quintanilla with Jim Cramer at Post 9 of the New York Stock Exchange. David Faber's on assignment. Stocks do look to get back some of Tuesday's losses as February CPI comes in cool up 2.8 on headline. That's the lightest since November. The EU, though, retaliating with some tariffs. Ten years back above 4.3. Our roadmap is that CPI print, helping fuel this pre-market bounce. The president's tariffs on steel and aluminum take effect today. The CEO of Cleveland-Cliffs going to join us to discuss the fallout there.

And Goldman Sachs lowering its year-end S&P target. Tech stocks, they say, are now transforming into the Maleficent 7 Let's begin, though, with market reaction to CPI after those back-to-back negative days for stocks. Jim, not bad. Shelter 4.2 year-on-year. Food away from home, 3.7.

Jim Cramer (1:40)

Right. And food away from home, if you had a raise in price, and I deal with a lot of the restaurants, that's going to come down. The numbers for those who raise price or have high price, the sales are very, very bad. Sales aren't that good at Walmart. I mean, so what are you going to do if you raise your price of food? I do think, by the way, medical care intractable and rent untractable. Wish I had positive reasons on that. Obviously, airline tickets, well, say goodbye to that. We know from Delta yesterday, you're not going to be able to keep that price up. Food is going to benefit from the fact that eggs have cratered. Energy's fine. Great stuff, by the way, by Brian Sullivan yesterday. Really fabulous reporting. People should recognize his serious stuff is just A+. You know what?

I really like it here. I really like the market. The market's good.

Carl Quintanilla (2:28)

Meaning you think it's gotten cheap enough?

Jim Cramer (2:31)

Yeah, I do.

Carl Quintanilla (2:31)

Without fundamentals completely falling apart?

Jim Cramer (2:33)

Yeah, absolutely. You have to watch Tesla. I think Tesla's bottom. You have to watch Nvidia. It sells at the market multiple that it always seems to bounce at. Of course, they got GTC next week.

Yesterday, we had this kind of scalper sell-off in the last few days. They started the rally too soon. Rallies have to start at 2.45.

Carl Quintanilla (2:52)

You said around 2 o'clock, don't do it now.

Jim Cramer (2:55)

I have studied rallies over 20 years, and the successful ones begin at 2.47. The fact that I know that is completely ridiculous, but I actually traced them out. That's what I do. It's one of the seven or eight benefits of being old. We have a lot of stocks that are set up. A lot of stocks that are set up.

Carl Quintanilla (3:13)

Well, yesterday, you had backed off on some of this Canadian rhetoric with the surcharges in the 50%. That was very kid. We got Ukraine at least agreeing to this 30-day.

Jim Cramer (3:23)

Why do people ignore that?

Carl Quintanilla (3:24)

We got a House CR, even though we'll see what the Senate does in the next two days.

Jim Cramer (3:29)

The Senate looks good according to the stuff I've gotten this morning.

Carl Quintanilla (3:31)

So that's all constructive.

Jim Cramer (3:33)

Well, I think that, by the way, I think you have to view this market as, this is apolitical, let me put it this way, wins versus losses to Trump.

The way that Canada blinked on electricity win Trump. Ukraine, where he's now back giving them the weapons, Russia's not playing ball, win for Trump, meaning like, hey, listen, I'm flexible. Wins for Trump matter. We get the no government shutdown, win for Trump. Where are the wins for the other side, for the bears? I don't see them, not CPI, looking for something, can't find anything. I think that we're going to see a resumption of M&A. I think we'll see a resumption of the IPO market, which will be led by Corweave, which is going to be a very big deal. That helps the data center. So look, can anything happen? I mean, if the president starts saying, listen, we have to put much higher tariff, we have to change our tariffs on German cars. Yeah, because, but I think what people don't realize, and I hope that Lourenco can help us in Cleveland-Cliffs, they don't, one of the whole things is, and thank you, Peter Navarro, for teaching me this, they don't buy any of our stuff. So they don't have enough to retaliate Europe. I mean, it's kind of really, they spend a lot of time in business in Europe. I wish that they bought stuff from us so that they could tariff it, but people don't realize how screwed we are. People just, I mean, the president's done a really poor job of explaining the tariff list, and I've tried to criticize those guys, as I said, will you please show people that they don't buy any of our stuff, so they don't even have anything to retaliate with? 28 billion. Where's the Levi's jeans? I mean, you know, come on.