June Playbook, Trade Tensions, Tesla Extends European Sales Slump 6/2/25

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Market insight and analysis. You're listening to the opening bell of CNBC's Squawk on the Street. Good Monday morning.

Carl Quintanilla (1:08)

Welcome to Squawk on the Street. I'm Carl Quintanilla with Jim Cramer at post night of the New York Stock Exchange. David Faber has the morning off. We kick off the month of June. Futures lower, some increasing tensions on trade, on geopolitics, oil's up 4 percent, Congress returns. Got an important week of data coming at us, a jobs number on Friday. A roadmap begins with new month, same trade tensions as the S&P does notch its best May since 1990 China accusing the US of violating that trade truce as Trump and Xi may be said to speak this week. And Tesla shares are pulling back, another weak sales month in Europe. Let's begin with the markets as we do enter a new trading month. Jim June is historically kind of rocky, starts out strong and then weakens in the back half.

Jim Cramer (1:52)

Well, there's a lot of money comes in at the end of the teaching year. Look, I think that we were down one and a quarter percent on Friday when the president made a very offhanding comment that he'll be talking to Xi. And then I think people felt, well, he might talk this weekend, so we better cover our shorts now. Come in Monday, he does not talk. So then you see just a recreation of where we were, probably where we were at 115 Look, I think people were very beleaguered by the fact that there's the trade talk seems to have gotten worse, not better with China. And I think that everyone's scrutinizing every single thing. Like we're back, NVIDIA is down again. Now, why is NVIDIA down? Well, because NVIDIA, they absolutely think that there's going to be something that happened. You know, Jensen Wong came on the show and said, listen, he trusts the president. But how do you get a deal, NVIDIA is up, maybe someone even knows some, I don't know. I mean, you look at it every second, it's going to drive you crazy.

Carl Quintanilla (2:53)

There is a bit of a two front war developing with these steel tariffs and the European pushback this morning that they strongly regret. Trump's speech in Pennsylvania Friday.

Jim Cramer (3:04)

Well, what's interesting is that I think if you bring in the Cleveland Cliffs CEO, because he's the one who's most affected, there's Trojan horse trucks and cars coming in. You build something in Mexico and you use foreign steel, it's a way to get around our rules. And I think what Gonsalves is looking for, CEO of Cliffs, is some statement which just says, you know what, you can't put that steel in our cars, you've got to make them here. Remember, the whole theme of the president keeps coming back to, if you make it here, you're okay. Even if we have a trade deal with Mexico, Canada, make it here. And I think that we, that's the undercurrent that he's really kind of, as an antithlete, we thought a lot of it was, let's punish China. Let's make sure there's no trans shipments of China. And no, now it's just, well, let's just make everything here. Look, we're not going to do that, so I don't know. I mean, it's kind of a so-called Mexican standoff.

Carl Quintanilla (4:05)

It's exactly right. Yeah, Morgan Stanley had some comments late last week about how it's smarter for Apple to go to India, pay the 25 or whatever it's going to be, and in 36 months or a little bit more, you'll have a new president-elect and you can recompute.

Jim Cramer (4:20)

I don't think that that's wrong. I was thinking about doing a piece today about corning, which makes our glass and our phones, and questioning whether you can do anything here. I know that Tim Cook has tried. I also think that it's a responsibility. He has responsibility. He has shareholders. The shareholders don't want him to do something that would be reckless. Maybe reckless is trying to build a supply chain. When you know that four years from now, when it'll be finished, you have a new president who doesn't care about whether you make it here or not. It just happens. I mean, think about all the money infrastructure was spent doing windmills because they felt that the Democrats are gonna win and the Democrats like windmills. And now the president doesn't like the way windmills look.