Meta’s AI Agent App Sends Stock Higher, US-Canada Trade War Gets Uglier

Zaid Admani (0:00)

Public.com presents The Rundown, your daily market update in 10 minutes. My name is Zaid Admani, and today is Wednesday, September 9th. In today's episode, we'll tell you about the latest development in the U.S.-Canada trade war. We'll also tell you why Wall Street seems to love Meta's new personal AI agent app. Then stick around to the end of the show to find out the main reason why Hollywood just had its biggest summer ever, and it's not just because of Spider-Man. We got a great show for you today.

Let's go.

The stock market had a rough return from the long Labor Day weekend with all three major indices finishing in the red on Tuesday. The S&P 500 dropped 0.6%, the NASDAQ was down 0.3% and the Dow did the worst, dropping 1.2%. Still don't care about the Dow. Energy was the best performing sector yesterday and that's because oil prices are rising again. Brent crude is now trading above $100 a barrel for the first time since July. We talked a bit about this yesterday. The Iran war is back in focus with more fighting in the Middle East and no signs of deescalation or a peace deal. You know, we're more than six months into this conflict now and missiles are still flying. The Strait of Hormuz is still choked. Before the war, roughly 20 million barrels of oil a day moved through Hormuz and now flows are around 6 million barrels a day according to estimates from the Wall Street Journal. And with fighting picking back up now, those numbers might start dropping, which is what's pushing oil prices higher. And higher oil prices have a cascading impact on the economy. It leads to higher transportation costs and input costs for businesses and it leads to overall higher inflation. So the overall macro picture is looking a bit shaky right now. Oil prices are rising, bond yields are surging, the Fed might hike interest rates next week. Oh, there's also a trade war with Canada brewing, which we'll talk more about in a bit. So yeah, all this macro stuff could be a headwind for stocks the rest of the year. Now we'll learn more about inflation this week. The wholesale PPI inflation report drops on Thursday morning and the August CPI inflation report drops on Friday mornings. We'll recap those reports along with everything else happening in the market. So definitely get subscribed to the podcast if you haven't already and tune in every day to stay in the loop.

Let's run through some headlines. Starting with Canada. The trade war between the US and Canada continues to escalate. Quick recap on the situation. Two weeks ago, trade talks between the two countries fell apart and the US imposed 50% tariffs on around $20 billion worth of Canadian goods. Canada then responded by imposing retaliatory tariffs on roughly $20 billion worth of US products ranging between 15 and 50%. The products include steel, dairy, farm equipment, electronics and hundreds of other things. Well, now the Trump administration is hitting back again and Trump is going beyond just tariffs. President Trump signed executive orders announcing outright import bans on certain Canadian products, including some beer, wine, liquor, dairy products and motorcycles. The administration is also adding new tariffs on things like cheese, boats, golf cards and mattresses. Trump is also threatening to raise tariffs on Canadian cars and auto parts to 50% starting January 1st, and he's moving to restrict Canadian companies from certain US government contracts as well. So again, this is turning into a full on trade war, and it could have a meaningful impact on both economies, especially in certain states here in the US because of how intertwined the two economies are. For example, 39% of Michigan's exports go to Canada right now, while nearly half of exports from South Dakota and West Virginia go to Canada. Now there's still conversations happening between the US and Canadian officials, so a deal is still possible, but right now both sides are moving in the opposite direction. Let's shift gears and talk about Meta, because the company might have finally figured out how they plan to make money from AI. Meta just launched a new app called Muse, which is a personalized AI agent. And this app is already making a splash. It's up to number four on the app store. Now the way this AI agent is supposed to work is like way beyond a normal AI chat bot. You can ask Muse to book appointments, fill out forms, make purchases, plan trips, build grocery lists, basically handle tasks for you instead of just answering questions. I've been using it since yesterday and I gotta say it is pretty fun to use. It's kind of addicting, honestly. Like I set it up to track Facebook Marketplace for some things that I wanna buy and yeah, it's been pretty useful for that. I also had to look through all my Instagram DMs of the reels of restaurant recommendations that my wife sent me. So it's been pretty useful so far and the market seems to like it too. Meta stock is up more than 5% this morning at the time of this recording. You know, one of the biggest advantage that Meta has over everyone else is their existing user base distribution and data. You know, they have data on 3 billion users, so they can really personalize the AI experience. And once they have people using AI agents, well, that's another billboard for Meta to slap ads on to. So we'll see if this works. I mean, Meta is spending $140 billion on AI this year, so the market is really looking for some signs that Meta can make money from all that investment. And I think it's possible that Meta might end up winning the market for personal AI agents, while OpenAI and Anthropic just focus on the enterprise. Let me know in the comments on what you guys think. Have you tried out the Meta Muse app? And do you think that Meta could be one of the winners of AI?