Roaring Into March: Trump Crypto Effect, Tariff Deadline Looms, Tesla from "Top Pick" to Protests 3/3/25

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David Faber (1:29)

Market Insight and Analysis. You're listening to the opening bell of CNBC Squawk on the Street.

Carl Quintanilla (1:34)

Good Monday morning. Welcome to Squawk on the Street. I'm Carl Quintanilla with David Faber, Sara Eisen at Post 9 of the New York Stock Exchange. Cramer has the morning off. Futures pretty solid as the S&P does come off the fourth negative week in five, but the best day since mid January on Friday. Busy week, retail and tech earnings, of course, tariffs possibly tomorrow and a jobs number Friday. Our roadhead begins with the White House, the president talking about a crypto reserve and ordering an investigation into lumber imports as we do approach tomorrow's deadline on tariffs.

David Faber (2:05)

Also, head Tesla shares are getting a lift this morning. This after Morgan Stanley's Adam Jonas reinstates that EV maker as a quote top pick in the auto sector.

Sara Eisen (2:14)

Plus a stunner out of Kroger. The company says Rodney McMullen is out as CEO following a board investigation of his personal conduct. We'll have a lot more for you.

Carl Quintanilla (2:25)

Let's begin with the president announcing these digital currencies that will make up a strategic crypto reserve on a truth social post. He listed XRP, Solana and Cardano along with Bitcoin and Ethereum. And that news has sparked a crypto rally started yesterday. The group pulling back a bit this morning. But Sara, Bitcoin is going to be up 20 percent from last week's lows.

Sara Eisen (2:46)

This is good news, obviously, to the crypto bulls who were wondering what's going on because crypto had gone back down to 80,000 post election. There's going to be a summit on Friday. And there are questions about what this will look like. How much are they going to aim to buy in the crypto reserve? I think it's interesting and somewhat surprising that they are including other crypto coins, according to President Trump in there, mentioning Solana and a few others shot up in yesterday's trading. The other question that I have, and this is more of a legal question, is can he do this via executive order? I went back to the creation of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which is our emergency oil stockpile. That was created through congressional legislation, came out of the oil embargo. So there's a question about whether they'll need Congress to do this, whether Congress will be on board.

There are bills out there, David, a Senate proposal, for instance, that include buying Bitcoin. So how much, what's possible, and how popular it will be. Certainly, it's popular if you own crypto, but there is this argument that people make that you risk taxpayer dollars for a volatile, speculative crypto currency may not be the best use of money, especially when they're so serious, like Doge, about cutting waste and abuse and fraud and trying to clean things up.

David Faber (4:08)

Yeah. And again, you can see there are all of the different currencies, all of which were up again, because as Sara said, there had been an expectation sort of the focus would be on a Bitcoin reserve. You heard that a lot, not necessarily more broadly speaking crypto, but of course, the announcement, so to speak, in that post was a crypto and does include a number of the other currencies, hence sending many of them up. And again, as we pointed out, Bitcoin has been above its current level, but certainly is retracing, or at least is, I should say, coming back up significantly from where it had been. This president does like to act through executive action. We've, what, at least 75 of them. I don't even know. I mean, there's just an endless amount. So, you could imagine, who knows, you know, that, I don't know if it ends up in the courts, but like so many other things, but it doesn't appear, you know, at this point, that it necessarily is something that's going to work its way through Congress, Sara.