SOTS 2nd Hour: Nvidia China Concerns, Dollar Tree’s Discount Deal, & President Trump’s “Recession Roulette”? 03/26/25

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Jim Cramer (0:44)

It's Jim Cramer here. You're listening to the opening bell of CNBC's Squawk on the Street. Don't miss a minute of the action.

Sara Eisen (0:58)

Good Wednesday morning, welcome to Squawk on the Street. I'm Sara Eisen with Carl Quintanilla and David Faber, live as always from Post 9 of the New York Stock Exchange. Take a look at stocks this morning. It's been mostly higher week. The S&P 500, though, giving back a third of 1%. Dow remains higher by 141 points. And the NASDAQ tech is lagging today, back to its lagging ways, down 9 tenths or so of a percent. Take a look at Treasuries. Seen a bit of, you know, yields marching around the 10 year, around that 4.3 level, a little bit firmer today. So selling bonds yields up, the two year yield above 4% right now. But you know, there is some strength in this market. Energy, financial, staples, real estate, utilities, they're all having a good day today. So some of the cyclical groups and the defensive groups are working, but when tech is down, information technology as a sector down 1% that drags on the index. Today, it's a super micro down 5, Arista Networks, Nvidia is down another 3.3%.

That's what's hurting the overall market. So that rotation theme is still intact. We're 30 minutes here into the trading session. Here are three big movers we're watching. Dollar Tree confirming it has signed a deal to sell its family dollar business, around a billion dollars, to a pair of private equity firms. All the details for you on the deal and what it means later this hour. Apple setting a date for its annual worldwide developer conference, the week of June 9th. Many expected, expecting updated operating systems for iPhones, iPads, Mac computers, still no word on whether the company or when the company will roll out its new AI offerings, which they have said could be delayed until as late as 2026 And then we're also watching Gamestop. It's announcing that its board has unanimously approved a plan to buy Bitcoin with its corporate cash. More on why and what that means straight ahead on the show.

Carl Quintanilla (2:47)

Of course, tariffs remain top of mind. Getting some new details on the president's tariff plans. Let's get to Amon Javers.

Steve Leesman (2:52)

Morning, Amon.

Eamon Javers (2:54)

Yeah, Carl, that's right. The president, speaking to Newsmax yesterday, said in terms of the April 2nd tariffs next week, he's inclined to be more lenient than reciprocal because if he is too reciprocal, then that could be too tough on people. So I talked to a White House official this morning to figure out what exactly that means, more lenient than reciprocal. And what I'm told here at the White House today, Carl, is that what the president is signaling here is that he is not going to take into account all the non-tariff barriers that countries raise against the United States. Remember, early on in this debate, the White House said that they would include things like a VAT tax, wage suppression, currency manipulation, those kinds of things in their calculation of a tariff attack on the United States. And therefore, that would be part of the reciprocal tariff back. Now what I'm told is that they're signaling they may not go all the way to including all of those non-tariff barriers in determining what the reciprocal tariff rate should be country by country. How are they going to decide that? I'm told it's more or less going to be on a case by case basis. But what they're signaling is that a lot of the stuff they said they would calculate against they may not actually calculate against. So it is a sort of lessening of the severity of the potential tariffs that we're talking about based on what they had said before. Now there were a lot of critics who said, as our Megan Casella points out, that some of these non-tariff barriers should never have been included in a discussion of tariffs. Nonetheless, the White House signaling today, they might not go all the way in including some of those non-tariff barriers next week. Guys, back over to you.