SOTS 2nd Hour: Roku & Airbnb CEOs Talk Earnings, Today's Movers To Know, and Navarro's Tariff Update 2/13/26

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Carl Quintanilla (1:03)

Good Friday morning, welcome to Squawk on the Street. I'm Carl Quintanilla with Courtney Reagan here at post night of the New York Stock Exchange, along with Mike Santoli, David Faber, and Sara Eisen are off today. Coming up this hour, we'll talk to the CEOs of two companies, seeing big moves on earnings, and exclusive with Airbnb's Chief Brian Chesky on why he says his company is set to handle this AI disruption. And Roku's Anthony Woodley with us, as that name jumps on some strong earnings and guidance. Share some Moderna today jumping on earnings, but some big questions remain around regulation. And we will discuss that straight ahead. Let's begin, though, with the market as stocks come off a rough Thursday session weighed down by these AI fears. Sentiment shifting this morning, though, after inflation data was cooler than expected. Joining us today is Mark Zandi, Chief Economist over at Moody's, and Jim Paulsen, former Chief Investment Strategist at Leuthold Group and author of Paulsen Perspectives, a great read, as always, on Substack. Morning, guys.

Mark Zandi (1:56)

Good morning.

Jim Paulsen (1:57)

Good morning.

Carl Quintanilla (1:58)

Mark, I know you said you wouldn't take a lot of solace in this week's jobs number, but can you take solace in CPI?

Mark Zandi (2:05)

Yeah, I mean, inflation is still on the high side. I mean, you know, Carl, as you know, the inflation numbers are biased lower because of what happened last October when the government shut down, the BLS couldn't collect that data and they assumed effectively no inflation. So if you if you account for that, CPI inflation year over year is closer to 3%, not 2%. So it's still on the high side and it's still high for necessities, things that people need housing, child care, medical care, that kind of stuff. So still on the high side, but it's not moving higher. I'll take that. So there is some solace there in that. Yeah, I guess so. Right.

Carl Quintanilla (2:42)

Jim, how about you?

Jim Paulsen (2:46)

I think the economy overall is weaker than widely anticipated here. I think Mark shares that view. I personally don't think inflation is an issue. I think inflation, we had a brief COVID-related supply distorted bursts of inflation, but it's come down basically below 3% ever since. And I don't, the obsession with 2% seems kind of ridiculous to me.

I think it's kind of benign and will get weaker, I think, because the economic growth is weak. So I think there's plenty of room here, both from, if you look at the job market, you know, barely growing, you look at the housing industry being a mess, real retail salesmen flat for years, now inflation coming off, true inflation has just collapsed here recently. So I think, I think there's a lot of room for easing to possibilities.

Carl Quintanilla (3:36)

Stay with us guys, we do have some news alert on tariffs and for that we'll turn to Steve Leesman this morning. Hey Steve.

Steve Leesman (3:42)

Just got off the phone with Peter Navarro, special counsel to the president on trade and manufacture. He says there's no basis in fact for a story out in the FT that said the administration is planning to reduce steel and aluminum tariffs. Navarro is telling me the president has a rule, no exemptions, no exclusions. He went on to say steel and aluminum are sacred to this administration. He thinks stories like this are not helpful to the administration's efforts to try to get investment in steel aluminum in this country. The FT reporting citing three unnamed sources that the administration was planning to scale back those steel aluminum tariffs after complaints, which I've heard, by the way, also from a lot of manufacturers and importers that they have to pay up to a 50 percent tariff on steel aluminum. And the FT reporting that the administration was feeling the heat of these consumer prices that had gone up as a result. But Navarro is saying no plans by the administration to scale those tariffs back.