SOTS 2nd Hour: Tariffs Latest: Key Headlines and What It Means For Big Tech… Plus: FTC VS. Meta & A Big Banks Breakdown 04/14/25

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David Faber (0:59)

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

Carl Quintanilla (1:10)

Good Monday morning, welcome to Squawk on the Street. I'm Carl Quintanilla with Leslie Picker, David Faber, live at Post 9 of the New York Stock Exchange. Sarah has the morning off. Bull's trying to make some hay out of the notion that these exemptions on electronics, tariff-wise, while temporary, are still material to some popular longs. Apple is the best performing Dow name, even some relief on the 10-year with the yield just around 4-4 this morning.

Leslie Picker (1:33)

We're about 30 minutes into the trading session. Here's some big movers. We are watching, late Friday, US. Customs published a list of 20 product categories, including semis and smartphones, that it said will be exempt from the White House's 125 percent tariff on China. Yesterday, President Trump clarifying, quote, there was no tariff exception, announced they are just moving to a different tariff bucket. We'll get the latest from DC in a moment, but stocks like Best Buy, Dell, Apple, up more than 4 percent each this morning. Chip Stuck's also firmly in the green on those headlines, Nvidia adding to gains on the month after its best week since 2024 And watch big banks, Goldman, the latest of the group to report what executives are saying on the call this hour. Those shares have given back some of the gains of about 1 percent right now.

David Faber (2:22)

All right, stocks are rallying this on, as Carl said, perhaps a tariff reprieve, at least for some electronics. Well, let's go over to Megan Casella, of course, because it is not as it all would appear. And Megan, perhaps you can explain to us what may be yet to come when it comes to these potential exemptions getting rolled back.

Megan Casella (2:42)

Yes, there's a lot to unpack here, David. So the tariff exemptions that the White House had repeatedly vowed would not be coming, of course, showed up this weekend. A handful of consumer goods, mostly technology, as you guys said, and as you can see on your screen here, all now exempt from the 125 percent so-called reciprocal tariff on imports from China. They are, though, still subject to the 20 percent tariff imposed over fentanyl concerns earlier in the term. But administration officials have spent two days now essentially saying not to read too much into these exemptions. Here's Kevin Hassett talking to reporters this morning.

Kevin Hassett (3:18)

Pretty much everything is going to be covered. The question is, which law applies? And so if there's something that has a national security effect on things, and so if we buy it from some other country, then we might be unprepared in time of war if they were to turn off that thing, then that's going to be in a 232 bucket. But then we've got the reciprocal bucket, which is kind of most everything else.

Megan Casella (3:41)

So Hassett and other officials are doing a few things here. They are first trying to knock down any criticism that the president is backing down in his tariff fight by carving out these items. They're also highlighting that that 20 percent tariff still applies, and they are emphasizing that more tariffs on these goods may still be coming. Remember guys, we've talked about this, but certain goods were always excluded from the reciprocal tariffs. Copper, lumber, semiconductors and pharmaceuticals, all on that list, because the White House has long been looking at imposing national security tariffs under what's known as Section 232 On those items, phones and computers were not initially on that list, but a White House official just this morning told me that they could now be lumped into the semiconductor investigation because phones and computers, of course, are downstream users of chips.