SOTS 2nd Hour: Trump’s U.K. Deal, AI Leaders In The Hot Seat, and Live: ARM CEO

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

Hey, Fidelity, what's it cost to invest with the Fidelity app?

SPEAKER_2 (0:04)

Start with as little as one dollar with no account fees or trade commissions on US stocks and ETFs.

Mona Mahajan (0:11)

Hmm, that's music to my ears.

SPEAKER_2 (0:14)

I can only talk.

Carl Quintanilla (0:17)

Investing involves risk, including risk of loss.

Rene Haas (0:18)

Zero account fees apply to retail brokerage accounts only.

Carl Quintanilla (0:20)

Zero dollar commission applies to online US equity trades and ETFs and retail Fidelity accounts. Sell order assessment fee not included. Some account types and securities excluded.

David Faber (0:25)

Details at fidelity.com/commissions.

Jameson Dotty (0:26)

Fidelity Brokerage Services LLC, member NYSE SIPC.

SPEAKER_8 (0:32)

If your small business is booming, you might say cha-ching.

Howard Lutnick (0:36)

But you should say, like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.

SPEAKER_8 (0:40)

And we'll help your growing business.

SPEAKER_10 (0:42)

Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.

Carl Quintanilla (0:54)

Good Thursday morning, welcome to Squawk on the Street. I'm Carl Quintanilla with Courtney Reagan here and David Faber at Post 9 of the New York Stock Exchange. Sarah's got the morning off. Huge morning in DC today. Not one, but two big events. First, the president set to make remarks on this new UK trade announcement. We're gonna head to the Oval when that happens. Plus this hearing on AI regulation kicking off this hour before Senate lawmakers in the hot seat over there, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, along with the CEOs of AMD and CoreWeave and Microsoft Vice Chair Brad Smith. We'll get to those key headlines as they happen this hour. Meantime, Bulls try to get the football this morning of re-approaching that level that we last saw on a close April 2 Right now, S&P 5661, most sectors are green. Dow's up 200

David Faber (1:40)

All right, we also have some trade data crossing the tape and Rick Santelli has it for us.

SPEAKER_10 (1:43)

Rick.

Rick Santelli (1:45)

Yes, David.

Howard Lutnick (1:46)

This is wholesale inventories and sales. On the inventories, it's a March final. On sales, it's a new number. On the final, we lose a tenth of a percent. We go from half a one percent to up four tenths of a percent. But maybe there's something important real quickly I need to go over. If you look at the beginning of the year in inventories, we started out with a powerful up eight tenths. That was the biggest build going back to the summer of 22

Rick Santelli (2:11)

Why is that important?

Howard Lutnick (2:12)

Because of the pull forward that we see in many of the numbers. Now it's tapering off a bit. And if you look at sales, they started out the year weak, but they've been building up six-tenths of a percent on sales.

Carl Quintanilla (2:23)

It's definitely a little bit light.

Howard Lutnick (2:24)

We're expecting a number closer to one percent. And we lose four-tenths in a revision from 2.4 to 2 percent. It started out the year, of course, at minus 1.5 though. So we are starting to come back and get back in line to some of this surge that we saw at the beginning of the year. Interest rates, well, they are moving up. The short end is moving up much faster post-Fed meeting. You are seeing a bit of curve flattening, and maybe that's because good news may be expected from the UK. Carl, back to you.

Carl Quintanilla (2:54)

All right. Speaking to Wichwick, thank you very much. CNBC does have wall-to-wall coverage from DC this hour, ahead of those new comments from the president on this UK trade agreement moments away. Meantime, OpenAI Sam Aldman and other AI leaders taking the hot seat before that Senate committee. Megan Casella and Emily Wilkins are here with the latest on both stories. Megan, let's begin with you. Good morning.

Megan Casella (3:15)

Hey, Carl, good morning. So we are waiting for the president any moment now to begin speaking from the Oval Office on this trade announcement. The first of what he says will be many such announcements. And we do know that this one will be with the United Kingdom. But a couple of key things to watch on this announcement specifically. The first is going to be whether that 10% baseline tariff remains in place with the UK. If you'll remember, the UK didn't get a higher reciprocal rate. They only got the 10% tariff rate. And we've heard both publicly and privately from administration and White House officials that they do not expect to lower that 10% baseline tariff for any country at all. So it will be very key here to see if there's any flexibility on that number. If they leave it in place, we are mostly ending this roughly in the same place where we were with the UK before the announcement. The other thing, of course, is which key sectors then might be included. We are thinking there could be something on autos, on steel and aluminum, those sectors that are currently facing higher than 10% tariffs, at 25% at this point. On the UK side, there could be something around digital services taxes. So key to see what exactly is going to be included in this framework. And then the final point here, this is almost a matter of semantics, but it does matter whether they're calling this a comprehensive agreement or an update on talks. And we've gotten mixed messaging so far this morning on that. The president, of course, saying that this is a, quote, full and comprehensive deal.