U.S.-China Trade Talks Countdown, Bitcoin's Resurgence, Barrick Mining CEO on the Gold Rush 5/9/25

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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.

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Carl Quintanilla (1:05)

Welcome to Squawk on the Street. I'm Carl Quintanilla with David Faber, Mike Santoli, Post 9, of the New York Stock Exchange. Cramer has the morning off. Futures mostly green above those April 2 levels still. As we head into this first weekend of U.S.-China trade talks, President making some conciliatory remarks in advance. Meantime, tons of Fed speak today and consumer earnings. Our road map begins, though, with Wall Street's China trade talk expectations, as the president now floats cutting tariffs on China to 80% ahead of tomorrow's meetings.

David Faber (1:33)

Plus, we'll have the latest read on the health of the consumer, Expedia, Pinterest, Affirm, all those stocks are on the move following the company's quarterly results. And gold is up, continuing that record run. We're going to discuss that with the CEO, Barrick Mining. That'll be right here at Post 9 in just a few minutes.

Carl Quintanilla (1:50)

Let's begin with the markets as we wrap up yet another volatile week for stocks. On Wednesday, Mike, the president was asked whether he would roll back some of those 145 tariffs on China. He said no. Today, he says 80 sounds are seems right.

Mike Santoli (2:03)

Yes, 80 seems right. Reports maybe it gets below 60 I mean, I think it really does sort of accentuate the somewhat absurd moment that the market finds itself in in trying to handicap these things, which are, you know, kind of not really a process. They're just kind of educated guesswork. Yesterday's action was pretty interesting. You know, the market sort of attempted to celebrate this UK deal up a percent and a half in the S&P at the highs, kind of faded through the afternoon. I don't know if it was a rethink of the terms of the deal or what it means for other trading partners. But what it does show you is that, look, under 5,000 in the S&P, which is where we were at the lows a little over a month ago, all you needed was anything but worst case scenario, washed out sentiment. Everyone was desperately panicky. And anything but mutually assured destruction, you got a snap back. 5,100, that was one of those hurdles. I think you had to start to see the makings of a deal. You had to sort of see gestures toward de-escalation and rhetoric. And now I think the stakes are pretty high for the China Talks this weekend, both because of where the market has gotten to and because it's kind of the ball game in terms of whether we're going to continue to have this standoff indefinitely or if we're going to dial it down.

It's not the only thing that matters for this economy by a long shot, but it's the only thing that matters in the moment for the market in terms of pricing in the incremental trajectory of what we can expect for earnings and the consumer and everything else.

David Faber (3:32)

When it comes to the economy, it may become a bit clearer in terms of the impacts. We've seen the numbers out of China in terms of exports to this country in April. They has perhaps not unexpectedly plunged. That said, they increased for China to much of the rest of the world. Then the UK deal, it's still 10 percent.

Mike Santoli (3:53)

Yes.

David Faber (3:55)

I have spoken to a number of people this morning, like, well, I don't know, what was that deal? What exactly does it all amount to? I think JP Morgan, their desk on the trade deal, talking about it, grabbing the headlines, but looks limited in scope and still leaves the UK worse off compared to the trading relationship prior to Liberation Day, less enthused by recent deals. But it does come back, guys, to this, it looks like we're going to have 10 percent at the very least with virtually everybody. What will the impact of that be? I don't know. We'll try and figure that out at some point.