Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News. This is Bloomberg Business Week Daily reporting from the magazine that helps global leaders stay ahead with insight on the people, companies, and trends shaping today's complex economy. Plus global business finance and tech news as it happens. The Bloomberg Business Week Daily Podcast with Carol Masser and Tim Stenebeck on Bloomberg Radio.
Hi, everyone, Welcome to the Bloomberg Business Week Weekend Podcast. Carol is off this week interplace, though we had a great rotating crew of co anchors featuring Nora Melinda, Emily Graffeo, Katie Greifeld, and Isabelle Lee. Another busy summer week. We've got global tariffs and how that's affecting US company's supply chains, plus fed independence and job security for j Powell. Also a hefty dose of earnings as banks kicked off Q two reporting the latest economic news and crypto week in
the US House. We get into all of that a little bit later, plus Rare Earth's and focus yet again. We speak to the CEO of MP Materials on the company's multi million dollar deal with the US government to boost output of rare Earth magnets. Stateside all that to come. We begin, though, with the biggest will he won't he story of the week. Speculation over the fate of Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell set off a short lived tempest
in financial markets on Wednesday. That volatility was mostly quelled after President Trump said he in fact has no plans to fire the central bank chief and was only discussing it in concept. Still, the president's remarks left open the possibility of ousting Powell, a credible threat that could end the Fed's independence and demonstrate the President's power to shake up global financial markets. For more, we turned to one of the few people who actually had experience on the FED.
Layel Brainerd, is the former vice chair of the FED Reserve and former director of the National Economic Council under President Biden. She says, any break from bed independence would be quote extremely bad.
I think there's a lot of continuity. He has clearly been very frustrated for some period of time with the Federal Reserve and their wait and see mode while they wait to see how tariffs are going to affect inflation and the economy, and you know, he's very impatient to see rates come down. So I saw those comments as being certainly in that same spirit, although of course the rumors.
Had more urgency to them.
Of course, subsequent to that, he seems to have pulled back the comments, and that's a good thing. I think it would be extremely bad for the United States to have a big rupture in the institutional independence of the Federal Reserve, which is what that would amount to.
Exactly, So, how do you think this will affect the Fed's credibility in controlling inflation? And more broadly, how will this political move really just affect inflation expectations?
Absolutely so, if the President of the United States were to go ahead and actually make an effort to remove the chair of the Federal Reserve, that would fly in the face of decades of institutional convention that puts the Federal Reserve in an independent position to pursue the control
of inflation as well as keeping labor markets strong. And I think it would really raise important questions in the minds of investors in the United States and around the world as to whether the institutional environment that really underpins the value of treasury securities, the strength of the dollar, and the expectation that inflation will remain low and stable in the United States, All of those things I think would be thrown into question, and that should lead investors
to demand more to hold long term treasury, so that should lead to the long end of the curve going up.
Whenever the Fed Chair gives a press conference, he's asked by journalists about the criticism that the President has made or is making about him.
You've worked with j.
Powell for years, you know him in your view, how does he feel about being this punching bag.
So I don't know how he feels personally, but I know that anybody in that position would feel that they have an important const well institutional responsibility that he was confirmed by the US Senate, that there is a legal set of expectations regarding the as a reserve chairs role. And of course monetary policy is set by committee. It's not set by the chair alone, and so it is the Federal Open Markets Committee that has continue to.
Hold on rates.
So it's a much broader institutional environment, and personalizing it by this relentless focus on the chair, I think is extremely problematic. Again, bad for the United States, and ultimately defeats the purpose that I think the President is trying to achieve, which is to see rates go down sustainably in an environment of growth and low inflation.
When you look at the history of political pressure exerted upon the FED, I'm thinking Nixon, arsthur Burns, is today worse? Is today different? Or are they more or less the same?
So I think that the past episodes where we've seen a lot of pressure on the Federal Reserve Chair two lower interest rates for political reasons have ended extremely badly, and we've seen in those episodes high inflation and the FED has really struggled to bring inflation back down. So I think this is a kind of similar set of pressures to what some FED chairs have felt in the past,
but not in the recent past. I think in the you know, during the period that we have seen low and stable, moderate what they call the Great Moderation, low and stable inflation, there has been a real understanding that the President the administration should allow the Federal Reserve to conduct monetary policy in a way that establishes their credibility on inflation control. So this is a big change relative
to the last three decades, and it's highly problematic. You know, the President has said very explicitly that he wants to see the Federal Reserve lower rates because every percentage point that rates come down, this is what he says, it will save him three hundred billion dollars in interest payments on the national debt. And of course that's more important than ever now that we've just added through the megalaw,
another four trillion dollars to the national debt. And so when you hear the President talking about this, he really seems to be very focused on those interest payments. And that is exactly the kind of institutional environment that would undermine the credibility of the Federal Reserve in fighting inflation and could actually lead investors to demand higher interest rates on long term treasuries.
That's the great irony in this, this whole situation here. I just we have twenty seconds left. I just want you to make a prediction. Do you think FED Chair J. Powell will fulfill his term as the chair? I'm inn the Federal Reserve until May of next year.
I certainly hope so, and yes I do.
All right, Lalel Brainerd, thank you so much for joining us on Bloomberg BusinessWeek Daily.
That is, of course.
Lalel Brainerd, former National Economic Council Director, former Vice chair of the Federal Reserve Distinguished Fellow at the Georgetown Sorrow Center for Financial Markets and Policy.
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Sticking with the President's threats to House j. Powell, this week, we turned to another expert on the Central Bank who spends a lot of time interviewing members of the feed. Michael McKee is Bloomberg News International Economics and Policy correspondent. Mike joined us from the Rocky Mountain Economic Summit in Victor, Idaho. It's an event that brings together some of the country's top economists and policymakers.
Well, actually, Jim, there's a bit about an eye roll going on with a lot of people because we've been through this so many times with Donald Trump, and the whole idea of taco came up again. So nobody was surprised when he came out and denied the earlier reports that he was ready to fire the president. Perhaps his early fire the FED chair, but the general feeling has been and we talked about this a lot at dinner last night, that the President won't do it because it
doesn't get him very far. It would probably lead to a steepening of the yield curve, a widening of spreads, the dollar falling, and interest rates would go up rather than down in the markets, and it would just create a lot of confusion and hurt the Fed's credibility. It would also end up in court, so he might try to remove the FED chair, but it would take many months of legal maneuvering to get that far, and really Powell doesn't have that much longer to go as chair.
You said that there was a little bit of eye rolling because this is sort of a movie that we've seen before. Let's take a listen to the rhetoric from the president just over the last few months when it comes to the chair of the Federal Reserve.
And the fake news is saying, Oh, if you fired him, it would be so bad, it would be so bad. I don't know why it would be so bad. So we have a stupid person. Frankly at the FED. I'd go him too late, Powell, because he's always too late. I know within three or four people who are going to pick I mean, he goes out pretty soon, unfortunately, because I think he's terrible. I'd love him to resign if he wanted to. He's a done, lousy job. Your own pal has been very bad for our country.
We should have the lowest interest rate on earth.
How we don't.
He just refuses to do it, and yet he's spending two and a half billion dollars rebuilding the bet. He's a terrible He's a terrible feed cheer. I'm surprised he was appointed. We're not planning on doing it if they were very concerned.
I was President Trump over the last few months his rhetoric around Fetchair J. Powell, it's in chronological order, and I want to point people to the park just before the last SoundBite where he said he's spending two and a half billion dollars rebuilding FED. Mike, is there any there there with this new line of attack when it comes to this renovation, Well.
There are questions about why the renovation has gone up from one point seven billion to two and a half billion, and I suppose those are things that could be investigated, and Powell has asked the Fed's Inspector General to look into it. The Fed's response so far has been that these plans were approved in twenty twenty one, and obviously right after that we had a big inflation, and so
the costs of everything have gone up. They have also argue that a lot of things that the administration is focused on, or some of the administration officials who tweeted about it or focused on, are things that are actually not in the final plans, and so it doesn't appear that there's a lot there. Is it enough for cause to fire a FED governor. That would be up to the courts to decide, and as I said, that would take some time. So I don't know that that's a
big deal. That string of Trump quotes, I would also point to the one where Trump said I was surprised he was appointed. Well, Trump appointed him as chair.
Yeah, Tim is eager to make that point. He did also express surprise that Biden renominated him President Biden. I do want to get your thoughts, Mike McKee on the idea that, Okay, his term as FED chair ends in May twenty twenty six. We know that. We also know that his term as FED governor doesn't end until January twenty twenty eight. We had Treasury Secretary Scott Besson joined Bloomberg Television, and he said that would be very confusing for markets if pal did stay on as a governor
until January twenty twenty eight. What does the precedent look like there.
Well, there really isn't a precedent. The closest you can get is back in nineteen fifty one the Treasury Fed accord where the Treasury Department and the Fed agreed that Treasury would handle fiscal policy and the Fed would handle monetary policy, and the FED chairman at the time stepped down. President Truman appointed a new chair, but the old chair stayed on for a couple of years as a governor. But it wasn't a matter of standing up to the administration at the time. He was actually asked to do
that to lend his experience. In this case, this would be a completely unusual situation. The only close analogy I could come up with would be Paul Volker, who faced a rebellion among his fellow Board governors and the ragged Whitehouse told him, we think this means you need to go, and he did resign. But it was a kind of
different situation than we have right now. So this would be as Scott Besson said, a completely confusing mess for the markets, particularly if the President appointed someone he's seen as a toady to him that would just try to lower interest rates regardless of economic conditions. The next thing that would happen would be Governor Powell would offer a speech and it would get massive coverage, and the markets
would be torn between which ones to believe. It's also, and this is important Tim and Katie to realize that the Open Market Committee that sets interest rates selects its own chairman of that committee, and it doesn't have to be the FED Board chairman. So the President could appoint Kevin Hassett as the FED Board chair and the Open Market Committee could just keep Jay Powell as its chair, and so interest rates wouldn't be any different than they are right now.
All right, Michael McKee, we're gonna have to leave it there. Michael mckei Bloomberg News International economics and policy correspondents out there in Victor, Idaho.
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One company that's certainly been on our radar as of late is MP Materials. In fact, the company's also on Apple's radar. This past week, Apple announced it would commit to a five hundred million dollar deal with MP for its rare earth magnets. News of that deal led the
stock of MP Materials to search twenty percent. Adding to the surge was this month's announcement that the US Department of Defense wants to make a four hundred million dollar equity investment in MP, along with one billion dollars in financing from JP, Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs to fund a major new plant. This, of course, comes as the US continues to secure domestic manufacturing of these critical supplies and push back against China's grip on them. James Litinsky
is the founder, chairman, and CEO of MP Materials. He joined Carol and Me alongside Bloomberg News Economic Statecraft reporter and mining and minerals expert Joe Doe on what the DoD investment means for the company and for the industry.
There are three pillars to DoD's investment. DOOD made an investment in MP. They also provided us with a long term, a ten year price floor contract that allows us to earn a fair return on the commodity. And then they also provided one hundred percent off take for a new magnet facility that we're building that will significantly expand.
It will ten x our magnet capacity.
What's so important about this is that with the supply chain, as you may have heard me say, if we have all the rarests in the world, if we don't have the downstream, if we don't have the magnet production, or vice versa, if we have magnet production but don't have the rare oaths, then you know, it's all for nought. And so it's really important to look at this supply
chain on a vertical basis. And so you really have to credit President Trump and his administration and of course our partners at the Pentagon for sort of looking at this challenge and recognizing that you know, MP has put together a vertically in a grin a champion, and the best solution to kind of catalyze this supply chain is making a substantial commitment to us, which they've done We're
very excited about that. And lastly, I would just say that this is this is a huge win for taxpayers because the structure of the deal is such that not only is DoD now economically our largest shareholder, but they have upside participation in both the commodity and in the magna business.
Hey, Joe, come on in here, because you understand this space like pretty much nobody else. Talk to us about what you see as significant about an investment such as this, especially from a position of economic staatecraft.
Well, I wanted to ask Jim about that. Jim, I feel like you're inderplaying. Can you give us size and scope, put into context why this is such a big deal in your industry and what you think about it.
Thanks, Jo, it's good to see you.
Well, I think not to get too wonky, but I would recommend, since we are on Bloomberg, for those is in our investor relations, we obviously put out a deck and I really encourage people to look at that and we go through a lot of the economics, but I'll give you this summary, which is that we have totally
transformed MP's business overnight. We've gone from you know, the Challenge show, as you know is that the Chinese historically have sold rare earth set a substantial loss because they use it mercantilistically as a strategic source of control of the downstream.
Which is a way of saying, Jim, that they will flood the market to take market share, which is one of the things that has always scared investors away from your company and other companies in this space.
Correct.
And so if you look at the math, we basically have transformed MP where we can earn We have long term contracted cash lists, so we have ten year agreements where essentially, if you kind of look out normalized, you know, we believe we can do six hundred and fifty million plus of ebadah and this is you know, and again look at the various parts, but this has taken our business from what was sort of a volatile commodity business to a long term, contracted economic platform which enables us
to further investments downstream and both and those investments downstream, we now have one hundred percent off take in DD as a customer.
And if I can't, Joe, let me add one more.
Point that I think is so important because you hit the nail on the head about the Chinese flooding the market.
The Chinese very thoughtfully realize.
That, particularly with when we think about physical AI and the future of warfare, robotics, drones, the Chinese are willing to lose billions to play for trillions of dollars of downstream market cap. And when we think about you know, our great leaders in technology, whether it's Jensen Wong or Elon Musk talking about robotics being potentially the largest industry in the history of the world where earth magnets are important,
very important, extremely critical feedstock to that. And so we've got to preserve that trillions of dollars of downstream enterprise value. And that obviously is what we're about at MP is making sure that our downstream industry has that feedstock and obviously ensures that we can make those investments.
Jim, the Defense Department is famously not flashy about anything. It's hard to argue that this was not flashy. Four hundred million dollar equity investment in a publicly traded company. Have they ever done this before.
I think it's a pretty unprecedented situation, and I think that this is obviously a very unique circumstance. And obviously, you know, we we are honored and humbled by it, Joe. And as you know, since we've been talking for many years, I guess there's the old expression of it takes a
lifetime of hard work to become an overnight success. We've been at this for ten years at MP, and I think I think that Dood and the administration realize that we've got to look at the supply chain holistically, and you know, hopefully this is a model for future other scenarios where we have strategic industries that we have to return and we've got to figure out a way to take on mercantilist economics, and so this is I think hopefully a good and model in doing so.
So Jim, to that point, you operate in a specific portion of sort of the rare Earth space when it comes to these magnets. In your view, because you're in this space, where does the US still lag and where does the US need to invest in order to try to catch up if even possible.
Well, we're vertically integrated, so we at MP, and there's nobody like this.
I just mean from the materials and processing perspective, I understand you are vertically integrated, but what about for all of the rare earths that will be in demand in the near future.
Sure well, so there are two major categories that are the light and the heavies, and is part of this announcement, DoD is actually also committing some capital for us to build out samarium separation at Mountain Pass. Samarium is a feedstock into a different kind of magnet that's actually really
critical for military purposes as well. And so essentially, tim if you want to refine, if you want to refine earth, so forget the ore bodies around the world, if you want to refine and separate them to then become feedstock to magnets.
There are two places to do it.
There's sort of the Chinese sphere of influence or Mount Pass, California. And so I think this basically catalyzes us to move downstream and really be able to have MP as an economic platform that can encourage additional investment really in all spheres in mining and across the stream all the way down to magnets.
You know, Jim, I think people are listening and they're like, yeah, you know, if we're thinking about developing our supply chains here and making and creating national security for things that are so important to so many different aspects of our lives here in the United States. People are gonna say, yeah, this makes sense, but do you feel like this is potentially a step towards you becoming a state owned enterprise?
Oh not at all, not at all.
In fact, you know, I think it's actually the opposite, which is, for the first time we see an actual data point of how we in the West, with free market capitalism, can take on mercantilism, but doing so in a way that is is along with our value system. So let's be very clear about this. D D is becoming economically our largest shareholder. But they they are you know, they will vote with our board and they expect us
to be a thriving public company. They want us to continue to run the company for shareholders, and obviously their interest will will be a benefit for taxpayers to the extent that they, you know, are we continue to compound, which we expect, and then they also have upside sharing.
And so I want to I want.
To, you know, really remind people that if you look at this deal, it was a win win win. Obviously, you know, the market likes it. I think there's our our economic platform has totally changed. But we're serving a key national security initiative enabling trillions of dollars of downstream enterprise value to be more secure. But the taxpayer also has upside in this, and so I think that this
is sort of again, it's it's a new model. It's unprecedented in a sense, but it's of course because we're facing a challenge that we haven't faced before.
Yeah, I guess on some level, Jim. The upside the tax payer has is if your stock goes up, the investment that the DoD hasn't it goes up. I was talking to an investor today asking about this, and I said, well, what what does it mean for the taxpayer? And they said, really, all it means is a better bet on national security issues. So I might push back if.
I may, Yeah, if I may push back, because if you look at the structure of the deal, it's not just the shareholding. There are three pillars. It's the shareholding, there's then upside participation in the commodity, and then there's also upside participation in our magnet business. So there's actually three different mechanisms of upside sharing for the taxpayer.
And can you clarify one thing in the details the agreement. It's one hundred and thirty dollars floor, right, or is one hundred and ten Sorry, one hundred ten. It's one hundred and ten dollars floor. That is just for the actual concentrate refined in metal. That is not batteries, right, Sorry, that is not permanent magnets.
That's all NDPR products. So you're right, concentrate oxide medal. And then we're on a downstream though. We also have one hundred percent off take for the new facility that we're going to build called ten X, and as part of that off take, we'll have a minimum EBITDAG guarantee and then there'll be a catch up for DoD and then we'll share. We're fifty to fifty partners and so again, Joe, this is this is a transformational public private partnership.
Right.
But taxpayer was really really well represented in the structure.
But Jim, one thing, you probably will be getting a lot of pushback from investors, from media whoever, saying what we just brought up, which is your biggest stockholder will be the Defense Department. And doesn't that bring a concern that the federal government has so much say in what is supposed to be a publicly traded private company.
Well, actually, interestingly, as part of our deal, d D will be voting their shares with our board.
And so I really think that this is again it's a new.
Structure that contemplates the fact that we need to be a successful public company.
So this is very different.
You know.
I know that maybe there's you know, historical examples of where the government needed to come in and rescue an industry.
It's actually the opposite of what's happening here. The government wants to.
Achieve an important national security objective and we at MP are able to help them achieve that objective. And so they are going to help support us in accelerating investment in our space, and they're going to create the conditions that allow us to invest with a fair return on capital and not be a tax sort of speak by mercantilism.
And in exchange for that, they're going to expect some upside and so again I think this is hopefully it's a new model that we can utilize across some of these verticals that are really challenging for us, where we've been unable to fully reshore industries because we're facing competition that is thinking differently again.
We yeah, oh go ahead, Sorry, we.
Only have a minute left, and I just want to hear from you how this deal came together in the timeline here, who did you speak to? Who first reached out? Trips to Washington, trips to you know, Chicago or Nevada, Like, how did it all come together and when did the discussions first start.
Well, we've been we've been having a great active dialogue with the Pentagon going back to the first Trump administration and through the Biden administration and now obviously the Trump administration. And obviously this is a non partisan issue getting this
supply chain back. Suffice to say that what we have been, as you know, in our mission, we've been focused on this single point of failure since the inception of the company post Liberation Day, as we saw the Chinese utilized raref magnets in the trade disputes that that basically the cutoff of rareth magnets had the threat of sending our economy into a deeptail spent and so that really certainly accelerated some of this discussion.
Got to ask you, though, did you actually talk with President Trump about this? Like who finally said got to do it signed it.
Well, I think you can look at the the transaction documents which which we're signed to the top levels of the Pentagon. So this was this was a conversation from the very top levels of the Pentagon.
Is that a yes on mister? Is that a yes on?
The president?
So this is this is again I don't I don't want to specifically name names of who we spoke to and how the conversations went about. But again, how about this, I will I will tell you that the President has directly mandated that we fixed this supply chain and so that is that is public.
You can see that.
And so the President mandated the secretary on down to fix the supply chain. And I think that this is this is really bold and decisive action to make that happen.
Well, investors certainly taking investors certainly taking note, as we said, your stock up fifty percent. I'm going to say thank you, thank you, thank you, because there's three of us, and we really appreciated your time and getting having a conversation with you on this because it does sound like it's pretty significant in terms of what happens with.
Rare Earth's here in the United States.
Jim thank you, Thank you staying touch Jim Litinski, He's founder, chairman and CEO of MP Materials, and of course our own Joe Doe Bloomberg News Economic Statecraft Reportito, Thank you so much.
You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week Daily podcast. Catch us live weekday afternoons from two to five eas during Listen on Applecarplay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app or watch us live on YouTube.
Back in April, Levi's was one of the first big apparel companies to report earnings after President Trump announced sweeping tariffs. Since then, a number of its competitors, such as American Eagle and Gap, have flagged the tariff's impact, along with
general consumer caution. Wall Street expected a similar fate for Levi's, but instead, Levi's actually announced its revenue outlook to rise between one and two percent for the current fiscal year, above the average analyst estimate and up from a previous view that sales would decline one percent to two percent. So is the head to toe Denham Lifestyle paying off. Levi Straus chiefinancial and Chief Growth Officer Harmeet Singh expects
momentum and consumer resilience to overcome tariff uncertainty. He joined us alongside Bloomberg News senior editor Nina Trentman.
We delivered a quarter to beat and we raised our fullier guidance. A special shout out to our teams around the world for what I call delivering the power of the end, which is not only growing direct to consumer business, but our wholesale business, growing our US business, and our international business, growing men's and women's and I can keep going on, and that really explains the momentum we have.
We delivered our third consecutive quarter of high single digit growth and growing our profitability, and that is why we believe that we're stepping into the second half. We believe we can manage through the uncertainty of tariffs.
The tariff situation is fluid.
We assumed an incremental ten percent on tariffs from the rest of the world and thirty percent from China. Our view is we are competitively in a better part to manage through this. Sixty percent of our business is international. We have a fairly diversified supply chain, and we've been agile over the years in managing through some of the uncertainties. We've got some mitigation actions. Tim we are working with
our vendors. A large piece of our growth is driven by higher volumes, and that makes a difference when you negotiating with the With our ten year relationships. Over the years, we are driving higher full price sales because our product offers are working, and we are targeting some pricing actions with minimal impact to the consumer. You a question about twenty six. We are working through that. Some of the mitigation actions will continue. We believe the brand momentum continues.
The brand has never been wronger. You know, this year it's all about center of culture driven through music. We've got a partnership with Beyonce. We've got a partnership with different musicians around the world. Think Dilgitusan in India, I think different influences in Europe, etc.
Next year, maybe I could jump in there quickly. We'll we'll ask about the music partnerships in a second. Just wondering in terms of earnings. Of course, an interesting thing is happening right now. We were expecting teriff clarity by July ninth. Now we're hearing from the White House it's going to be August first, and that won't be moved. But of course you are on the lucky side that
you have already reported earning. Still, at the same time, you gave an outlook, you provided commentary about what you're thinking about the future. And you're doing that in an environment where we're hearing teriff announcements from the White House basically on a quasi daily cadence. How confident and comfortable can you be as CFO to provide forward guidance at this point given that target, the tariffs are still such a moving target.
Yeah, you know, a couple of things give us confidence, Nina. Number one, the momentum that we're entering the second half, it's been sustained over.
The last three quarters.
The second is our product offers the consumer so far has been resilient. Our customers, our wholesale retailers are still buying our products, especially our new product.
And because we are a global.
Company, international for example, has been fairly strong. So as we manage through the uncertainty, we are trying to do it thoughtfully.
You know, we don't take anything for granted.
You know, our view is you've got to continue to earn the trust with our consumers every day, and you know, especially in moments of crisis, consumers tend to gravitate to brands that are relevant and also you know, brands they trust, and you know, because we have been around for one hundred and seventy years, get a different crisis. That's really been the genesis of why we think we can manage
through it. You know, we talked about the impact, we talked about actions that we're taking to mitigate that, and more importantly, we're doing different scenarios. I mean, after earnings, when we received news about certain tariffs, we went back and game plan that through another scenario. So we're working through different scenarios. The other piece that gives me more confidence is the agility of our supply chain and our teams around the world. And you know, let me pause here.
I hope that addresses your question.
Yeah, Hermie, you mentioned a music partnership that we of course all know, Beyonce, and this was a really major deal for Levi Strauss. I mean you mentioned the brand being relevant. I was just at the Cowboy Cotter concert and I look around there's Levi's everywhere. How influential was this partnership to the company and how much of an impact did it have on sales?
Yeah, it's been really important, you know, We've had a relationship with Beyonce for decades. She's an icon, She's in the center of culture, and we are just privileged and honors that she chose us for this partnership. It's had an impact. Our women's business is on a roll. You know, we have doubled the business over the last many years. The partnership really accelerated there. We are nowhere near done.
We think we can double our women's business. You know, our women's business is about a little less than forty percent of our business. When I joined the company twelve years ago, it was about twenty percent. We think our women's business can be about you know, half our business. And I would say the partnership is important. Her styles and what she's wearing, they're selling really well.
You know, take the Beyonce hat.
You know, I was in Europe, you know, early June, and you know I was hearing stories of consumers wanting to wig and shop the hat and the product before they went to the Beyonce concert.
They come to our store.
You know, we have store managers who help customized the product. Emily, you know, who runs our store in Regent Street, is a great example. And so from my perspective building and coming up with these memorable moments for our consumers is what connects us with our fans and makes a big difference.
We should note Harmee saying who we're speaking to now. He's chief financial and growth officer at Levi Strauss. If you're listening on radio, he's dressed head to toe in Levi, but he's not actually wearing the Beyonce hat right now. So next time he joins us, he can shoot for that name.
Sure he'd look great in the Yeah.
Harmitd You talked about the importance of your supply chain. I'm curious to see what you're hearing from suppliers. We've seen about a ten percent decrease in the dollar against major currencies around the world since the beginning of the year. Are you seeing any demands from suppliers to be paid in local currencies to not carry some of that the currency volatility that has come with dollar.
Yeah?
No, you know, we have tenured relationships. We source from about twenty eight countries. You know, our relationships are deep, have been there for a long long time. Currencies go up and down. There are times when the dollar is weaker, the times when the dollar is stronger, and you know, and I think our supplies, our vendors, and our partners are used to that. So we're not seeing any pressure to change it into local currency because people have lived through,
you know, pieces. The more important thing is what goes into the production and manufacture. Cotton is a big piece commodity, and cotton has a commodity has actually traded down and that also helps offset some of the currency pressures. And because volumes have been a big piece of us driving our growth, you know, and we're thinking long and you know as and we believe we can sustain in the growth ad mid single digit over a period of time.
I think that's what helps us ensure there. It's a win win both for our manufacturer and vendors as well as the brand. And so I think that's how we're dealing with it.
Nina.
So, while Levi is focusing on direct to consumer, the wholesale channel is also growing. Right, what kind of retail is specifically doing well for the company? Department stores are more so e commerce.
Yeah, So it's the magic of the end.
It's great to see our stores perform well, our comments perform well, and wholesale and you know, I mentioned jokingly within the company. It's a great trifecta on DDC. We're growing comp sales. We just reported our thirteen consecutive cot of comp sales growth. We're opening doors, so we're you know, increasing our market reach. We have thirty thirty two hundred doors right now, we're adding fifty sixty a year, and we're growing commerce in the mid single digit. Beside all this,
wholesale is also growing. And where DDC first really helps Norah to your question. You know, our wholesale customers see the new product which is introduced in our direct to consumer stores, see it, see how the performance is doing, and in a lot of cases is working, and that gives them the confidence to buy into the product. So wholesale customers are growing largely because DDC is growing. They're seeing the product introduction, they see things working, and that
makes a big difference. And also with our wholesale retailers, our relationships have been here for a long long time.
Given the tariff uncertainty, are you having serious discussions about moving any production or more production or any production excuse me to the United States.
No, Tim, You know, ninety eight percent of all apparel soul in the US is actually imported, so you know, that's not a conversation that's happening. We believe long term the tariff uncertainty will clarify and settle well where the consumer in the US, you know, doesn't bay the cost of the incremental tariffs, and companies like ours, different apparel companies, continue to grow their businesses in the US.
HARMI always good to see you. Thanks so much for taking the time and joining us on Bloomberg BusinessWeek Daily this afternoon. That's hermeat saying, chief financial and Growth officer at Levi, Strauss and Company. Also Bloomberg News Senior editor Nina Trentman. She's the author of the Bloomberg CFO Briefing newsletter. You can sign up for it if you haven't already at Bloomberg dot com slash CFO Briefing.
This is the Bloomberg Business Week Daily podcast. Listen live each weekday starting at two pm Eastern on Applecarplay and Android with the Bloomberg Business App. You can also listen live on Amazon Alexa from our flagship New York station, Just say Alexa play Bloomberg eleven thirty.
Plenty ahead in our second hour of the weekend edition of Bloomberg BusinessWeek, including the shark tank like companies that are now feeling the bite of Trump's tariffs and how stressed out overworked customs brokers are now left calculating the bill for those with tariffs. Plus how Binance aided President Trump's crypto firm, then its founder sought a pardon that's
coming up later this hour. First, though, a pulse check of the state of US manufacturing in the age of tariffs with one of the largest industrial supply companies in the US. Fastenal is a roughly fifty two billion dollar market cap wholesale distributor of construction and industrial supplies think nuts, bolts, screws, anchors, rivets, and other fasteners, as well as other industrial, janitorial and
safety supplies and cutting tools. The company sells to builders, manufactures, governed, and more so, it's got a great read on the industrial and manufacturing economy in the US. For a look at how the company is navigating tariff disruptions, Bloomberg Equities reporter Nora Melinda and I caught up with fasten Now CEO Daniel Flornes.
You know, we sell to a wide range of customers and industries as you As you mentioned across North America and in twenty six countries in total, but mostly of North America. Our customer base has been relatively subdued for the last several years. In the fall of twenty twenty two, we saw some indicators saying it was going to slide, and we felt that as we moved into the second and third quarters of twenty twenty three, and it's been
really weak since then. About thirty percent of our business is very production centered business within manufacturing.
So are there any signs that that part of the business is improving, that those customers are seeing sentiment improve, Are you hearing anything from them?
I think the biggest sign that we're seeing is the knife has stopped dropping. You know, we were trying to catch that falling knife for a two year period. When I talk to our district and regional leadership throughout the throughout the world, the feedback I hear is, you know, they're not talking about this two hundred thousand dollars month customer whose business is off sixty seventy percent. You have
a much more stability now. Might be stable at a lower level than it would have been two years ago, but it's much more stable, and so it allows our inherent growth to shine through.
So we've really been in this prolonged downturn, especially in the industrial economy. Are you seeing any particular green shoots or signs of inflection, and if so, which markets are you most optimistic about.
Yeah, so we're seeing some green shoots for us, we're seeing some We are seeing some impact and energy. However, I would say that's probably more us taking market share than it is a lift in the tide. About twenty five percent of our business is outside of the industrial and within there we're selling. We're doing quite well. I hear a lot of commentary from our folks with data
centered builds with you even warehousing customers. And we've made really good inroads over the last three years into the government sector. And that primarily was an offshoot of COVID. During COVID, when supply chains blew apart, we stepped in to serve a lot of that market when they were not being served, and those folks have remembered that and we've grown our business there.
So we need to, of course talk about terrariffs. How have tariffs really changed your thinking about product sourcing, particularly for fasteners, which we know, of course are primarily sourced in China Asia. What other options are you evaluating to mitigate the tariff impact here?
You know? So back in two thous eighteen, we did some short term moves of our supply chain, but it was fairly limited because you just can't change There's so much QC involved with vetting out cut suppliers that you couldn't move it fast enough. What we had done quietly over the last five six years is continue in that progress because the tariffs that were put in place in twenty eighteen were sticking and we expected more of it to happen, and we wanted to better diversify the supply
chain for our customer. We did look at a lot of options. There aren't a lot of options within North America. We looked at some options of doing some manufacturing ourselves. The problem is the economics still didn't work. So it was really for us more about diversifying supplier base in general.
Are the economics of that going to work now in this new tariff regime? I think during the first Trump administration, the goal was to move things out of China, But as many companies are learning right now, it doesn't matter. It's China, Vietnam, or India. If it's not in the United States, there is going to be a terrify on it. At least that's what it seems like is going to be the case.
Yeah, economics still do not work, and uh and and and. Part of the challenge there isn't just the economics, it's the amount of time. When we were researching it very in depth two and a half years ago, one of the one of the challenges is it's easy to find a site. It's relatively easy to get a building up and get a supply chain set up. When I say relatively easy, I mean timeframe of what it takes to
do it. The most challenging aspect was the production equipment of how many how many months it would take to get that And so that aspect really pushed us to look more at geographic dispersion of supply chain sourcing because because the economics are are still very challenging.
So how much of what you sell right now is actually made in the US?
If I look across what we're sourcing, what our supply our branded suppliers are sourcing, We've always estimated less than fifty percent is coming from the US.
And is that going to stay stable in this new tariff regime.
I suspect it will.
Okay, So I know fast and All raised prices back in April, especially as a result of tariffs. Historically, I mean the company has been able to pass on pricing costs. What should even in the feedback here from customers, has there been much pushback in terms of the ability and appetite for customers, frankly to take on additional pricing, especially as we head into the second half of the year.
First off, we sell into a very competitive market. There is always pushback. The real challenge in the equation is his communication. And one thing that helps in our supply chain, we're directly sourcing from the manufacturer that's producing the product, more so than most of our competitors in the marketplace, just because of our scale, and so we have the ability to see into the future farther than a lot of our competitors, and it puts us in a position
to communicate very well. It puts us in a position to take steps as the inventory is turning. Unfortunately, the one unfortunate part of that it also can create a fatigue for your customer, and I would say our customer is at the fatigue point right now of where it's become challenging, but it always is, and it's all about communication and trust.
I want to talk a little bit about the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that became law on the fourth of July this year. In the press release for your earnings, you didn't mention it, but big picture, what does it mean for your customers and for your business?
You know, big picture what it means for our customers is if you look at some of the depreciation rules and the timing, it's it makes it very advantageous to make capital investment. And so that's the biggest piece that we see impacting our customers because our customers have, especially on the manufacturing side, an incredible amount of infrastructure that they're investing in, and so anything that allows them to depreciate faster and to improve their return profile is advantageous
for our marketplace. And that's a key element that we talked about in the release.
I know that you talked a little bit about to us manufacturing your own products in the US and your suppliers doing it, but I'm wondering about your customers and the way that these so called America First policies might help them reshore manufacturing back to the US. Are you seeing any evidence or hearing discussion of your customers beginning to move manufacturing back to the US.
You know, I would say it's fairly limited, but again, that's not something that happens in six months that you set up. We've had some customers set up assembly operations, which you can do in a much shorter timeframe as opposed to pure production where you're manufacturing components yourself, or you're changing your supply chain to more domestic type supply. But what we've seen is a lot more willingness of making investment even beyond the manufacturing capacity in the short.
Term, Fastinas refocused on growing with larger customers. What are the key drivers there in What additional investments do you need to make to enable growth with those customers.
Yeah, so a position we've put ourselves in for a number of years is we have very aggressively made investments and this was starting back fifteen plus years ago of slowly building an infrastructure to move the supply chain closer
and closer to the point of use. And what that involved for US is investing in a tremendous amount of vending infrastructure, and in more recent years a lot more OREFID type infrastructure to measure product movement within a facility, so that you don't have to to with human capital physically observe product being diminished. You can monitor it electronically
and remotely. And and so we've made extremely large investments over the last ten plus years in vending technology, and I'm pleased to say that vending technology is all manufactured in the United States.
Yeah, I was surprised when I went to your website earlier. So I was preparing for this to see those of those vending machines. It's not something that I've run into and certainly in my life, but it's pretty cool to see that.
Not just so it's a snack machine.
Yeah, that's what That's what I was thinking. It's like, it's a snack machine, but you can't eat what's in there.
So exactly.
Okay, Hey, we've got about a minute left, and I just want to talk numbers real quick. Gross profit up forty five points forty five point three percent, up from forty five point one percent over the second quarter.
Of last year.
You said it was partially offset by higher import duty costs and higher fleet and transport costs. Are those costs in your view, going to stabilize.
They're going to continue to rise because because about the way our supply chain works, we carry a fair amount of inventory because we have such dispersion in our locations, so we carry quite a few months of inventory. So that's going to keep ratcheting up as we're on a fightful basis inventory So is that inventory continues to turn, that will continue to ratchet up a little bit as we move into the third and fourth quarters and into twenty twenty six. What really helped us during the quarter
and what drove the improvement our gross margin? Set aside teriffs for a second, right, we've put in place a faster expansion starting last summer to widen our inventory, and that's really what drove our margin this quarter.
Dan Florida, CEO of Fast and All, I really appreciate you joining us. Shares up today new all time highs three point eight percent.
Right now, you're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week Daily Podcast. Catch us live weekday afternoons from two to five Easter and listen on Applecarplay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app, or watch us live on YouTube for years.
It was a winning business model. A startup in the US would have a clever idea for the kind of everyday product that everybody else wished they thought of. First, the design and innovation were American, but the manufacturing was outsourced to a country with much cheaper production costs, such as China, Mexico, or Vietnam. That model was a feature of many of the businesses that appear on the hit TV series Shark Tank, in which entrepreneurs pitch their idea
to a panel of potential investors. But now, as President Donald Trump plows ahead with promises to upend trade and force more manufacturing back to the US, the design in America, made in China model is in doubt. Christina Lindblad is Bloomberg BusinessWeek Global Economic Editor. She joined Normal Linda and Me to discuss how Shark Tank like companies are feeling the bite of Trump's tariffs.
Well, I was actually thinking about how I had watched a clip of Shark Tank in which these founders told the judges that they had set up a production line in the United States, and one of them said, that's crazy, you know, And then it is it is crazy, and then I thought, how are these companies, so many of them which followed, you know, this sort of apple model, you know, designed in California, made in TK somewhere else, the cheaper China, you know, and how are they faring
through all of this because you know, they don't have the like, you know, lobbying arm and the deep pockets to to you know, have their margins be eaten away like this. So we decided to go out and we actually we we went through a whole we we cast a whole bunch of companies, and we decided to focus
on four. And we did basically as toltoos, you know, so we it's like directly from from their mouths, and we asked them a bunch of questions about how, you know, what kind of tarifs they were paying right now, and what they were looking to do about this, and several of them said that well, actually some of them said they had started out making their products in the US but pretty shortly realized that that wasn't going to work out.
That one of them said the product was so expensive nobody bought it, uh, and that they were contacted by a Chinese company that was also that was already making something like what they made.
And then the other thing we.
Heard frequently is that by going to China or going to some other countries, you get like a full operation, like you know, you don't have to be What people were saying is if you're a small company in the US, it's like you're having to watch out over all these parts that there's different parts of production, like you're importing this and that, and you know, making shirt's all going to the plant that in China, like somebody is saying,
we'll take care of all of that for you. And and then also we talked to a person she makes this this little contraption called a click and carry that like you like snap two bags over your shoulders, brilliant. I bought one. I'm immediately after.
Do you like it?
Do you like it?
On Shark Time the story after before we wrote the story, because I read the transcript, I thought, oh, yeah, this
is like your bags. Are we sliding up your shots when you go to the green market anyway, And she said it would take a minimum of eight months to bring this back to the US, and it would involve something like getting a mold maker in China because there are barely any left here in the US to design the mold and bring it back and forth, you know, between I'm sorry, the designers will be here, the mold maker in China, back and forth, sent it back and
forth for adjustments, right, and finally, once you had the mold, you still have to import the resins, the plastic resin from China, and you'd probably she said, I'd have to find a factory that had a high degree of automation, you know, So that kind of beats the whole idea of like job creation, you know, for the tariffs. So yeah, it's it just seems like some of these that small businesses really have a hard time and right now trying to figure out what's next.
So net net, would it be possible for any of these companies that you came across in the casting call to actually do this in the US right now?
They said that at this at the level of tariffs they were facing, and let's be cleared two weeks ago when we were talking to them, No, it's not worth it for them. I mean, we could be talking to them if we were to go back to them, who knows. After August first.
You're listening to the blow some of the podcasting that we've been.
Talking about quite a bit over the last few months is Okay, who eats the picture that we've gotten from talking to different it's sort of like everybody in this spply chain, So our earnings will take a hit, will absorb some of them. Maybe we'll weise prices, consumers might pay a little more. That's for big companies. What about for these tiny companies that are watching every cent well.
I mean there's one woman who the founder of click and carry. She was saying that, you know, she actually had taken it a loan and sold out a bunch of stocks in the fall because she was she had been selling online and she was actually starting to sell through retailers. And she's saying, well, I approached all these companies with a certain price. This is what I told them, Like,
I can provide this to you for this price. But now, like you know, with tariffs, I'm going to have to go back to them, you know, and quote them another price. And she's scared, you know, that some of them will drop her product because they've only started carrying it a few months ago, and some of them she hasn't even gotten it. I mean, she has enough I think to supply everyone, you know, all the contracts that she has
through like you know, early summer. But yeah, a lot of companies were talking about how the uncertainty towards the back end of the year when like you know, they're having to restock.
Yeah, Like we spoke to Levis CFO and they said this in earnings to that about what roughly half of their inventory for the remainder of the year is already in the US. So that's kind of free and clear at this point.
Oh, most definitely. But I know you mentioned earlier you were talking about a company that you said they were wanting to pass on some of the tariff impact towards the customer, but customers are just unwilling to pay.
Yeah.
I mean, I think if you're a young business and you have your foot in the door with some of these retailers, you know, and you don't have a long relationship, you're going to be really scared to do that. So mostly we heard the story sounded like it was going to be the importers eating the tariffs. I mean, I think there's a misconception, largely because of the way the White House talks about this, that it's the exporters eating
the tariffs. And you know, we did hear stories at the beginning of Walmart pressuring Chinese suppliers to lower their prices in order to compensate for the tariffs. But even there we heard that many of them were saying, no, I mean, a small company just does not have that kind of leverage. Really, So what are people.
I mean, you cover the economy more broadly, so just outside of this story, if we were to just bring in a broader context, what are people saying about the impact of tariffs on the US economy?
You know, we.
Haven't seen it in inflation yet, although I think we have a print this week which, yeah, which may throw some light on all of this. I think it could be a lot of people say because of this dynamic in which many people knew tariffs of some level were coming right after Trump was elected, right and so, and there was this big bump you know, the surgeon imports, we haven't you know, we haven't seen costs go up because of that because people are selling on the inventory
they already have. I do think there's still a lot of question marks. And also there's been I mean, this kind of whack a mole effect where it's just sort of like, Okay, it's going to be one hundred and forty five, but now we're going to suspend it. Now we're going to throw it to August. I'm personally really interested in looking at investment figures at some point. I suspect that this year may be one of the lowest, may show a big fall off and of corporate investment around the world.
Which is not exactly the opposite of what Trump, the president likes to see.
Yes, but I think the uncertainty is just leaving companies kind of probably saying I'm going.
To sit it out.
So that's what I wanted to talk about. You mentioned the whack a mole? Is it going to be one hundred and forty five percent? Is it going to be what was on Liberation Day? Do you have to wait and see what the letter says. I'm true social to understand what the effect of tariffs is going to be on the country that you manufacture in. Does it mean that there's sort of a stasis here with these small companies that you talk to, or are they plowing ahead and moving forward them.
Is fortunate and has suppliers in many different countries, and they sound like you know, and and they were lucky. I think it was you know, Turkey was their main supplier, and that well, that wasn't one of the countries that had you know.
The thing is we're going.
By what liberation date, you know, like the Church, you know, and Turkey wasn't you know, very severely affected, you know. So, but you never know, you never know, I mean, because now we're seeing duties used for purposes other than just delivering trade deals, you know, in the case of Brazil. Yeah, and both so and you know Trump's friendship with Bolsonarow, like you know, so that's been an issue where you know, we're seeing Yeah.
Just to clarify that, he basically said that this was not about the trade deficit, because we have a trade surplus with Brazil. Instead, this is a punishment for the way that U Bolsonnarow is being treated and prosecuted by the current president.
So the story, he talks about the fact that some founders are saying that they'd like to get some sort of notice, even a ninety day notice. Talk to me about that. What are they thinking?
It's interesting I had that before. Yeah, people were talking about getting an advanced notice, about when when tariffs. One person said, just like an advanced notice and when tariffs are going to go up. Another one said, can get enough an advanced notice? If like there's a group a of countries, you know, those tarrafs will go up and these will go down. You can't really wage a trade war like that, though, I don't think, you know, yeah, so well we're certainly it's maybe you can, but certainly
not how it's being how it's being waged now. Yeah, yeah, I just think it's it's just like a difficult time for people to make decisions, and what came through is they wish they had more wherewithal, you know, to like adjust, and also you know, you're talking about small businesses sometimes with like I mean some of the people talked to had less than three people full time staff.
You know.
Yeah, they're shipping one container of something at a time, right exactly, which is a tiny portion of what you see on a cargo ship.
Yeah, I mean we had one person who we didn't end up you know, choosing for the package, who had to go back to her old job, you know.
So yeah, well it's a great piece, Christina. I encourage everybody to check it out. It is in Bloomberg Business Week. Christina Lynn Blad is the editor of it. She's Global Economics editor for Bloomberg Business Week. She's also the brains behind the idea for IT. So everything. Shark Tank addressed those questions to Christina Lynn Blade. I got to tune in, you got to tune in, or you just got to read everything in Bloomberg Business Week and get the updates.
You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week Daily Podcast. Catch us live weekday afternoons from two to five eastering. Listen on Applecarplay and Android Otto with the Bloomberg Business app, or watch us a live I've on YouTube.
From navigating tariff uncertainty to navigating tariff costs at the ports, being a customs broker used to be a pretty straightforward, low drama gig, at least according to Jonathan Lieberman, president of New York Customs Brokers. It specializes in seafood. Maybe there there was the occasional emergency, such as the shipping container of crocodile meat that he had to send back to Australia because of insufficient paperwork, but most nights he could make it home in time for dinner with his wife.
And two young children after so called liberation. Today everything changed, so writes Stacy Vanicksmith for Bloomberg BusinessWeek. Stacy's the co host of Bloomberg podcast Everybody's Business. Check it out new episodes every Friday. Stacy joins us from New York. Stacy, I want to start with just what exactly a customs broker does.
That is a great question. Before I started the story, I didn't know myself. A customs broker is kind of a facilitator. They kind of guide help to guide products into the country from overseas. They take care of the paperwork, They know about regulations. In the case of New York customs brokers, like you were saying, they specialize in seafood, there are all kinds of sustainability laws, noah, FDA regulations to navigate, as well as tariffs. So they kind of helped facilitate all of that.
So everything was kind of fine and normal until April. Second. Then what happened? What did he start to hear from customers?
Well, it was so interesting, So I guess normally, you know, we've had almost no tariffs, a lot of free trade mostly for decades and decades, and so it was a pretty straightforward job. But all of a sudden, with Liberation Day, all these different tariffs for all these different countries, and you know, seafood comes from all over the world, so he's been dealing with with dozens and dozens of countries and dozens of places all over the US importing these fish.
And you know, he said, all of a sudden, everyone was calling wondering, you know, well, if I get the fish from here, but they're fillaid here, what does that mean? And I mean, people were just panicked because the margins are not huge for seafood, and so you know a lot of times like something like shrimp, but there was a big box of shrimp in his office when I came that day, a big box of frozen shrimp in his office. Something like shrimp, a ten percent tariff can
completely wipe out the profit. So they were really panicked and just wondering what the rules even were.
How has it changed his job itself? As Tim mentioned at the top of the show, you know, he used to be able to just make it home in time for dinner, but now he seems to be spending a lot more time at work. Really, how has this specific role just gotten so much more stressful and more difficult post liberation day, well, for a.
Couple of different reasons. So initially, you know, it was just a lot of paperwork, kind of keeping track of shipping containers, occasionally going out to his offices right by JFK Airport, occasionally going out to the airport and sort of checking on a shipment. Now it's just much different because he's got people calling him at all hours asking
about rules. Also, the Customs and Protection Bureau is just issuing all of these new directives and rules all the time, like multiple times a week now Apparently that almost never used to happen, So he is trying to communicate the
rules changes to customers. And also there's just a lot of confusion over when the tariffs actually hit how much they are, So he's getting calls and these are very high stakes deals for a shipping container full of like lobster tails, that can be almost a million dollars worth of lobster tails in which case of ten percent tariffs, you know, like one hundred thousand dollars. This is just so much money for these companies. Oftentimes they don't know
how to find it. How much time they have things, I mean, they used to actually pay the customs brokers. They used to actually just cover the tariffs for their customers because they were so tiny, And now you know the tariffs can be upwards of one hundred thousand dollars, So he's helping them to calculate that. He's answering all of these calls. There's a lot of confusion over when the rules will change, so he's answering that, and then just the paperwork itself is a lot more complicated. He
has to make sure that he's getting this right. There's not a lot of time to waste when you've got seafood sitting there waiting to be shipped. So he's just he's trying to keep his clients updated on the rules. He's trying to answer a bunch of questions like late late into the night, and also just keep the shipments moving as much as possible.
We've heard from the President repeatedly that the countries themselves are paying these tariffs based on your reporting, did you find that to be true?
That is not true. So the importer of record pays the tariff. Now in some cases, the company, the overseas companies will also be the importers of record. Sometimes they will do that, so sometimes that is actually true, but it is always the importer of record who pays the tariffs. So if you've got, you know, a seafood restaurant importing a lot of seafood, they are paying, they are paying the tariffs.
Did you get a sense at all in your reporting about just when the uncertainty is going to ease? Of course, we had the initial deadline. Now we have this August first deadline of when all these deals you know, need to be completed. But from your seat, does it seem like that initial like Tariff Liberation Day induced shock that kind of spread across markets and economies. Has that cooled off?
No?
This was I think the most striking part of my reporting is just there is so much uncertainty, and uncertainty about the uncertainty I would say. I mean, I spoke with one of the companies that works with Jonathan Lieberman who uses him as their customs broker. One of the
biggest it's called Sense is the company. It's one of the biggest seafood importers in the country, and the owner, one of the presidents of the company, said to me, you know, he's like, I don't how do you run a business if you don't know what the costs are going to be. He's like, I don't know what they're going to change, when they're going to change. He was stopping shipments. He had stopped a lot of the shipments from China just because there was so much uncertainty around
that situation. The costs were potentially so high. There's just there's so much uncertainty, and there's not even certainty about when we will have certainty. And I think it's just making so hard for businesses to plan anything.
So enter the magic eight ball. This is not a joke. There's a magic eight ball in your story.
There's this was one of my favorit. Every once in a while when you're a reporter, something happens that feels a little magical. But I went into Jonathan lie Berman's office, like I said, it's right by JFK. And he had all the stuff you'd expect, huge customs book, It's a foot and a half thick of like every different possible product, files, computer, and then there was a magic eight ball on his desk,
And of course I asked about that. I assumed it was from his children or something, but no, he bought it right after a liberation date. He was taking calls after calls from clients he' did for decades. Just they were all panicked wondering what was going on. And he kept he said, he kept saying, over and over, I wish I had a crystal ball. I wish I had a crystal ball. And he said while he was talking, he just impulse ordered a magic eight ball of Amazon.
I wonder.
So now, he says, somebody he just shakes it up to see, you know, to answer questions. And you know, when I was there, he should get in. It said outlook hazy, which seemed appropriate.
This magic eight ball likely was not made in the US and probably would be such a fact.
It's a terra made in China.
It was okay, looked it up.
Well, there you go. Ever the amazing reporter Stacy Vannick Smith writing for Bloomberg Business Week. You can check out our story now on the Bloomberg Terminal. It's about customs brokers. It was a low stress job, not so in the age of tariffs. Also check out Stacy's podcast, co hosted with Max Chafkin, Everybody's Business. New episodes come out every Friday.
This is the Bloomberg Business Week Daily Podcast. Listen live each weekday starting at two pm Eastern on Appleclarcklay and Android Otto with the Blue Blog Business app. You can also listen live on Amazon Alexa from our flagship New York station, Just say Alexa Play Bloomberg eleven thirty.
Bitcoin hit an all time high this past week to start what crypto enthusiasts and the Republican majority in the House of Representatives have dubbed Crypto Week. After an initial roadblock from some conservative holdouts, ultimately the House passed a series of crypto friendly bills, a huge win for an industry that poured millions into last year's elections to promote
pro crypto candidates. Now, one of the Trump family's crypto ventures has received key behind the scenes help from the world's largest digital asset exchange, whose founder is a convicted felon now seeking a presidential pardon, and critics say the relationship poses a conflict of interest for President Trump, so writes Bloomberg News investigative reporter Zeke Fox. Zeke is also the author of the book Number Go Up. Inside Crypto's wild Rise and Staggering Fall.
Yeah, so this is like it's a complicated story, but I think it's an important one. So the Trumps, while Donald Trump was running for president, started this new crypto company which they called World Liberty Financial. And the way this company set up, at least at the beginning, three quarters of all the money that came into this company was paid to the Trumps as just a licensing fee. So they've made tons of money off it, something like
three or four hundred million dollars. But as is so often the case in crypto, when they started this company, they didn't really know what it would do. There was some talk about it being like a buying and lending platform, borrowing and borrowing and lending platform, but the company had really very few coders on staff. They didn't really have a team commensurate with all the money they raised. So they needed a product, and what we reported was that
they decided to make a stable coin. Like a cryptocurrency, it's always worth a dollar because it's backed by real dollars in the bank. And when they went to go make this stable coin, because they didn't have a lot of programming talent, they called on Binance, the biggest crypto exchange owned by cz and what we reported is that Binance actually wrote the basic code that powers the world
liberty stable coin USD one. And so also, in a conveniently for him, cz who was only just let out of Halfway House last year after pleading guilty through these money laundering violations, is seeking a presidential pardon. So his company is helping out the Trump's venture while he also is looking for this favor for himself.
So this is.
One of many crypto currency ventures that the Trump family has, right.
Yes, I have actually lost track of how many there are.
You need a whiteboard.
Yeah, it's it's so confusing that they actually got kind of confused themselves the other day. Now the Trumps have a meme coin, trump Coin. Those guys announced that they were going to make a crypto wallet, and the Trump's sons were like, this is not an official Trump project. Like these guys can't even keep straight how all their different crypto ventures.
Is Is that unique though, to this trump coin? And just this is a little aside, you know, whether we're talking about I think there's a cologne that I saw recently. There are the shoes, they're the bibles. This is all licensing, right, Yeah? Is that any different than what the Trumps are doing with crypto.
So at first I think it's quite possible that when they got into crypto, I mean, they did even work with some of the same guys that they'd worked with on some of these more traditional licensing deals. Maybe they thought it was just another thing where they might make, you know, a million bucks here or there by licensing their name. But it's turned out to be like on
a totally different scale. Just since Trump has become president, I think Bloomberg Billionaires estimates that he's made six hundred million off these different crypto ventures, and it's become a way that anybody in the world, even people who are citizens of other countries who couldn't donate to his campaign, can just give him money. There's another crypto billionaire named Justin Sun bought seventeen.
You might know him as the banana guy.
Yes, best known for paying six million dollars for banana and then then eating it. It's modern art. He bought seventy five million dollars of World Liberties tokens, and he had been facing a frost lawsuit from the US SEC
and that was later put on hold. And I should say that all these people have mentioned have all denied that anything untoward is happening, and they're saying like, hey, you know, I just want to invest in these coins and it's not related to whatever business that might have with the government.
So all these.
Crypto ventures that we said may not even fit on a whiteboard if we rewind back to twenty twenty one. Trump was anti crypto, correct. I'm just trying to catch up here.
Yeah, I mean he said it was a scam. I think he said maybe it's all made up.
Scam against the dollar.
Yeah, And his first administration initiated some of the lawsuits that crypto guys have been so up in arms about. But it only really changed during this most recent campaign, and there was a very concerted effort, mostly by a small group of rich bitcoiners to get Trump on board. They got together and donated something like twenty million dollars to his campaign. It was a fundraiser at the Bitcoin Convention, the annual Bitcoin Convention, and they had the fundraiser who
raised a twenty million. Then he went out on stage in Nashville and gave this speech in which he totally changed his position and said Bitcoin's going to the moon. I want to lead the way. Let's make this a crypto capital of the world. It's really an amazing triumph of lobbying.
On the Binance story, we should know. A Finance spokesperson didn't respond to questions about the Coding Helper investment deal, but said USD one followed the exchange's quote standard listing process. A White House spokesperson declined a comment for the story. A spokesperson for World Liberty didn't respond to questions about the company's dealings with Finance, but set in an email quote, your assertions are factually deficient and designed to further a political agenda.
Yeah, I mean this is like quite controversial, so I can see why they why people aren't talking about it. You know, this work that people familiar with the matter told us that Binance did for World Liberty was not was not disclosed at the time on and we also reported that the Finance has done other things to help World Liberty. One of them was so the World Liberty is a stable coin. People have to use it for the company to make money, and the more people want,
the bigger this pile of stable coins get. The way the company makes money is earning interest on that. So right now, of all the stable the USD one coins that exist, most of them are actually held by Binance. So there's about there's two more than two billion dollars of USD one on finance. The interest income that generates a lot of it goes to the Trumps.
But does the USD one that is from is it World Liberty Financial?
Is that right?
Again?
They're the issuer. The stable coin.
Is the Trump is let's just call it. This is the Trump family stable coin, a competitors circle stable coin and a competitor to tether.
Yes, okay, and even right now the House is going to take up the Genius Act and they're calling it Crypto Week. They're going to debate the rules that are going to govern these stable coins. And like the rules they set might be more favorable to one or another of these companies.
So zeke.
In this story, here we have cz who pled guilty back in twenty twenty three to failing to maintain an effective anti money laundering program. Now he wants a part in Trump's. The only one that can give it to him, is he the only one still cross caught in the crosshairs here.
He has finance was has paid his fine, He's done his time on having this criminal record is could make it difficult. Right, Finance is the biggest, it's huge worldwide, but they've never really been able to establish a foothold in the US, and the owner of the company having pleaded guilty to this serious felony could make it difficult for them to get the required licenses here. So if that were wiped away, they might be able to compete
in this giant market. And like you said, the other big companies in crypto, like Coinbase, they were facing serious lawsuits under the Biden administration. Those have been dropped. Pretty much everybody in crypto has been given the go ahead under Trump.
I got to ask, because your book is called Number Go Up. Inside Crypto's Wild Rise and Staggering Fall. You wrote you published it at a time when crypto it was Crypto winter. How are you thinking about what you've learned over the last two years and if that changes the narrative of your book at all.
Yeah, I mean I definitely should have picked a different sub title for the book, given that, like crypto is always on these boom and bus cycles. But I mean, what I've seen in this last like Crypto Recovery, is actually nothing that's changed my mind. If anything, it's become easier to raise money for crypto projects that have no point at all, like this Trump meme coin. They're not even claiming this is going to revolutionary, just finance. So just like, hey, Trump's famous by this coin, and then
lots of people are piling in. It's like GameStop mania or something.
So look, I'm not going to ask you to predict the future, but do you think we're still in a boom bus cycle and this is a boom Oh yeah.
I mean even people in crypto I think are mostly saying this can't go on forever like this. I mean eventually, Like with all things, I think that the value has to come from actual usage. It has to have real world applications. Now, these laws that are being debated, he make it so favorable, might be end up so favorable for the industry that people will be incentivized to use crypto who might not have rtherwise. Wanted to Zeke.
Always good to see you. Congratulations on this story. Everybody read the book. It is a great book. Zeke Fox is investigations reporter for Bloomberg News. He's also the author of Number Go Up. Inside Crypto's Wild Rise and Staggering Fall.
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