Prof G Markets: Tariffs Blocked by Court, U.S. Steel’s Golden Shares & Neuralink’s Funding Round

Follow Prof G Markets: Apple Podcasts Spotify Scott and Ed discuss the trade court’s ruling that Trump lacked the authority to impose most tariffs, Trump Media’s plan to buy bitcoin and Nvidia’s first quarter earnings. Then they discuss Nippon Steel’s acquisition of U. S. Steel, arguing there was no strong reason to block the deal in the first place and debating when government intervention in business is justified. Finally, they explore Neuralink’s latest funding round, acknowledging the technology’s potential while cautioning that widespread adoption may take longer than expected. Subscribe to the Prof G Markets newsletter Order "The Algebra of Wealth," out now Subscribe to No Mercy / No Malice Follow the podcast across socials @profgmarkets Follow Scott on Instagram Follow Ed on Instagram and X Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:31Speaker 01

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• 1:01Speaker 02

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• 1:29Scott Galloway?

  Today's number 75. That's the percentage of US restaurant traffic that comes from drive-through or takeout orders. I remember saying to my ex-wife, I'd love to see a fast food restaurant in space. And she said, what fast food restaurant would you want to see in space? And I'm like, I'd like to see Five Guys on Uranus.

• 1:59Scott Galloway?

  I think that's good, no?

• 2:01Ed Elson?

  It's fine.

• 2:01Scott Galloway?

  Fuck you, you're on MSNBC and now you think you're all big time. Big time.

• 2:06Ed Elson?

  I like whatever makes you happy. And that one clearly, that one resonated for you.

• 2:12Scott Galloway?

  Ed, I think. You are getting a little too good on MSNBC. Daddy's getting a little jealous. First they call me and I'm like, no, I'm not going on Katie tour for four and a half minutes with a bunch of talking heads who were, you know, in the Obama administration 12 years ago. Fuck.

• 2:32Scott Galloway?

  Seriously, it's like, okay, I think I've graduated beyond that. So they said, so I suggest you, you go on. Oh, is that what happened? Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to. Yeah. Well, how do you think you got on there? Do you think they're like, oh, let's bring on a 26 year old from Princeton? I thought that's what happened. I thought they suggested me organically. Are you sure? Uh, anyways, believe what you want to believe. Yeah, they're, they're cable television consistently reaches out to 26 year old podcast co-hosts. Anyways, uh, you are outstanding. I'm, I'm saying this to, granted, I want you to buy Zbiotics and invest in Fundrise, but I am really recommending to our listeners, type in Ed Elson, MSNBC,

• 3:15Scott Galloway?

  and watch when they ask Ed a question. They ask all these boomers these questions and they give this ridiculous blah, blah, hoping to get a speaking gig or a consulting offer for some Joey Bag of Donuts firm or something. And then you break into, all this is, is a tax on me, is you folks continue to, and you literally, everyone on the panel looks as if they've just been caught masturbating. You make everyone, you rendered everyone totally flat footed. No one had a response. No one could. You are, you are outstanding. I really, it was like, so,

• 3:56Scott Galloway?

  I was a mix of proud and jealous. I didn't, I was sort of, okay, he's getting too big for his britches. He's gonna want 15 bucks an hour now.

• 4:05Ed Elson?

  Yeah. Now I want a consulting gig, just like the rest of those guys.

• 4:08Scott Galloway?

  Oh, my gosh. You were, you were outstanding. And what was that, your second or your third appearance?

• 4:14Ed Elson?

  Uh, that was my second appearance. Yeah.

• 4:16Scott Galloway?

  Okay. So this is what's gonna happen. You're gonna start getting calls from all these producers, um, you know, who want to seduce you to come and talk to hundreds of thousands of 75 year olds.

• 4:26Ed Elson?

  My target audience. Yeah.

• 4:27Scott Galloway?

  In between soup and water aerobics at night, but TV is super fun. And your parents will be super impressed. And you can go on for a year, but after that, we're gonna limit, I'm gonna manage your brand so well here. We're gonna go very scarce.

• 4:41Ed Elson?

  Okay.

• 4:41Scott Galloway?

  We're only gonna go on with like Ando. We're only gonna go on.

• 4:45Ed Elson?

  Yep.

• 4:46Scott Galloway?

  With, they're really like, you know, maybe the view, I think Whoopi would like you. I think they, all the women there would love you. They, you would remind them of like the son they wished they'd had instead of the son that's home, you know, stealing the Range Rover with a cocaine habit. But you are, we're gonna manage your TV appearances.

• 5:03Ed Elson?

  I love it. I need your, I need your branding help. So right now, the strategy, I assume, is just pure volume, quantity over quality. Take anything I can get.

• 5:12Scott Galloway?

  I think, is I really, what is, what is it we want to do here?

• 5:17Ed Elson?

  What is the point of any of this again?

• 5:19Scott Galloway?

  It raises your profile so more people download our podcast, buy more Zbiotic, and I can pay you more money.

• 5:24Ed Elson?

  And to get more subscribers on The Daily Show, which is starting next week.

• 5:28Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, but we're gonna, we're gonna manage. I made some big mistakes. I was a total whore. I was so impressed with media that I went on a ton of media. I think it's sort of cheapened my brand a little. Is that right? Did it cheapen my brand? Actually, you know what your next move is? And I hate to say this, your next move, you should go on Fox.

• 5:44Ed Elson?

  I would love that.

• 5:45Scott Galloway?

  Despite the fact that they're the gravedigger for democracy. They are, it's a really well-run organization. The people are really nice. I used to go on Fox every week and I think it gives you a certain, um, and unfortunately, the, absolutely the best journalists there are the best TV hosts. Neil Cavuto has just retired. But I think it gives you a little bit of cred. I think you want to get cred on both sides. I don't think you want to be on MSNBC too much because you're sort of like, oh shit, him again.

• 6:08Ed Elson?

  I agree.

• 6:09Scott Galloway?

  We know what he's going to say.

• 6:10Ed Elson?

  The whiny woke liberal.

• 6:12Scott Galloway?

  There you go. Yeah. Although if there's all, if you make a series of really deft moves and everything works out, at some point you might get a voiceover on the White Lotus. You might get a 10 second voicemail cameo appearance.

• 6:27Ed Elson?

  I will absolutely take that. I hear the voiceover money is pretty good. Not for your episode on the White Lotus. They paid you what, like 20 bucks?

• 6:34Scott Galloway?

  I got paid, no, I got paid, you know, I paid, I think four or 500 bucks and I said donate it to it. I'm not kidding. I said donate it to a Thai orphanage or some elephant camp or something.

• 6:44Ed Elson?

  Yeah, that'll make a difference.

• 6:45Scott Galloway?

  No, but we're gonna, we're gonna manage this very, very carefully. Anyways, I'm very excited.

• 6:49Ed Elson?

  Good.

• 6:50Scott Galloway?

  Again, Ed Elson, not Olson.

• 6:52Ed Elson?

  And thank you for recommending me. I did not know that you recommended me for that appearance.

• 6:57Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, but now just to be fair, when people call me and ask me for referrals, I say not Ed Elson because you're getting a little too powerful. The force is a little too strong with this one. Ed, get to the headlines.

• 7:08Ed Elson?

  Let's start with the weekly review of market vitals.

• 7:17Ed Elson?

  The S and P 500 rallied, the dollar climbed through the week before giving up some gains. Bitcoin retreated from its all time highs and the yield on 10 year treasuries declined. Shifting to the headlines. A US trade court has ruled that President Trump lacked the authority to impose many of his liberation day tariffs. Duties on cars, steel and aluminum will likely remain intact as they were justified on national security grounds. Trump Media shares fell 10% after the company announced plans to raise $2.5 billion to invest in Bitcoin. The raise includes $1.5 billion in newly issued stock and then another $1 billion in convertible debt from about 50 institutional investors. And finally, Nvidia posted first

• 7:58Ed Elson?

  quarter earnings that beat expectations with revenue up 69% year over year. Shares rose nearly 5% after the company issued a strong second quarter forecast. Despite new export restrictions, they're expected to cut $8 billion in revenue from China. Scott, your thoughts here, starting with this new tariff court order?

• 8:19Ed Elson?

  That has basically said that these tariffs that Trump has come up with are illegal.

• 8:23Scott Galloway?

  Well, the Constitution is late to the party here, but it's a welcome guest. And I found this really encouraging that the gears of justice grind slowly, but they do grind on. And basically, the court said that only Congress, not the president, has the constitutional authority to regulate commerce with foreign nations. And that emergency powers, when they're clearly just a ruse, are not emergency powers and they don't override this. And a bunch of companies that have been sort of like ground zero in terms of this toxic uncertainty that's plaguing the nation and some stocks right now lifted pretty seriously. Apple and Amazon, Etrus, about 3%, chip stocks were up.

• 9:06Scott Galloway?

  So I was really happy to see this, just when I'd sort of given up hope that, oh, wait, the president can just run roughshod over the law. The Constitution showed up and said, no, not so fast, girlfriend. So I was really happy to see this. Any thoughts, Ed?

• 9:21Ed Elson?

  The way Trump did these tariffs, he did it under this framework called the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which allows you to implement these tariffs, but there has to be an emergency. I mean, it's literally in the name. And the law literally says, you know, this is only legal if it is in response to, quote, "an unusual and extraordinary threat to America." And there was no unusual or extraordinary threat here. I mean, Trump said the threat was the trade deficit that we have with many other countries. But as people have said over and over, and as we've said, a trade deficit is completely normal. That's not a threat. So to call that the unusual and extraordinary threat, it just doesn't hold up.

• 10:06Ed Elson?

  So I guess the first thing I would say is I was waiting for some legal entity to say this. It came from this international trade court that I frankly had never heard of, but which apparently has some level of federal authority. But this is something we've been discussing in California. Even Gavin Newsom sued Trump over this because he's like, you're supposed to do this when there's an emergency. There's no emergency here. And that's exactly what they ruled. Now, the second question is, does this mean the tariffs will actually be repealed? And the answer to that question is no one seems to actually know. And I've read the commentary. I've read the legal opinions and it's all kind of like, uh, we're not, we're not really sure.

• 10:48Ed Elson?

  And then, and then you look at the markets and the markets tell me a similar thing. There was a little bit of a rally, but not enough to say outright, the tariffs are coming down. So I think where the market probably lands on this is first, they thought it was going to be appealed. And that is what happened. Trump administration immediately appealed. I think what they're probably thinking is this appeal process, it's going to take some time. It's probably going to climb its way up to the Supreme Court. And throughout that very long and boring and complicated process, the tariffs will probably just remain in place.

• 11:23Scott Galloway?

  What I see is that a lot of companies are probably beginning to just ignore Trump. I have a friend who's in the import business and thought he was out of business. And now he just sort of takes everything Trump says with a grain of salt. And we should, a quick shout out to a regular guest, FT journalist, Robert Armstrong. He coined the phrase, the taco trade, and that is Trump always chickens out.

• 11:51Ed Elson?

  And by the way, Robert Armstrong is going to be joining us on the show on Thursday. So make sure to tune in for that.

• 11:57Scott Galloway?

  And Mia pulled together some notes showing that since he's taken office, he has threatened, implemented and or reduced tariffs 50 times. And you can validate or nullify this, but I don't think there's, after 50 threats, 50, 50 chickening out, 50 folds. I don't think we have one tangible deal to show for it, do we?

• 12:22Ed Elson?

  No, deuce. He says the UK is a deal and that the deal has not been agreed upon. And there are no, there's no upside in, in, in the agreement that they have there.

• 12:33Scott Galloway?

  I do think as you get more senior in your professional life, you always want to be measured around, you know, if this person does this, I'm going to fire them or something like that. You don't want to make declarative statements like that. Unless, or we're not going to work with them ever again. You know, be very careful with absolutes. And the few absolutes you make, follow through. You know, do it, even when it's painful. Because the most powerful cop or arsenal or arrow in your quiver is your reputation. And you want to be known as someone who does what you say, both on the upside and on the downside. And he's lost, he's literally lost all credibility.

• 13:16Scott Galloway?

  The markets are now not moving nearly as much. He announces an Apple tariff and Apple goes down three or 4% and then recovers the next day. If Obama or Biden had recommended a tariff against Apple, anything along the lines that he's recommending, these stocks would be down 10, 20, 30%.

• 13:34Ed Elson?

  Let's stop talking about Trump, the president, and let's start talking about Trump, the media company. Trump Media is taking on the MicroStrategy approach. They're raising $2.5 billion to buy Bitcoin and they want to, they want to become a Bitcoin treasury company. I'm sure you can imagine my reactions to this, Scott. I don't like this, but let's first hear your reactions.

• 13:59Scott Galloway?

  You know more about this than I do, so you run with this one. I don't, I'm fascinated that it's gone from the ultimate strategy for pumping your stock to now stocks are crashing on this news. What are your thoughts?

• 14:10Ed Elson?

  Well, like they're trying to do what Michael Saylor did at MicroStrategy. And that is you basically, you rebrand the company. In his case, it was a enterprise SaaS company. You rebrand it as a Bitcoin or a crypto company. Then you issue debt to buy up Bitcoin. And then you use that Bitcoin to issue even more debt, which you use to buy even more Bitcoin. And then you just keep on doing that. And that's what Michael Saylor has done. I have said in the past, I think it's a Ponzi scheme. I still think it's a Ponzi scheme. I know you disagree with me on that. I don't think we need to re-licitigate that conversation right now, but the reality for MicroStrategy is they're up more than 100% in the past year doing this thing.

• 14:52Ed Elson?

  And now you've got all these companies like GameStop, like Rumble, like Vivek Ramaswamy's company, his company Strive Asset Management, and now Trump Media, who are all trying to do what Michael Saylor's been doing at MicroStrategy for the past several years. Now, what's interesting is that after they announced this, the stock, unlike MicroStrategy, actually went down. And that was despite the fact that Bitcoin's hitting these all-time highs, and it fell 10%. And that did surprise me, because this is a very meme-able stock. It's the kind of stock where if you start mentioning words like Bitcoin and crypto, history would tell you, you're gonna get a pop. So I've been wondering, why did it

• 15:32Ed Elson?

  fall? And I wonder if the reason it fell, I hope, by the way, the reason it fell is because the bullshit around the meme coins and the crypto is just about starting to die out. And I wonder if this is the first signal that slinging these half-baked financial engineering strategies, that they just don't hold the same level of hype and excitement that they used to hold when Michael Saylor was out doing it back as far as 2020. And that would make sense to me, because, quite frankly, this whole Bitcoin treasury thing is becoming boring and predictable. And there are now almost 100 publicly listed companies

• 16:16Ed Elson?

  that have announced some form of Bitcoin treasury strategy, and it's all happened in practically the span of a year. So at a certain point, I don't think you can expect the market to just be wowed every time you come up with this grand vision of, we're just gonna buy up as much Bitcoin as we possibly can. It's just not interesting anymore. At a certain point, it's just, I think it's just boring and played out to the markets. And it's funny, because this goes back to our conversation with Michael Saylor, where I asked him, what is actually interesting to you about this and about this strategy? And you go and you watch that moment, it was almost like I had physically attacked him.

• 17:03Speaker 05

  Wasn't the more important question, why is it interesting to everybody else on the earth? So literally, what I do is turn it around to you and say, if you don't think it's the most interesting, tell me what asset in the world is more interesting right now to more people, because I don't think you can name one.

• 17:20Ed Elson?

  I think I hit a nerve there, that this whole operation is completely and entirely dependent on hype. And as soon as the hype runs out, suddenly the money stops. So I don't want to jump the gun here, but I think what we saw happen with Trump stock this week, where they do this whole Bitcoin thing, and then the stock actually falls 10%, I think that could be an indication that this is sort of the canary in the coal mine for the hype running out. Not necessarily on Bitcoin itself, but certainly on these Bitcoin treasury companies, where it's no longer interesting and exciting to go out and say, look, we're going to buy up all this Bitcoin, and then suddenly the market goes crazy. I

• 18:01Ed Elson?

  think the market's saying, eh, we've seen this all before. And you're not MicroStrategy, and you're not Michael Saylor, you're the president.

• 18:09Scott Galloway?

  What Saylor has been able to do, that you could say warrants some enterprise value beyond the value of the underlying crypto itself, is he's been able to come up with pretty innovative debt strategy, where he's able to go into the market and access debt at a pretty low price. So I don't know if these companies can do that.

• 18:32Ed Elson?

  So the value of MicroStrategy per Bitcoin, it's 1.6 times Bitcoin. Is it really worth that?

• 18:38Scott Galloway?

  It also has a core business, though, right?

• 18:40Ed Elson?

  No, they're not, the business is like, nothing. It's, I mean, compared to the market cap of the company.

• 18:47Scott Galloway?

  Intellectually, what you're saying is, it's hard to contradict. I 100% understand what you're saying. And also, I felt the same way when I saw this. I feel it's a little bit like, whenever you're on a board in a company, and this happened to me twice, a company decides to do its first stock buyback.

• 19:05Scott Galloway?

  My my kind of first and and at some point, a mature company should start buying shares back and returning money back to shareholders and buying stock back is a fairly efficient way to return money to shareholders. But my first question is, so we're out of ideas. We don't think as an enterprise, we can invest ahead of where market returns should be. And when I see these companies basically deciding to transition to a Bitcoin treasury company. Basically, what they're saying is to a certain extent, it's sort of saying it's it's throwing up the white flag and saying our core business doesn't work. And we want to pivot out of our core business. And if you look at the companies that are doing it.

• 19:46Scott Galloway?

  You know, a GameStop, right? It just

• 19:49Ed Elson?

  Rumble.

• 19:49Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, rumble. These are companies that have no underlying core. You're not going to see Procter and Gamble do this. They have a really good business with really good margins and it's growing and it's a global business and great culture. You know, Netflix is not going to overnight decide they're a Bitcoin treasury company. They're just not going to. And what it is, is the market now sees it as that. This is you waving the white flag. You're not going to be focused. Your core business is so bad, you're grasping at straws.

• 20:13Ed Elson?

  Let's talk about Nvidia, another phenomenal quarter. Beat on top and bottom lines, revenue up 69% to more than $44 billion. Data center revenue up 73%. That's their AI chips revenue.

• 20:28Ed Elson?

  Up to $39 billion, net income up 26%. It's just crazy, crazy good quarter. And that's why we saw this.

• 20:37Ed Elson?

  Big pop in the stock around 5%. Now, what makes it even more impressive is the fact that they did this without access to one of their biggest markets, which is China. Just as a reminder, the Trump administration, they recently banned Nvidia from sending any chips to China. They sent these H20 chips, which they had specifically designed for China to have less capabilities. And then Trump came in and said, no, not allowed to send any of them. And according to the company, if it weren't for that ban, gross margins would have been 71% versus 61%. And also revenue for the current quarter for Q2 would have been, or the guidance would have been $8 billion higher.

• 21:19Ed Elson?

  It's they they guided 45, it would have been 53 billion. So that's a pretty significant hit now. When you and I discussed this Trump ban on Nvidia chips going to China, one of the questions we asked was, will we see a tone change from Jensen Huang? And my prediction was that we would see some level of a tone change. And on this earnings call, I believe we witnessed it. He opened his speech, Jensen Huang, the CEO. He opened his speech with a monologue about China. And it went on for three minutes. And his total comments, the total length of time that he spoke was six minutes. So he spent half of his time right at the opening,

• 22:03Ed Elson?

  talking about China and what a bad policy this is. I'm not going to play you the full thing he said, but let's just play you a little bit of what he said and let's get your reaction.

• 22:12Speaker 06

  China's AI moves on with or without US chips. It has to compute to train and deploy advanced models. The question is not whether China will have AI. It already does. The question is whether one of the world's largest AI markets will run on American platforms. Shielding Chinese chipmakers from US competition only strengthens them abroad and weakens America's position. Export restrictions have spurred China's innovation and scale. The AI race is not just about chips. It's about which stack the world runs on. As that stack grows to include 6G and quantum, US global infrastructure leadership is at stake. The US has based its policy on the assumption

• 22:56Speaker 06

  that China cannot make AI chips. That assumption was always questionable, and now it's clearly wrong.

• 23:03Ed Elson?

  So just to clarify, at the end there, he did do a bit of, oh, Trump's great, Trump's great. But we're hearing that pretty loud and clear. He said that the policy from the US is wrong. It was based on an assumption that is wrong. Any reactions to what he said there, Scott?

• 23:19Scott Galloway?

  He's got to thread the needle with Trump because he went on the grift tour. He went on the Gulf grift trip, but Tim Cook refused. And I don't think it's any accident that a week later, Trump is having a temper tantrum and levying or threatening to levy tariffs on Apple. So he's, at the same time.

• 23:39Scott Galloway?

  Jensen is really powerful. Jensen, it's not the most valuable company in the world. It kind of embodies US innovation. They're a juggernaut. Jensen is arguably the most powerful person in business right now. I'm of two minds here, and it'd be interesting to have a trade expert because there's a really solid argument for free trade that, okay, if we give them our chips and they don't have the incentive to develop their own chips and their own L L Ms, they end up buying more of our stuff and they don't develop a technical equanimity or technical equivalence that by sequestering them or creating an embargo against China for our most advanced chips, we just gave them sort

• 24:21Scott Galloway?

  of a burning platform to create their own Manhattan project around developing their own chips and their own L L Ms. And in almost no time, they spun up something, kind of the Chinese version of AI. Eighty percent is good for 50% of the price or a lot less. So there's an argument that free trade, that it just makes sense to sell into them. Now, having said that, I just did an interview with Patrick McGee. He had a really interesting point, and that is, Apple, since Apple's gone into China, it has upskilled and trained 24 million people. So it's upskilled and trained in kind of advanced manufacturing capacity, every job to try and pull together all these parts in what is probably the most

• 25:05Scott Galloway?

  complex supply chain in history. And he believes that the echo effect of that, or the spillover, has essentially built the Chinese tech community. The Xiaomi and Huawei would not be what they were without the ecosystem that basically Apple financed in terms of human capital. So the question is, do you do yourself, do you do shareholders a solid in the short term going into China? A hundred percent. But what if Apple had made that same level of investment in, say, Mexico, or kind of friend sharing, and that is countries that we have a less adversarial relationship with? Would that have been a better idea? So I'm of two minds here. I really don't have an answer around, I mean, Jensen is doing what every CEO, he's coming up with thoughtful, earnest reasons why he

• 25:50Scott Galloway?

  wants to get his stock higher, and why he wants bigger markets. So, but I don't know if this is... I think there's really solid arguments on either side. What are your thoughts?

• 26:00Ed Elson?

  I'm totally with you that he makes a really compelling argument and there are compelling arguments on both sides and his point is it's happening anyway. Would you rather they're building this stuff on the American tech stack or the Chinese tech stack? But honestly, I feel like ultimately where this goes is we're talking about national security threats. We're talking about stakes. Basically, we're talking about existential threats here. That's what we're all worried about. The only real solution is that we're friends with China.

• 26:30Scott Galloway?

  I agree.

• 26:31Ed Elson?

  Like, it goes back to what you've said about we need to kiss and make up. It's like, we can, we're sort of, I don't know, we're pinching pennies if we're talking about how to sort of slalom our way through AI chip strategy and a trade relationship in terms of AI with China. If China's an existential threat or a national security threat to the US, like, we've got bigger fish to fry. We need to be friends with China. And now that the AI race is happening, what all we know is both countries are going to develop AI at an exponential pace. And that's a scary concept. So do we want to live in a world where we're friends or adversaries?

• 27:13Scott Galloway?

  What Patrick also said that kind of opened my eyes was he said that US companies are run for profit, whereas the priority for Chinese companies is control.

• 27:23Ed Elson?

  National unity as well, yeah.

• 27:24Scott Galloway?

  They're not as worried about, it's like, if we don't mint as many billionaires, that's fine. We're not, that's not, we're not in the business of minting billionaires. We want companies to be profitable. We want people to make money here. But we're in the business of what we think is best for China, which is that we stay in control. And long term, it's, it's debatable around whether that's not the best strategy for national security and kind of, you know, the flow of IP is one way.

• 27:53Ed Elson?

  We need to get better at that. That, that's, I mean, the IP theft is unbelievable.

• 28:00Scott Galloway?

  Well, Trump's, to his credit, I think his instincts are right on a lot of this stuff. I think there is trade asymmetry.

• 28:05Ed Elson?

  I agree.

• 28:05Scott Galloway?

  And the fact that none of our media companies are allowed in there and we let TikTok into our, you know, there's just some things that just are blatantly wrong. But the way he goes about it, it doesn't make, yeah, it doesn't make any sense.

• 28:20Ed Elson?

  We'll be right back after the break and quickly, as a reminder, we are going daily starting next week and that will only be on the Prof G Markets podcast, not on the Prof G Pod podcast. So be sure to give the Prof G Markets podcast a follow. You'll be getting the most up to date episodes from us and it'll be happening every weekday, Monday through Friday.

• 28:49Scott Galloway?

  Support for the show comes from Superhuman. The pace of modern work can be relentless. You're getting a constant influx of messages from a ton of different apps. You haven't closed all your browser tabs in a year. Everything seems urgent and staying on top of it all feels like an impossible task. Superhuman Go is an AI chat that's always there when you need it, already aware of what you're doing and doesn't ask you to start from zero. Superhuman Go, from the makers of Grammarly, help you be the best version of yourself at work. It handles the repetitive stuff so you can focus on the work that only you can do. Whether you need to summarize an endless email thread or prep for a meeting that's happening in five minutes, Superhuman Go works inside the tools and sites you already use, your browser, inbox, docs, and your project tools. And its AI chat is available on the side of your browser and it's always ready. No

• 29:34Scott Galloway?

  new tabs, no switching apps, no losing your place. This is AI that works with you, not on top of you, so that you have the time and brain space to solve the problems that matter. Check it out. Find out more at superhuman.com.

• 29:51Scott Galloway?

  Support for the show comes from Vanta. As AI adoption grows, so does your company's security risks and requirements. New frameworks, audits, and vendors keep piling on, but your team isn't getting any bigger. Most compliance tools promise automation, but you're really stuck doing all the work by hand, chasing screenshots, validating controls, and playing catch up. When audit season comes around again. Vanta works differently. The regentech trust platform is built to scale with you, not slow you down. With over 1,400 automated tests across 400-plus integrations, Vanta collects evidence and monitors your controls year-round, cutting your audit prep by 82%. Plus, you can access the Vanta agent everywhere you work, whether your team is in Vanta every day or living in tools including Claude or Cursor. Want proof?

• 30:36Scott Galloway?

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• 30:58Scott Galloway?

  Support for the show comes from Vanta. As AI adoption grows, so does your company's security risks and requirements. New frameworks, audits and vendors keep piling on, but your team isn't getting any bigger. Most compliance tools promise automation, but you're really stuck doing all the work by hand, chasing screenshots, validating controls and playing catch-up when audit season comes around again. Vanta works differently. The regentech trust platform is built to scale with you, not slow you down. With over 1,400 automated tests across 400-plus integrations, Vanta collects evidence and monitors your controls year-round, cutting your audit prep by 82%. Plus, you can access the Vanta agent everywhere you work, whether your team is in Vanta every day or living in tools including Claude or Cursor. Want proof?

• 31:43Scott Galloway?

  Over 16,000 fast-growing companies like Ramp, Rider and Harvey save time and resources while scaling fast with Vanta. Learn more at vanta.com/profg and get $1,000 off. That's spelled V-A-N-T-A dot com slash prof G for $1,000 off.

• 32:10Ed Elson?

  We're back with Prof you Markets. After more than 17 months of delays, the acquisition of US Steel by the Japanese company Nippon Steel is finally moving forward. President Trump gave it his stamp of approval, calling the deal a "partnership" rather than an acquisition. And he also noted that Nippon will invest another $14 billion in US Steel over the next 14 months. The deal had faced strong opposition from both Trump and Biden due to union concerns and national security risks. But support grew after the addition of a golden share provision, giving the US government power to approve key board appointments and prevent cuts to production levels. Scott, we've been following this story for a while.

• 32:51Ed Elson?

  We talked about it back in September when Biden blocked the deal. You'll remember Nippon tried to buy it and then Biden said no. He cited the national security concerns, which was fake. All the reports said, no, there's no national security risk. The reason he blocked it was because the union workers who worked for US Steel, they didn't like it. They were concerned they would lose their jobs and Biden wanted their support. So he said, no, you can't do the deal and he blocked it. So let's listen to your comments from back then.

• 33:24Scott Galloway?

  This is a mix of xenophobia, ego and pandering to unions. This is stupid. If they were making air filtration systems or airbags, they'd let the deal go through. But because steel for some reason is seen as Pittsburgh and a part of America, we need steel to build buildings. They want to get in the way of it. I'm sure unions are trying to convince them that this is a bad idea. This deal should absolutely go through.

• 33:46Ed Elson?

  Now we're at a place, I mean, what was interesting was Trump agreed with Biden throughout all of this. He was very against Nippon buying US Steel. I think for the same reasons you just outlined there. But now he's letting it go through so long as the government has some level of control. And that control is coming in the form of this golden share. So that's where we are today. The deal will happen. Nippon will buy US Steel, but the US government gets a golden share. Your reaction, Scott?

• 34:16Scott Galloway?

  There's no reason, there's no sort of strategic threat here. And the only argument is, well, our steel industry has strategic importance in case we all of a sudden need to make tanks overnight. Fine, Japan is a very close ally. In addition, This has such outweighed rhetoric versus the actual importance of this company. This company employs 24,000 people. It employs- Only 14,000 are in America, by the way. Is that right? Okay, Lululemon employs 38,000 people. So it takes more people to figure out yoga pants than figure out US Steel. It just- And my understanding is Japan or Nippon Steel is talking about making huge investments, upgrading the technology and potentially hiring tens of thousands, the number I saw

• 34:58Scott Galloway?

  as they're planning over the long term to increase employment at US Steel by up to 70,000 people. That's what they said. Yep. So your security risks are somewhat a swash because Japan is a fantastic ally. I mean, we're building, our steel consumption builds the Navy ships that guard much of Japan. So they have a vested interest in maintaining a very strong alliance. The other thing, in some ways, the Trump administration is more progressive and liberal than Democrats because this one golden share thing where they get a vote, that is the definition of socialism. The notion that somehow bureaucrats know how to run individual companies. The way you have a golden share or government influence is you have systemic regulation.

• 35:43Scott Galloway?

  But to decide all of a sudden that, oh, Stephen Miller or Peter Navarro knows how to run a fucking steel conglomerate, it's the definition of socialism. It's like, if you want, if you want laws or input into how an industry or private business behaves, you pass laws that apply to everyone. But this is not, quite frankly, this is not an important company. It's just the rhetoric surrounding it and some of the jingoism here has manifested itself. And pat ourselves on the back, we got this right. We said this would eventually go through because at the end of the day, markets win. The reason that Texas now produces more wind power than any other state in the world

• 36:27Scott Galloway?

  is the economics around wind finally makes sense. They make more sense in many instances than wildcatting for fossil fuels. The markets and money wins. At the end of the day, global trade will win, tariffs will come down, there'll be some blips, but the arc of justice bends towards Benjamins. And this, the same thing is happening here. This made sense for both parties. And I'm glad to see it's going through, but this nonsense around a golden share, that just shows that in some ways, the Trump administration is much more socialist than any Democrat out there. If Bernie Sanders said, I want to, I want the government to have control over Nvidia, that we should have a say in just this one company, their,

• 37:12Scott Galloway?

  their hair would be on fire. Like, oh, there goes the socialist.

• 37:15Ed Elson?

  Just to be clear, this isn't without precedent. We have had the government stepping in and owning stakes in companies before. And I'll just go through some examples. In 2008, the government bought a 92% stake in AIG. In 2009, they bought stakes in GM and Chrysler during COVID. They bought not stakes, but warrants in many of the airline companies like Delta and United and Southwest. But in each of those cases, the government was intervening to prevent some sort of structural collapse in the economy. Like with AIG, it was a response to the financial crisis. With GM and Chrysler, it's to prevent the auto industry from going under. With the airlines, it's because we're in the middle

• 37:56Ed Elson?

  of a pandemic and no one could fly. And so this is a very different situation where there's no real crisis at hand. And the only hot button issue here is like this prospect of manufacturing jobs potentially being outsourced into, I guess, Japan. But even still, as you mentioned, Nippon made this commitment that they're going to keep the jobs in America. And actually, they're going to add jobs. They said, we're not going to outsource any of these jobs. And as you also point out, it's not that many jobs. It's 14,000 people. And you compare that to what we saw in like 2009 with the auto industry, where it was literally millions of workers whose jobs are at stake. And in this case, it's at

• 38:38Ed Elson?

  most a few thousand. So, yeah, I guess it does beg this more libertarian question, which is when is it appropriate for the government to step in? And it's just so interesting, as you say, because this has been the big issue for the Republican Party, where they believe that Democrats, and perhaps rightly believe, the Democrats are way too quick to intervene. They are, something happens, business happens, and the only way they feel comfortable is if they say, well, we just want to have our hands on it. We want some level of control, i.e. we want a golden share. And here we are with a $14 billion acquisition for a company that is not even remotely systemic

• 39:21Ed Elson?

  to the economy and the productivity of this nation. Maybe it used to be, but certainly not anymore. And the Republicans and Trump say, the only way we're down for this is if government controls it. So Scott, how would you answer that question? When, when is it appropriate? When is it right for the government to step in? And I assume, I mean, I guess you already said it, the government should not be stepping in here.

• 39:48Scott Galloway?

  I still believe you let businesses go out of business. The one I fucking hate is them bailing out the airlines where the CEOs had taken about 150 million in compensation and had done all these share buybacks with their excess cash when things were going well through the odds. And then, and then the COVID crisis comes along and they decide, we're all in this together and we need handouts. So when you have capitalism on the way up and socialism on the way down, what you have is neither. What you have is cronyism. So I'm a big fan, we have very strong bankruptcy laws of letting companies go out of business. As a matter of fact, the thing that really screwed your generation is that we didn't let more businesses go out of business in COVID.

• 40:31Scott Galloway?

  We should have let, you should have been able, granted you were too young, but your older sister should have been able to walk into a restaurant or Brooklyn real estate in Manhattan or Brooklyn and say, this is selling for 40 cents on the dollar because the baby boomer got fucked, as happens regularly in economic cycles, which transfers capital from the incumbents to the entrants. That is a natural part of the economic cycle. But instead we said, no, bail everybody out. Bail, do you realize I was working at, I had just started Section, the kind of our AI upscaling company for the enterprise. And we just started, we just raised, what did we raise? We raised $30 million from General Catalyst.

• 41:15Scott Galloway?

  And our CFO came in and said, said to me, sign this paperwork. I'm like, what is this? We're going to get $260,000 from the CARE Act. And I'm like, what? She said, yeah, there, any company, if you just sign here and agree to not lay off employees, you get a certain amount. We were going to get $260,000. And to my board's credit, we looked around the table and we said, we're all wealthy. This company is overfunded. We're not taking the after school budget of a large public high school. And we said, no, and I granted, I'm doing a lot of virtue signaling here, but this is a true story. And guess what, folks? They never audited anybody. And then there's fucking Shake Shack taking tens of millions of dollars and they rightfully get called out for it. But basically, they bailed out every incumbent.

• 41:59Scott Galloway?

  And the beautiful thing about the markets and capitalism is we believe in winners and losers. And with losers, there's opportunities. Specifically, there's opportunities for young people who want to come in and buy stuff on the cheap, buy houses that have gone through disruption. They want to go into Miami real estate and have their chance to pick up a condo for a hundred thousand in the design district and have it be worth six hundred thousand 10 years later. But since, essentially since the Great Financial Recession, the incumbents, i.e. old people, refused to let any one industry fail. In my opinion, it's nothing but, again, another transfer of wealth from the young to the old. I absolutely think you should let these companies go out of business.

• 42:40Ed Elson?

  Or you just, I mean, in this case, just let business do its thing. I mean, don't jump at the bit to get involved as government. And the argument that you always hear whenever there's some level of government intervention, which I think is a good argument, is this is a slippery slope. You know, if you're going to justify government intervention here, then what else are you going to justify government intervention for? And if we're justifying government intervention for an ally buying a basically small to mid-cap American company because they're Japanese and because the company is old and gives

• 43:23Ed Elson?

  off vibes of, you know, patriotic America and sort of reminds us of the golden age, and that's our justification for the intervention? Not national security risk, which was proven there is none. There's no national security risk here. If that's the reason... That's really a slippery slope.

• 43:42Scott Galloway?

  Chipotle has 130,000 employees. So Chipotle has 10 times the number of employees as a US steel. So that's the real existential threat is if something happens to Chipotle. Look, I mean, just look at history. Business people can't run the country or failed business people aren't very good at running the country. And then Devin Nunes, a congressperson, is running True Social. How's that going? It's a different skill set. And when industry or when politicians get drunk on their power and start believing that they can run business, you lose the violence. The key here is the violence of full body contact competition where people have a vested

• 44:23Scott Galloway?

  stake and they see downside and upside and they have greed and fear and they constantly make thousands of decisions every day to offer an amazing product and do their best to put their competitors out of business. That creates great companies that have appeal overseas, grow their markets, better profits, and hopefully more tax revenue that creates a base for future companies. But when governments get involved, whether it's the UK subsidizing DeLorean or Obama subsidizing, what was it, Solyndra, it usually doesn't end well.

• 44:56Ed Elson?

  We'll be right back with a look at Neuralink's funding round. And if you've enjoyed the show so far, hit follow and leave us a review on Prof G Markets.

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• 46:11Scott Galloway?

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• 47:24Ed Elson?

  We're back with Prof G Markets. Elon Musk's brain implant company, Neuralink, is raising $600 million in a new funding round that values the startup at $9 billion. That is more than double its $3.5 billion valuation from late 2023. The company is currently in early human trials of its implant designed to help people with spinal cord injuries. Three patients have received the implant so far, and more volunteers are in the pipeline. However, the device is still far from commercial release. So Scott, just in terms of the valuation.

• 47:59Ed Elson?

  This company is still so early, it's probably not even worth talking or thinking about the valuation. There's no real way to value a company like this that isn't generating revenue. So I think the thing that I'd like to focus on is just the technology.

• 48:15Ed Elson?

  And I'd like to get your reaction because I think the technology is absolutely incredible. Essentially, what it allows you to do as of today, this Neuralink chip.

• 48:26Ed Elson?

  And this isn't a promise that they've made in the view, this is something that is happening right now. Basically, instead of using your hand to move a mouse that moves a cursor on a screen, instead of using your fingers to type words on a keyboard, this technology allows you to do all of that just with your brain and with your thoughts. And what they found is, I mean, it's essentially connecting your brain directly to a computer interface. And they found that the best use case right now for this technology is to help people who are physically paralyzed. And there's one, there's one guy, they installed this chip into this guy who has ALS, which basically means that you can't move anything except your eyes.

• 49:10Ed Elson?

  Like, he can't talk, he's completely immobile. And he put out a video explaining the experience. And I just want to play you a short clip that I think kind of demonstrates how this technology works and why I believe this is just incredible.

• 49:26Speaker 08

  Hi, I am Brad Smith. I'm the third person in the world to receive the Neuralink brain implant. I'm also the first person with ALS and the first non-verbal, which means that I rely on it for all communication. I am making this video using the brain-computer interface to control the mouse on my MacBook Pro. This is the first video edited with the Neuralink and maybe the first edited with a BCI. This is my old voice narrating this video cloned by AI from recordings before I lost my voice.

• 49:56Ed Elson?

  The full video is on YouTube and anyone could go search it up and check it out. And you see how this thing actually works. But in short, this guy was unable to move or speak or communicate with anyone. He has a fully functioning brain, except for he cannot move any parts of his body. And this has basically unlocked his ability to communicate with people.

• 50:19Ed Elson?

  I'm just like blown away and inspired by the technology.

• 50:25Ed Elson?

  More of this now.

• 50:27Scott Galloway?

  Kara Swisher calls a good Elon. This is a good Elon. You want someone with this type of vision and ability to attract capital, working on some of our biggest problems. This is a big problem. I have someone in my life that struggles with multiple sclerosis and is fine now, but I wonder what's that going to be like in 10 or 20 years? And so the idea of doing, you know, we have technology, we have a ton of technology or implants for hearts, right? Pacemakers that send a shock that keep you essentially keep people alive or keep them from going into VTAC. So it would make sense that at some point we'll have implants into the brain. By the way, I had a brain implant, but I got one of the cheaper ones and anytime someone turns on the microwave, I piss myself.

• 51:14Scott Galloway?

  That's good.

• 51:15Ed Elson?

  Is there a joke? I mean, why the microwave?

• 51:18Scott Galloway?

  Someone turns on the microwave or some sort of waves go out and I piss myself. That's, that's good. God, yeah. Jesus. You're so big time now. You're like getting so intense.

• 51:30Ed Elson?

  No, I'm just trying to understand you. All I want is to understand you. Yeah.

• 51:34Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, that we're going to need a bigger boat if your goal is to understand me. So, look, I think this is great and one of my, my glass half empty side can't help it. Every time I used to get excited about the X project or Peter Diamandis stuff around the singularity and I like Peter a lot, but I remember on 60 Minutes 10 or 15 years ago, them doing a tour around this facility where they were growing ears and like, oh, no doubt within 10 years, we're going to be able to grow human limbs using stem cells. I find this stuff just takes a lot, a lot longer. I think this is more like autonomous driving

• 52:14Scott Galloway?

  from Elon than from Waymo. And that is, I think the promise is super exciting. I think it's going to take a lot longer than people think. Does that mean it's not fantastic that he's able to raise capital, cheap capital and do things like this? Yeah. And even if it's 10, 20, 30 years out, if ever, I hope is a wonderful thing, right? It gives people a reason to try and stay in shape and try and stay alive and thinking, you know, at some point I might be able to walk again or, you know, use my.

• 52:46Scott Galloway?

  Communication skills again. So I don't think, I kind of think there's nothing not to like here.

• 52:51Ed Elson?

  I think you're right about the timeline and that's often what happens with these moonshot technology bets is there's, there's a lot of hype.

• 53:01Ed Elson?

  And then, I mean, by the way, he's, he's made a lot of these annoying claims as well. He's, he sort of throws out stupid numbers out there. Oh, in the next five years, we're gonna have thirty to forty people with, and it's all, it's all bullshit and I wish he wouldn't do that. But in terms of the timeline, it's sort of like, the way you speed up the timeline is with capital. And I guess it just annoys me that there's, there's this incredible technology out there like Neuralink. And then I compare it to all of the stupid technology out there. In my view, that would be crypto. You know, the difference between this technology that literally transforms people's lives, that gives them the ability to walk and talk again.

• 53:46Ed Elson?

  Versus, oh, this thing allows for more transparency in the blockchain, except it's actually not even creating more transparency because everyone's anonymous. Like, it's deregulation in the form that is thinly veiled as technological innovation. And I guess it's just, it's frustrating because it's like, I agree with you, the timeline, it takes a while. But the way that you fix that is by pouring capital into these kinds of projects. And I guess I just find it frustrating that there's not more attention. Why is Elon spending all of his time dealing with Twitter and, you know, whatever he's doing at Twitter and whatever he's doing at X, which is quite frankly, a gigantic waste of time.

• 54:31Ed Elson?

  And whatever he's doing at Doge, which turned out to be completely useless, they're now just getting rid of it. A hundred fifty billion dollars in projected cuts, which was then just reversed in the form of a hundred fifty billion dollars in the defense budget. I mean, I like what Kara Swisher says there. This is the good Elon. Why aren't we spending more time, more capital, more attention, more effort on technology like this that has transformative and powerful effects on people's lives and things that can really, really benefit society long term?

• 55:00Scott Galloway?

  I think it's important that we know what my DJ or personal trainer thinks about vaccines. I think X is super important.

• 55:08Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, like, you know, we, what's that adage? We thought we were going to fly in cars and we ended up with 140 characters. The market goes where there's money to be made. And there was money to be made in capturing people's attention, rewiring the brain of the young male or female such that they needed that constant Dopa hit and could get it on a screen. That's what's essentially is, everyone calls it an attention economy. It's an addiction economy. It's just attention is the metric, as opposed to investing more and more in healthcare. Now, what the pharmaceutical industry would say is that, no, we're an example of capitalism at work because if you can turn someone HIV negative, they will pay a lot of money for that and so will their insurance company.

• 55:51Scott Galloway?

  And that creates a tremendous amount of capital for wonderful research. And what I would argue back is that without government research through, you know, the National Institutes of Health or the CDC, you're, you're going to see a substantial slowing in these types of breakthrough incredible technologies that benefit humanity because typically these types of breakthrough technologies don't make economic sense in the short run. And I think Neuralink wouldn't make, be able to raise money had it not been for the fact that Elon is attached to it. So the strongest argument I think you could make in favor of why it's important to have a guy like Elon Musk is his ability to, his brand and awareness and ability to attract

• 56:32Scott Galloway?

  capital results in a company that probably would have a difficult time getting this type of capital if he wasn't directly involved.

• 56:40Ed Elson?

  And by the way, that's Bezos's justification for Blue Origin as well, which I actually think is, is the right one. He wants to get involved in the business that is the most capital intensive with the longest time horizon because as the richest guy in the world, he's the only one who can really do it. I mean, that's sort of his thinking with, it used to be that the government took on that role with NASA. He's like, well, the government isn't going to do that. I've got all this money. I'm going to be the new NASA. And I know you've had issues with that. I actually think it's a great justification. And I think it's, it's true. Elon Musk is in the position, he's the one that can do this because he's so rich and because he can raise so much money.

• 57:23Ed Elson?

  So they should be going after the most capital intensive projects, which have less immediate time horizons for returns.

• 57:31Ed Elson?

  Thought experiment, would you invest in this?

• 57:32Scott Galloway?

  Neuralink?

• 57:33Ed Elson?

  Yeah.

• 57:34Scott Galloway?

  No, not at seven billion. I don't understand enough about the business.

• 57:39Scott Galloway?

  I mean, it would be a trade. I think this company might change the world. But I think on a, an IRR basis, it's going to take a lot longer than people think. If I were to invest, it would be under the belief that in the private markets, I'd be able to double it in two years and get out.

• 57:57Ed Elson?

  That's why they're not getting funded because as you rightly point out, it's too long of a time horizon.

• 58:03Scott Galloway?

  I just think this stuff is so incredibly.

• 58:07Scott Galloway?

  And to a certain extent, the, you know, the Bezos speech that he gave that, that you recited is a little bit like his speech of why he's moving to Florida because he wants to spend more time with his pop pop. And the reality, in my opinion, in my opinion, he's setting, he's sending Katy Perry and Gayle King into space to beta test his launch vehicle for satellites. And if Katy Perry blows up, no one's really going to miss her. So he gets to, he gets to beta test.

• 58:37Ed Elson?

  Can someone clip that and put that on every social media platform?

• 58:42Scott Galloway?

  I'm convinced aliens replaced her. That is not the Katy Perry I know. I don't know if you've seen her performing recently, but something's gone wrong there. Anyways, I don't think he's doing it for all mankind. I don't think Bezos is doing it for all mankind. And he's the only one that can answer. I think he's hoping that his project Kuiper, which we've talked about, is going to be a competitor to Starlink. I think this is again.

• 59:02Ed Elson?

  Rich people wanting to make money. That's fair.

• 59:04Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, and that's fine. That's, it's an important part of capitalism.

• 59:08Ed Elson?

  Let's take a look at the week ahead. We'll see factory orders on the US trade deficit for April, and we'll also see the unemployment rate for May. Scott, any predictions?

• 59:17Scott Galloway?

  I just think this taco movement is so interesting that I think, I think you're going to see a bunch of Trump tantrums where he'll just make these outrageous claims around tariffs and the market is going to begin to yawn. The market is going to stop and I, and you saw Apple go below 200. I think Apple comes back, not to where it was probably, but essentially all of the, all of the Trump trade, all of the Trump tariff reduction or hits or dents that some stocks have taken, those stocks recover. And taco, if you will, the taco phenomena, the market is wising up to it the same way. As you pointed out, the market is wising up to this Bitcoin exchange arb that is really,

• 59:59Scott Galloway?

  there is no arb there. It's kind of a sleight of hands that you're going to see a bunch of ridiculous statements around massively increasing tariffs where certain stocks should absolutely crash and, you know, they won't.

• 1:00:15Ed Elson?

  This episode was produced by Claire Miller and engineered by Benjamin Spencer. Our associate producer is Alison Weiss. Mia Salvario is our research lead. Isabella Kinsel is our research associate. Dan Shalon is our intern. Drew Burrows is our technical director and Catherine Dillon is our executive producer. Thank you for listening to Prof G Markets from the Vox Media Podcast Network. Join us on Thursday for our conversation with Robert Armstrong, only on Prof G Markets. Taco trade.

• 1:01:18Speaker 09

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• 1:01:49Speaker 10

  This podcast is supported by Anthropic, the public benefit corporation behind Claude. Everyone's got a hard question about AI. Anthropic was built to surface those questions and share what it finds along the way because there's hope in hard questions. Ask yours at claude.ai/spotify and keep thinking. That's claude.ai/spotify.