Walk us through why their earnings are so significant.

Well, this isn't just a tech story at this point.

It's increasingly a financial story.

So, uh, like you said, Nvidia's been the bellwether for chip demand for some time now, and for fourteen straight quarters it has beat Wall Street's expectations in terms of its profits.

But what's different about this time around is that Nvidia is increasingly shoring up weak points in the market for AI.

It is investing in startups such as Poolside, which is aimed at developing a powerful AI model.

It also took a stake last week in Cloverleaf Infrastructure, and earlier this month it put out this plan with six really big Wall Street firms to finance something like five hundred billion dollars worth of loans in which Nvidia will provide something of a backstop for potential customers going forward.

Should we be expecting to see something similar on Wednesday?

But what was interesting to me, and I just wanted your thoughts around this and the stats around it, it looks like the people though, his supporters or followers who are kind of investing in his sort of crypto, they're not making as much money themselves, are they? You know, if you try and copy Trump or you try and get into Trump crypto, that's not as profitable as owning the Trump crypto, is it?

Yeah, I mean, a lot of the stuff has tanked in value.

But I guess what I would say, and this is very difficult to suss out, is if you look at the folks who have put money into this stuff, there's surely a large chunk of them who are Trump supporters.

They want to aid him in some financial way.

They want to buy into the brand.

Maybe they believe in it.

Maybe they think of it as some sort of political donation.

Hmm.

But when outside of that, when you're looking in this, all of your reporting, what is the thing that stick- sticks out the most to you that the American people need to understand about this?

Well, first and foremost is just the scale of the money-making that we're talking about here.

Something like $800 million from one crypto project launched by the president and his son's World Liberty Financial, as well as more than $600 million from a meme coin that essentially spiked in value, then quickly evaporated in a matter of days, if not weeks.

Um, you mentioned how some investors in some of these projects were duped out of their money, more or less, but I would like to sort of introduce another bucket of potential investors as well.

There were, of course, political followers of the president who wanted to, you know, bet on the Trump brand, so to speak.

But additionally, there was investors who were trying to curry favor with the president, either to get access to administration officials or, as my colleagues reported earlier last year, um, to buy an equity stake in World Liberty Financial.

They reported that a UAE royal actually helped invest in one of these equity deals in World Liberty Financial for hundreds of millions of dollars, while at the same time was seeking access to tightly guarded US AI chips.

Mm-hmm

Is he proud of it? Or did he actually do something the law requires?

Well, despite all of the sort of moves against transparency by the federal government in recent years, one thing that we still do have going for us in America is that public officials, federal officials still do have to publish periodic reports into their financial holdings as well as their transactions.

So President Trump, for example, he files an annual report once a year.

This is what we have that came to us on Tuesday.

And it's this 900 page leviathan of information that sort of spans all of his stock trades, all of his capital gains, all of his stakes in various companies throughout his empire, everything down to a Screen Actors Guild pension that he still has that pays him out about $6,500 a month.

That is all in this docket of information that comes once per year.

And from my understanding, talking to ethics officials, he has to report everything in that.

Okay, David, can you fact-check some of that for us? Has the stock market really done well enough to account for this jump in earnings? Yeah.

Can you comment on that? A- and, you know, what other issues does that raise for you?

Right.

So I'm not a tax analyst, but from my understanding of the deal with the IRS, there was some limitation of future IRS audits of Trump or people connected to him, perhaps his, his family.

So that obviously raises a ton of questions for your point, Pat, about if and how they will pay taxes on this.

That said, uh, generally speaking, extremely wealthy individuals, as you probably know, they oftentimes employ what are called family offices in addition to entire legal teams or teams of accountants whose sole job is to minimize their tax bills.

So one example of this, as we saw in these financial disclosures released this week, Trump reported a surge of stock trading over the past year or two.

And talking to people in, on Wall Street in recent weeks who have looked through some of these disclosures, these are thousands and thousands of st- stock trades.

Tell us a little bit about what you heard from folks and, and how they're feeling about the fact that this coin is underwater.

David, why are tech stocks hurting in particular?

One of the big catalysts that investors are citing is the expectation for higher interest rates from the US Federal Reserve.

The new Fed chairman, Kevin Warsh, last week in his first appearance as chair was unexpectedly hawkish in his commentary, basically suggesting that the US Fed might actually keep rates steady if not raise them in response to above target inflation.

And due to the fact that many of these tech names that we follow every day are increasingly issuing debt in order to build out data centers, fund all their computing operations, the higher interest rates could really impact their operations in a really big way, and ultimately impact how profitable those companies are in the years ahead.

Some of the companies hit hardest today, Micron and SpaceX, why those in particular?

SpaceX has been continuing its pullback since its post-IPO pop.

At one point today, shares were actually trading below where they were initially issued during the IPO.

Stocks like that are inherently volatile, and SpaceX just has a tremendous valuation vis-a-vis what its actual business fundamentals are.

Uh, David, w- what were you able to find at this point in your investigation?

Well, we've been accustomed during the Iran war for President Trump's Truth Socials to move financial markets, which isn't surprising.

But what's surprising is that we've increasingly become accustomed to some of these markets moving even before President Trump posts on his social media platform.

March 23rd was one of the first big instances of this, and what we found in the course of our reporting is that there was this massive surge in trading volumes about 15 minutes before a Trump tweet deescalating some of the conflict in Iran.

And the CFTC has at least three firms of interest as part of its inquiry into this surge in trading volumes.

They include a London-based investment firm.

They include a fund with ties to a Chinese trading outfit, as well as the trading arm from one of the largest oil and gas companies in the world.

But this is such a specific play on oil markets that is targeted on whatever the next Strait of Hormuz news is.

Right.

Um, this could be a coincidence, but the CFTC is investigating whether it might not be.

So we have three firms of interest.

One's a London-based investment manager.

One is a fund tied to a Chinese trading outfit, and one's a trading arm of one of the largest oil and gas companies in the world.

Now, we don't know exactly why the CFTC is interested in these three firms, whether they're interested in the, the actual trading these firms did, or maybe these firms have additional information about other firms in the market.

But what investigators are coming up against is this really complex array of information, and they're working with firms that might trade manually.

Are they investigating themselves?

David, walk us through the details of what you found out.

So on March 23rd, as you said, there was this incredible surge in futures trading in the oil market at about 6.50 AM, 6.51 AM as well.

15 minutes or so later, Donald Trump posted on Truth Social that he was going to postpone strikes in the energy structure across Iran.

The price of crude oil cratered after that by as much as 13%.

Now, this has raised a lot of questions within the oil market.

Why were traders trading crude futures at that time? Why were they selling oil before this huge drop down in prices federal regulators as we reported have three firms of interest in their inquiry thus far they include a london-based investment manager a firm with links to a chinese trading outfit as well the trading arm of one of the largest oil companies in the world and depending on where you were in the market on that day if you were on the right side or wrong side of these bets you could be profiting or losing by 10 million dollars or more and so regulators are now asking a bunch of questions about why firms were positioning the way they were at such a fortuitous time, and potentially if they have more information about different market participants potentially trading counterparties and such that could give us a better sense of what happened and why.

What do we actually know, David, about the president's trades and profits in office?

Well, it depends which part of the business empire that you're looking at, Wolf.

David, explain the divide.

divide.Well, with any oil shock and any sort of inflationary shock, there are winners and losers to that shock.

We've written extensively about the surge in gasoline and diesel prices in recent weeks.

But what I wanted to do is actually try to put an estimated price tag on what Americans have cumulatively spent on these types of fuels during the war with Iran compared to a year ago.

And what we found, based on federal demand figures and daily pricing data, is the price tag is about $45 billion so far, compared to what Americans were cumulatively paying last year.

Now, that disproportionately hits consumers, and especially consumers that spend a lot on gas and diesel.

So if you're thinking about lower or middle income people who have to drive to work, spend more of their disposable income on fuel to fuel up their cars, those people are bearing the brunt of the pain from this sort of thing.

Explain the gas station impact here.

Shortages are also beginning to take their toll on other US trade allies.

If you're talking about major trading partners to the US, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, we get a lot of our both consumer electronics from those countries, as well as the chips that are fundamental to the AI boom as well.

And those chips, the plants that the chips are made in require both a lot of natural gas for power, and they also require a lot of helium to help create the chips.

Both of those sources of supply have been severely disruptive.

Europe is next.

Europe is a huge energy importer.

You have economies that are, are quite industrial like Germany and Italy.

So if you look at the moment that we're in, Dave, would you say, what? The worst is still ahead?

Is that because perhaps the owners of those fuel stations paid a lot more for the fuel and that they have to kind of sell that off before they can start charging less for gas?

Yeah, it's funny.

It's one of these things that anyone who's lived through an energy shock kind of feels in their bones.

They see the gas stations raise prices pretty, pretty fast and then things tend to taper off more slowly over the course of time.

The reason why that is, is because especially in a situation like a war or a shock of some sort, the wholesale cost of gasoline rises so quickly on the front end that it really hits the profit margins of gas stations.

They aren't able to raise prices fast enough in some cases to keep up with those wholesale costs.

So over the course of time, after the shock recedes, they have these more expensive supplies on hand and they want to recoup some of those profit margins that they lost on the front end.

fuel oil prices to the gas station.

David Uberti covers markets and the economy for The Wall Street Journal.

President Trump has said that he could end this war at any time, but he's not the only person who has a vote in when this war ends.

Iran has shown that it has the capability to effectively close the Strait of Hormuz.

It has struck tankers across the region.

It has raised the cost of shipping in a huge way.

And the tanker owners who actually operate the ships that carry crude oil that becomes your and my gasoline or diesel, they don't want to take the risk of being hit by a missile, being hit by a drone, being hit by a naval mine or an Iranian submarine.

Uberti says it puts the country in an enviable position in this war so far, but that could all change.

I would say right now we are at peak uncertainty.

And who is benefiting from this huge run-up in oil prices?

The winners in the market are the companies that produce oil that are not in the line of fire.

So if you're an oil producer in West Texas or New Mexico, you are about to get a windfall profit from some of these price increases that we are seeing, and obviously the longer it goes on, the more that will boost their bottom lines.

The losers are everyone else who consumes oil, construction crews, manufacturers, big farming companies.

Oil and all of the byproducts that are created when we produce it go into basically every facet of the modern economy.

In addition, natural gas is a very key input for a lot of manufacturers around the world.

They are going to experience price increases, if not already.

What are some of the political ramifications of that if people are already starting to feel this at the pump, and then it just potentially gets even more exacerbated as this conflict continues?

David, give us numbers.

So over the last couple of years, something like 200,000 jobs in the manufacturing sector have disappeared.

And that has come at a time in which across U.S. presidential administrations, Trump 1, Biden, and then Trump 2, have really thrown a lot of money and energy into U.S. industrial policy.

They have made the revitalization of U.S. manufacturing a key plank of economic agenda.

But all of that said, despite all of those attempts, we've seen some weakened factory activity over the last couple of years or so.

And the Census Bureau actually estimates that the construction spending on new manufacturing facilities has actually fallen each of Trump's nine first months in office.

So we're really in this sort of treading water territory where Despite the fact there is a lot of support from Washington for a lot of these manufacturers on the margins, things are getting a little bit weaker.

So why is that with with all the effort behind it? Why would we see this weakened factory activity?

What are the roadblocks folks are contending with?

The impacts of tariffs are very disparate across the manufacturing sector.

If you own an aluminum or steel plant, you love tariffs on aluminum or steel because it boosts prices for aluminum and steel.

But if you're the various types of suppliers for automakers or infrastructure firms or whatnot that use those types of materials in the various types of widgets or equipment that you actually produce, and you need to import some of those materials, then your costs are going up, and that's actually compressing your margins in many cases and making you scramble for supplies.

I spoke with a number of businesses who are grappling with some of these impacts, two of which are based in North Carolina.

One of which was called Insteel.

They have been forced to import more steel because of tariffs.

And yet I suspect if we look big picture, we might get some clearer answers about why it's proving so difficult to bring back a golden age of American manufacturing.

Why don't we start off there? Um, talk about the significance of Chevron in Venezuela, and President Trump saying he didn't consult Congress, but he did talk to corporate executives before and after the US attack on Venezuela and the abduction of the President.

Right.

Well, US oil companies have had a long history in Venezuela over the course of decades, ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips, Chevron, a number of them left Venezuela in the mid-2000s after the government nationalized many assets in that sector.

But Chevron has been the sole player to continue navigating this sort of political and economic environment in Venezuela since then, more recently operating on a, on a license agreement with the US government to basically get around US sanctions.

Now, investors on Wall Street believe because of that imprint within Venezuela right now, Chevron is potentially best positioned to capitalize on any new opportunities to come within Venezuela.

That said, it's an extremely long road to any of that happening.

In addition to the geology, there's that question with Venezuela, they have very large oil reserves.

Um, and at the same time, President Trump issuing an executive order that would prevent states or local entities from regulating anything related to data centers.

David, what are we seeing?

So we're seeing sort of a ramping up of scrutiny from folks, including sort of traditional Democrats, people like Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, as well as more left wing senators, people like Bernie Sanders as well.

There's a growing amount of concern about the potential economic pressures that come with data center development.

particularly as it relates to utility bills.

Americans' electric bills have gone up across the country in recent years.

And while there are varied reasons for why that has been happening, data centers' power demand is quite voracious, and it's really putting a lot of strain on different parts of the electric grid.

So what we are seeing right now is actually sort of this emerging collision between two of the most important forces in American life right now.

So the ones building their own, are they impacting, say, consumer bills or not necessarily?

Why is this happening now?

As you pointed out, there has been no economic calamity this year that has driven gold prices higher.

This is-- makes it really unusual compared to history, and it stems in part from what's happening in the White House.

As we know, President Donald Trump has tried to reorder global trade, which has had a lot of turbulent effects on what the US dollar is doing in global markets.

More recently, though, gold has really rallied as inflation expectations have risen.

Inflation, as we know, if it goes up over the course of time, it eats into companies' profits.

It basically makes your dollars worth less over the course of time.

So who is buying up all this gold?