President trump tweeting about Jerome Powell again following the fed chairs comments the last hour. Morgan, the president continues to tweet in realtime im reading some of these tweets for the very first time. I can tell you, just a second ago, i was in the west wing and saw Peter Navarro and Robert Lighthizer, just standing just outside of the oval office, presumably set to go in and meet with the president to talk about this chinese retaliation this morning. They didnt talk to me, so i dont know exactly what theyre up to there, but they are within feet of the oval office as of a couple of seconds ago. So the president tweeting, within the past couple of seconds about china, responding here, saying, our country has lost, stupidly, trillions of dollars with china over many years. They have stolen our intellectual property at a rate of hundreds of billions of dollars a year and they want to continue i wont let that happen. We dont need china and frankly would be far better off without them so the president saying here that stealing intellectual property must stop hes saying that American Companies need to start looking for an alternative to china, including bringing Companies Home and making products in the United States. The president saying here, i will be responding to china tariffs this afternoon this is a great opportunity for the United States. Also, i am ordering all carriers, including fedex, amazon, u. P. S. , and the post office to search for and refuse all deliveries of fentanyl from china or anywhere else the president saying our economy, because of our gains in the last two and a half years is much larger than that of china we will keep it that way so based on the positions of all the principles here over the past couple of minutes, its entirely possible the president tweeting that with Peter Navarro and Robert Lighthizer by his side now inside the west wing. Dont know exactly where all of those players are, but i just saw them outside the Oval Office Just a couple of minutes ago and then the president tweeted this. So thats the reaction from the president of the United States, sort of a belligerent one, but also promising a further respond this afternoon so belligerent in terms of rhetoric well see if its belligerent in terms of policy this afternoon, morgan eamon, thank you for that what a remarkable series of tweets from the president a moment ago fed chair powell, of course, saying in a speech today, there are no rule books on trade wars, as china initiates more than or retaliates with tariffs on 75 billion worth of u. S. Goods. Our next guests latest oped says that trump is losing the trade war. For more on that and the fed, lets bring in former council of economic advisers chair jason furman live from jackson hole. Jason, thanks for the time today. Appreciate it. Great to be with you. Im not sure if youve been able to see the president s tweet, but this one line our great American Companies are hereby ordered to start immediately looking for an alternative to china including to start bringing your Companies Home and making your products in the usa. What does that mean when the president is ordering u. S. Companies to change their supply chains it Means Nothing. So many of the words in so many of his tweets Means Nothing and it means absolutely nothing. What we should be doing is making america a more attractive place to invest and then well have more Companies Investing here other than china. Ordering them to stop just Means Nothing. So how do you make america a more attractive place to invest . Weve seen tax reform how else having more stability and predictability the type of trade policy weve had tariffs on one day, tariffs off the next day, the type of macro policy, payroll tax cuts one day, no payroll tax cuts the next day, just making some of that more stable and consistent would be a good start. Certainly things like investing more in education, infrastructure and the like but were also going to have global economies theyre going to be operating around the world chinas a huge market. You have to be in china to serve that market. To tell American Companies to go out of china would be, you know, hugely crippling to the u. S. Economy, relative to the rest of the world, which is becoming more integrated with china i want to get your thoughts on the speech we just got from fed chair powell the president also tweeting about that as well, saying the fed did, quote, nothing. It is incredible that they can speak without knowing or asking what i am doing, which will be announced shortly. We have a very strong dollar and a very weak fed. Ly work brilliantly with both. And he goes on to keep tweeting, along this line. What is your sense what is your takeaway from what the fed chair had to say this morning, given the fact that he has been walking really such a fine line . At a moment like this, im just so grateful that theres an adult in the room for the u. S. Economy. Jay powell gave a terrific speech he talked more clearly about the risks that trade policies is posing to the u. S. Economy than he ever has before he was clear that he was going to look through the noise and look at the longer term in terms of how hes setting u. S. Monetary policy, and he certainly didnt tell us what he was doing next on rates, because i dont think he knows what hes doing next on rates. Hes going to see what goes on in the world, what goes on in the u. S. , what goes on in the data, and make a decision based on those facts, not on some preconceived theory jason, the market took a spill, and its clearly related to that president ial tweet the dow is down 213. Obviously, its barely 1 , not even quite that. So what degree do you think the market is going to start reacting violently to requests from the white house that appear to be more and more extreme . Yeah, the question is, do people believe them and do they think or are they just noise on twitter . To date, a lot of this has just been noise on twitter, but every now and then, you have another set of tariffs placed on china china places another set of tariffs on us. Its just an enormously uncertain situation right now. Where we dont know if these are words or actions and you have to place some probability on them being tied to action and i think that sort of gets to whats so challenging about this environment right now, jason, which is the fact that a lot of what were seeing in terms of the slowdown in Global Economic growth right now is tied to politics, is tied to fiscal policy, or in some cases lack thereof you can point to brexit, you can talk to this sort of bias towards a leaning of fiscal austerity in germany, as well as that region continues to slow down and yet, it would seem whether it is the president here or other leaders around the world or even wall street and investors right now, everybody is sort of turning to the fed and Central Banks as the entities that could actually keep a recession or keep a globe Economic Growth on track is that fair to put that weight on Central Banks i mean, hes the only adult in the room right now, the Central Banks are in general so its not ideal to put all of that weight on them. Germany should be doing a fiscal expansion, the uk should be having a more orderly policy, italy should have more certainty. But we cant have all of that, so we need our Central Banks right now. I think we shouldnt lose the big picture. The Unemployment Rate is under 4 inflation is close to the 2 target wages are growing. I think, you know, the u. S. Central bank and a number of other Central Banks around the world have done a really good job navigating Turbulent Times i just wish the times were a bit less turbulent speaking of turbulence, dow now down 300 points. S p down about 36. Gold, jason, is up 25 and you can see the defensive trade reaccelerating this morning. I asked you about market responses to things like the president s tweets i wonder, 20too, whether or not this does anything to further crimp Business Investment, Business Confidence, whether it means that were going to get pmis sub50 not just on market, but on ism in just about a week. Yeah, im very worried about. You know, were in a manufacturing recession. We saw Business Investment contract in the last quarter consumers are keeping the u. S. Economy going. As long as the Unemployment Rate stays low and wages are rising, consumers can keep doing that. But that wont happen if businesses arent investing. We wont get our potential growth rate up, which is really important, that businesses arent investing and Business Investment is much more sensitive to this type of noise and uncertainty than the consumer side. So i think thats a big area of concern right now. I was just going to say, so, jason, lastly, i guess, when you look at the fact that there is so much uncertainty, when you look out over, you know, the coming months, the coming year plus, how do you expect i guess, how do you expect things are going to go . Both here in the u. S. And globally i have no idea. In part, the economy is always really hard to predict, so you need to be ready for contingencies. But a lot of the Global Economy hinges now on the decisions of a few people one of them being President Donald Trump and i certainly lay no claim to expertise in predicting what his next set of actions are going to be on trade and elsewhere. Jason, we had john ostensibly to talk about drop ed, but thanks for reacting to the news of the day jason furman from jackson hole thank you well, when we return, shares of intuit are higher on a revenue beat theyre up about 5 right now. The ceo joins us exclusively on the other side of this break meantime, the dow is down almost 400 points right now as isth selloff steepens. Were going to have more on that, straight ahead and we have zero account fees for brokerage accounts. At fidelity those zeros really add up. Maybe ill win saved by zero well, just getting a read on markets right now, which weve seen sell off the selloff accelerate, i should say, in the last couple of moments on the heels of those recent tweets from President Trump the dow is now down about 346 points, about 1. 4 the nasdaq, the worst performer, down 1. 6 . Tech stocks, energy stocks, industrials, all of those more tradetariff sensitive names, more risk on sectors are leading the losses, but every sector in the s p is lower right now gold continuing to move higher, back at 1536, as the sentiment here really is this move again towards safe havens, given all of the focus that we have had on the trade and tariffs this morning. We have mike santoli on set here this morning as well to break down this action and the fact that we are seeing this increased selloff right now and i think it was an across the board, lets step back from this market, because this is not a process that we can now handicap and game out. We dont know what this means when the president sort of says, all companies have to look for alternatives to building in china. So thats, to me, the reflex reaction is a quick risk off twitch in stocks and bonds you have tenyear treasury yields back below 155. The lows the recent lows have been right in that zone for this week and i think thats something that basically says that the market is trying to call in the bats and say, we just dont know now, that all being said, the s p has been kind of knocking around in a jumpy way within this range for weeks now so 2822 or 2820 for the s p has been the recent lows the highs have been 4 or so up from here. So its obviously an anxious situation, but much more about, you really dont know what to make of this than it is trying to price in some specific feared outcome. Weve talked for a year or more what it would take to get the vix sustained above 2. And the president thinks he can order American Companies to change their corporate behavior. And we got to 19 got to 19 its a summer friday weve got to price in a weekend of nothing heading coming up. But also, i do think its important to recognize that the market has been in this ullbac correction kind of mode for a month. And so we did during this period see the vix go up to 25. We did during this period of the last several days, even, see a lot of demand for Downside Protection in puts so all of that is to say that traders have been busy hedging, even before we got this news today. So maybe thats why the vix itself is not responding also, were in this range. When youre staying in the range and havent broken below or above it, the vix isnt going to get too excited. And its a slirlighter month. August tends to be one of those times. Looking at all of this, i just cant help but to go back to and i know ive made this point on our air before. I cant help but go back to the fact that this president and this administration really seems to see this trade standoff with china as essentially a winwin, right . At least based on some of these tweets and some of the comments weve gotten either we get to some major structural longlasting trade deal with china or you find ways to, through tariffs and through the pain of the situation, push more companies to move their supply chains, move their manufacturing outside of china i guess preferably to the u. S. Now, whether all of this happens, that is the big question mark, especially as we are seeing this weakness in manufacturing here and slowing growth globally, as well right, i think theres no doubt that wall street professionals have been overconfident in suggesting that this is obviously leading to some kind of at least superficial agreement. Theyve been doing that for more than a year. To morgans point, the administration has viewed this clearly as something bigger, longer term, more dramatic and more core to what theyre up to. And that maybe is one of the things the market is having to come to terms with in days like today, as well well, i mean, i think the initial messaging was this would be, quote, easy to win, as we well know. Wilbur ross came on our air and said, whos going to be bothered by the minimal pain that tariffs would add, right and that message has evolved over time, to the point where we need to save christmas, and now p to the point where we need to issue false mandates on american behavior and we want the fed somehow to kind of grease the skids for the trade policy to be less difficult on the economy than it otherwise would. So obviously, you dont reverse, you know, 30 years of global rotation and outsourcing and all the rest of it in, you know, in a hurry. And i think the market just doesnt know how to assimilate that at this point i always thought, though, in the markets sort of mercenary purposes, if all that it cares about is Global Growth, is it going to collapse, a hard landing in china, is it going to flare up Financial Stress in major way . Thats the most immediate thing. Not so much, oh, frictionally, do we each pay more for certain things and exports go up or down its not as much about that. And we dont know the answer to that and the bond market saying, we think the odds of something worse than just a moderate slowdown is rising mike, stay close. Obviously, the market trying to find a new level here with gold up almost 27 bucks lets get to dom chu for some internals on this midday selloff dom . Carl, first of all, to the conversation you were just having, it would seem to me that the market would be a lot further down if they took this more seriously were down about 24 some points here and thats not insignificant. We had an 800 down point day just a couple of weeks ago at this stage here, maybe the algorithms and the High Frequency traders and everybody with the hedge funds maybe getting a little bit more savvy with regard to just what these headlines mean but as you can see, that sharp dropoff is what we saw in the Immediate Reaction lets take a look at some of the other places were seeing it play out where the rubber meets the road internally within some of these indices if you take a look overall at some of the other stocks that are involved, we are going to take a close look at those semiconductors weve been saying it for months at this point. They are some of the biggest and most sensitive stocks, queue china u. S. Trade headlines, those stocks down about 2. 5 another sharp leg lower for Semiconductor Stocks watching that semiconductor etf very closely another place to watch is some of the dow components that have more chinacentric Business Activities they get their revenues from there. Check out intel on the chip side of things. Down 2. 5 . Apple stocks down almost 3 at this stage caterpillar on the Construction Equipment side down almost 3 . And nike 2. 5 , as well these four stocks among those dragging a lot of those points off the dow today. Apple, caterpillar, and nike some of the more heavily weighted ones there. Maybe not as much for intel. However, you pointed out some of the macro things were watching as well. Gold prices and oil prices you mentioned that big surge with gold prices at almost 2 we saw a trade earlier and that big move higher near almost 2 for gold right now, 1536. It will end on the large drop we saw in crude oil this is the second time we saw a dip in crude intraday. So crude oil, 53. 80. About 3 to the downside, watching the macro and the micro, guys, back over to you. Dom chu, thank you for breaking that down for us. Meantime, a revenue