He basically said the border adjustment tax as written, current language from the gop is mot something the white house would support. This comes about a day after a reuters story where donald trump seemed to hedge a little bit on that and seemed to suggest some support. Cohen seems to back drtrack on this morning. Could it be reworked . It also comes 24 hours after treasury secretary Steve Mnuchin told our becky quick that all options are on the table still. The cohnspecific negative sentiments were specifically on the actual language, the actual talk that the gop has had specific language. I think it certainly could be reworked. He did not say that the concept was objectionable but the way it was worked out. Dan, longtime finance guy, covering banking, private equity, et cetera. From your market expertise, its brian sullivan. From your market expertise, do you think that the market is maybe overreacting to the upside, given your story . Or do you think that a border tax could still live, to melissas point, maybe just not in the house form . I think, to melissas point, it certainly could. Look, candidly, i think the market overreacts right now on anything that comes out of the administration in the sense that you dont seem to have huge agreement between different members of the administration, or at least not between the finance professional types, cohn, mnuchin and the president himself, who has to make the final decision. So its all a question of li linguistics here really. Its not an essential knockdown of the border adjustment tax . Not necessarily. It could be. The president has said repeatedly he seems to favor a much simpler form of tariffs and also has legal questions with wto. I think you have an administration as mnuchin said, everything is on the table. Thats how they still view it. Ultimately it will be what the president decides one way or another. He has not seemed to make a Firm Decision and has been waffling back and forth on it. Another adviser would be Steven Bannon and we know that he has supported the adjustment tax, reporting from john harwood. Correct. A bunch of different folks in this administration who have different feelings on this particular issue and there does not yet seem to be a consensus. Its interesting that cohn didnt beat around the bush when he said the way its currently written its not something that the white house would support. Dan primack, interesting scoop. Thank you for joining us. Moving markets. Footlocker up, nordstrom is up. E e if dans reporting is accurate and the white house does not like the language of the border adjustment tax, clearly paul ryan, kevin grady, as we heard on our own air, are all in on this plan. Can you actually rework the language to make it work for businesses . Right now it doesnt seem like that is possible because in order for border adjustment to work, all imports would need to be subjected to this tax or to this lack of deduction. And what ive heard from lobbyists and from lawmakers is that once you start offering exemptions to one type of product, to one industry, then you start seeing special interests line up to ask for exemptions across the board. And once that happens, you lose the pay for. Thats why border adjustment is so critical to the House Republicans plan more broadly. Do we know what the language was that mr. Cohn, speaking on behalf of the white house, objects to in the proposal . What is it specifically . Is it that idea that it applies to all imports or Something Different . We dont know that at this point. That certainly is something that we are trying to find out. The other thing that is important to remember is who is really speaking for the administration here . Is it going to be donald trump who said he supports some form of the border adjustment tax . Is it going to be gary cohn who says that the white house is it going to be Steve Mnuchin . Clearly theres a lot of division over exactly what this will look like Going Forward. And if theres not really broad agreement on the big picture, then how are we going to find agreement and consensus on the details Going Forward . Again, as we know, the devil is in the details. Yeah. And it looks like maybe the armada of lobbyists may have earned their pay. Thank you very much. Lets bring in brian nagle, of oppenheimer. Got to have Courtney Reagan on. Here i am. Ill start with you, courtney. Ive got a feeling if youre a retailer youre a little happy but probably also confused. Sure. You heard dans report. And melissa asked him, basically, listen, does it mean its dead or does it mean this version is dead . What do you think is going on in retail board rooms right now . Im sure theyre paying attention to every single one of these headlines. They also have very strong earnings. I think that might be something else. Xrt took a different direction yesterday than this morning. I spoke to jcpenney ceo yesterday. He was in d. C. And with President Trump and other lawmakers about this very issue and tax reform in general. Theyre literally going directly to the source, trump, cohn. He was contacted by one of the retail associations as they were looking for various members that represented different segments to sort of come in, explain their concerns with the border adjustment. He said that President Trump listened, he asked really good questions. The questions went back and forth but didnt give any indication about where he was leaning. This was last week. Then they moved on to those meetings with braidy and the other members of congress. He felt very strongly that they at least understood the retailers position, that this would be a tax on the lowest income consumers and that would be very harmful. He said he doesnt think its a foregone conclusion thats going to pass but is still on the table. Moving higher on these headlines is the mirror image of what happen eed late in the session when the reuters interview came out with President Trump, that said i would favor some sort of border tax, which would suggest he leans to a border adjustment tax. I changed to all black just to celebrate the death of the border adjustment tax. But it might be premature. This vampire is going to rise from its grave. Were going to have to have something to fill the hole in the budget. If you talk to people in the house, which ive done, they really believe theres going to be a cross border adjustment tax in their bill. Unless the administration pounds it out of them, theyre going to have one in their bill. Whether it will pass is still up for grabs. I still only always had it at 35 . 80 of getting a bill this year, 35 contains border adjustment tax. Thats the probability . Thats the probability. Probably reflective in the stocks. If the stocks suddenly decided tomorrow there really was going to be one and it was going to be fairly broad, theyve got to take another big leg down. The question is, if they dont like it this way, do they like it if you exclude food and the first 5 of cost of goods sold . And, therefore, everything you buy at walmart is okay and the poorest people in america dont have to pay more and you only have to raise the rate from 22 to 20 . Maybe they do. Thats why i dont have my mallet and stake to drive this stake into this vampires heart. Well have some form of revenue razor. Where are they going to get it . That would be a pretty big revision, if thats what they do. But they need the money for something. Of course they do. They need the money for something. Stick to the stocks. Brian nagle, thanks for being patient. First off you have to be yanking your hair off. To be the real tail analyst. I have to do the numbers with the tax, got to do the numbers not the tax. What do our viewers do if they own some of these stocks . Theyve got to be pulling their hair out. Its a great way to put it. I wrote about a week or so ago, my team and i published a comprehensive outlook for the sector and label this had potential b. A. T. As one of the biggest wild cards affecting retail stocks. Im not a tax expert by any means. I dont think it happens. I say that simply because the administration was elected, in large part at least in part on the idea that lowering taxes for middle income consumers. When this if this were to happen i think a lot of these retailers, rightly, would try to pass these costs along to their consumers in the form of higher prices. We may get lower Corporate Tax rates, maybe lower personal tax rates, the prices of a lot of goods would, over time, probably go higher. As people understand this math, i just dont think this happens. How many downgrades do you think you would have to put in your sector if there is a b. A. T. . Are there retailers that leave at that cusp if, there is a b. A. T. , that completely changes your Investment Outlook on them . There would be some. Jcpenney reported today. Not to pick on them necessarily, about that, to me, is a company that would have a difficult time passing higher prices along to their consumers. I think about Companies Like im going all over the place here but home depot, another company i like and followed it for a long time. Home depot could pass along higher prices to consumers relatively easily. I think thats also the case in the auto parts business. Potentially where you have a lowerincome consumer, a more price sensitive consumer, thats where it would be most difficult for the retailer to pass along these costs to consumers and probably see the biggest earnings with retailers. Well leave it there. Thanks a lot, brian nagel, Courtney Reagan. Vampire hunters. News flow seemingly never stops out of our Nations Capital these days. President trump rallying his base earlier today at the conservative summit, cpac, calling out bad trade deals, promising more tax cuts and vowing to build the border wall between u. S. And mexico and announced a massive military buildup. Also signing a new executive order within the past hour. It is aimed at slashing regulations. Lets get to cnbcs eamon javers with coverage of the president s busy day so far. Reporter thats right, tyler. A bunch of those ceos here yesterday were back, standing around the president , flanking him as he signed this executive order. Here is what the white house says this order will do. We havent seen the official text of it yet. To give you a summary, they say this will create a regulatory rere form task force inside each agency. The task force will be focusing on eliminating costly and unnecessary regulations. They say that agencies are going to be expected to measure and report their progress back to the white house, which will make some determinations about whether theyre moving fast enough in cutting regulations and red tape or not. Here is how the president described all this today. Each task force will make recommendations to repeal or simplify existing regulations. The Regulatory Burden is for the people behind me and for the Great Companies of this country and for small companies, an impossible situation. Were going to solve it very quickly. Reporter tyler, one of the ceos who was here yesterday told me privately on leaving that meeting that the president asked him and other ceos for a list of ten regulations he would like to cut. They want to bring in all the suggestions from industry about what regulations to slash and burn here at the white house. Tyler . Eamon javers on the north lawn. Thank you very much. Lets get to Jackie Deangelis. Jackie . Good afternoon, brian. Crude oil is hovering around that 54 mark. Losses were steepening as these numbers came out. Five oil rigs were added last week, total 602. This is the sixth straight week weve seen increases. This is the big risk when it comes to crude oil. Yes, opec has cut its portion to help balance the market here. Youve got production in the u. S. Back now at 9 Million Barrels a day. That could push these prices lower. Back to you. Thank you very much, Jackie Deangelis. Private prison stocks taking off today, Trump Administration vowing to keep using private prisons, sending shares of the group higher. A look just ahead. The New York Times is doing something it hasnt done in a decade. Its all because of President Trump. Well explain. Stay tuned. When you have 7. 95 online u. S. Equity trades, you realize the smartest investing idea isnt just what you invest in, but who you invest with. Isnt just what you invest in, but who you invest with. If only the signs were as obvious when you trade. Fidelitys active trader pro can help you find smarter entry and exit points and can help protect your potential profits. Fidelity where smarter investors will always be. This car is traveling over 200 miles per hour. To win, every millisecond matters. Both on the track and thousands of miles away. With the help of at t, Red Bull Racing can share critical information about every inch of the car from virtually anywhere. Brakes are getting warm. Confirmed, daniel you need to cool your brakes. Understood, brake bias back 2 clicks. Giving them the agility to have speed precision. Because no one knows like at t. Welcome back. Utilities are the leaders right now, up 10 . Lets get more on the market slide today with dominic chu on the floor of the new york stock exchange. Dom . Reporter tyler, as we talk about whats happening overall with the markets, the dow is not so bad. We were worse off in the premarkets this morning. The big movers, dow is down about 50 points right now. Post eight, gts, chevron down about a percent, one of the biggest point drags so far on the Dow Jones Industrial average. 54 bucks, thereabouts, chevron one to watch here. We work our way around here, well show you whats happening with post six, big blue, ibm, off half a percent. One of the more heavily weighted stocks in the dow as well. Those shares a big drag again, off overall total for the dow so far today. And those guys are just trying to mess with me. Biggest weight in the Dow Jones Industrial average. Downgrade from barron bank say i i will end on a positive note. Positive kind of guy. Post five, citadel and show you johnson johnson. They are up about a percent and one of the biggest gainers in todays tradings. Right now were off our session lows, down about 50 points. Back to you. Is this move lower sort of the pause or something that presses it more . Lets bring in the president of farr, miller and blackstein and the Portfolio Manager of dynamic funds. Who would be surprised if the market takes a bit of a breather, michael . Is there any particular catalyst why stocks have stopped moving up today . Can you point to anything . No, probably not. Were getting talk that theres concern about the elections in france and what it may mean, resulting perhaps in a frexit. So is that really the pressure . Who knows. After a market run like this, it doesnt seem a bit surprising to have stocks pull back some fraction of a percent. Can you point to any particular catalyst today other than what i know you believe, which is that earnings will drive this market as they move through the rest of the year. The earnings have been pretty good. Right. I think the earnings have been pretty good. Weve broken a near threeyear streak this quarter. I think thats going to be the key driver. You closed a big valuation gap in the Fourth Quarter of last year where, you know, the undervalued financials and cyclicals had a monster rally based on, hopefully, regulatory relief. And steepening yield curve. Now the financials have caught up in terms of valuation and everything is sort of kind of fairly valued across the board its going to be individual companies, earnings reports that will drive individual stocks for the rest of the year and news out of washington in terms of living up to the promises of the election. Do you take any comfort from the reports that we began the broadcast with today that gary cohn, white house top economic adviser, has said that he is not and that the white house is not on board with the border adjustment tax, as it is written today in the house gop proposal . What do you think the future of that tax is beyond this rather measured response from mr. Cohn . Nobody who voted for trump voted for this border adjustment tax or the worst way of installing a vat in the United States. Its a halfbaked idea that could probably only come out of a committee somewhere. Trump and mr. Cohn, mr. Mnuchin all during the campaign and afterwards suggested a 15 Corporate Tax rate. Thats where the Corporate Tax rate should be put today. Border adjustment tax or manipulators can be put in place at a later date. House their ip in ireland or move their offshore to get that down. This border adjustment tax hammers the consumption part of the economy. And the export part of the economy is not that material. This whole notion that dollar is going to go up is completely, completely just no evidence that thats going to happen. Its a dangerous plan. Hopefully it dies and we can get the Corporate Tax rate down. Michael, pick up on the border adjustment tax if you want or maybe a reaction to the fed speak earlier this week and whether you see Rising Interest Rates as in any sense a rising market. I love all those questions, tyler. On border adjustment tax, i dont know how investors are supposed to know what to Pay Attention to. From this president weve seen political analysts criticize or suggest that president clinton in his first term or president obama in his first term expended a lot of Political Capital on Getting Health Care done. President trump, weve got a tax cut, maybe border adjustment tax, immigration, repatriation of funds, Affordable Care act, defense budget, which restroom to use. Its hard