France is the only winner though the losses are not particularly significant at this hour. Ten year note yield crept up yesterday. Did we aye. There we are. Kind of hanging where we have been. When i was in this chair last week, jim, we were talking around there. We did have a yeah. Ever so slightly. Lets get to the road map and it does start on the global stage. Trump diplomacy. The president is set to host chinas xi jinping at his Maralago Club in florida today. On the agenda is trade, currencies and north korea. Plus, tax reform delay . House Speaker Paul Ryan saying the white house has yet to nail down a plan with congress. What that could mean for investors. And goodbye butter. Consumer giant unilever making big changes to the portfolio. Paul polman was a guest on squawk box, but well have more of the background to everything thats gone on there and what it means to the future of the Consumer Products giant. First though, President Trump and chinese president xi jinping be begin two days of meeting at maralago. Trade issues, worries about north korea are expected on the two primary areas of discussion. Jim, meteeting like this dont have the market moving repercussions, but theyre of great importance given the rhetoric that we have heard we havent heard it as much from the Trump Administration. Early from president elect trump and earlier as a candidate. The trade deficit being so important. Some of that seems to have been more muted of late. But we go into this meeting, theres a lot at stake. Right. I think that one of the things thats happened is that they have they let the yuan appreciate. Theyre focused on the currency very heavily, okay . Subsidized currency. Now they are adamant in the white house that these the state businesses, the ones controlled by the state are really just employment factories and just dump everywhere. I know that there is going to be a spirited defense against the state businesses that dump, that are run foolishly just to employ people. We would think is foolish, but they want to dump everywhere to keep everyone employed because they have a forestalled revolution. Theyre really focus on the state owned enterprises. Yes. North korea also is going to be an issue here. Yeah. Again, when it comes to the markets, rare is the day it seems that geopolitics weighs heavily on them. Every so often it does. But certainly as that country and that leader who seems to be so irrational moved closer to being able to load a Nuclear Missile or a Nuclear Device exkee excuse me on a Ballistic Missile thats going to become more serious. People forget the history except for those who were there. The communist chinese came in when the u. S. People forget they sent millions of people down to defend north korea. While there are times that the leadership has been erratic, this the communist saved north korea from being south korea. One korea. We seem to forget that. We seem to forget what military allies they are. Im sure there will be coverage of this. What for you would be an outcome that i mean, what are your expectations and what would be a positive outcome for investors . Getting it done. Just having it come out and trump said we agree to disagree, well work hard together. Its just really turns out to be a very good mano a mano relationship. Say some positive things. Get two hand shakes, not no hand shakes ala merkel. I think thats his goal behind the scenes. Hes not going to negotiate in public. Hes smarter than that. Youre watching it closely. Lets move on to stocks this morning. Theyre looking to rebound one day after the biggest intraday reversal for the dow and the s p in 14 months. It was the minutes from the last fed meeting in which some policymakers said they see the stock market valuation as high, that seemed to catch some people by surprise. Blackrocks larry finked said it seems longer to transpire and we have an economy that is slower because of the uncertainty then i would say the market is the u. S. Equity markets are probably higher than they should be. Always interesting when the fed chooses to at least include some language or have some sort of opinion on the broader equity market. The last time we can remember yellen talking about small biotech stocks and speculation there. Boy, she had that wrong. A lot of the small biotech stocks were subsequently taken over. Not to be not to dismiss the fed chief. We dont know how many felt like this. Obviously the real take away is wait a second, the stocks have been going up. There are stocks that need a good economy. And they are ahead of themselves. The economy is not that strong. Thats what i took away from that. Which is that this not about Procter Gamble being too high, but the eaten and the parker hanifans and the United Technology and honeywells getting ahead of themselves and that would be very bad. Far more important, once again, paul ryan, the lead story in the usa today basically putting the big kibosh on anything thats important to tax reform. You have said over and over again, once we get up this high we simply could not have a situation where we could stay there without something happening. I polled a lot of people yesterday before ryan spoke. Lets actually listen to what you had to say hes dynamite. This is paul ryan yesterday commenting on those challenges jim just mentioned about getting tax reform done. We will need more time to do tax reform. The house has a plan, but the senate doesnt quite have one yet. Theyre working on one. The white house hasnt nailed it down. So even the three entities dont arent on the same page yet on tax reform. Yeah. Its going to be complicated. With all respect to treasury secretary Steve Mnuchin who indicated it would be simpler than health care reform, i dont think so. Look, when you hear ryan, what youre thinking about b. A. T. , border tax thats a couple of years to figure out whats right. Because its the academics have to get involved. Theres going to be a lot of opining. This is 2018 if they if the house plan which distinctly is about border taxes. The calendar says they can get something out of the house in the next couple of montshs . Does he want to . What is the white house coming up with . They seem to want now take the lead to a certain extent. They dont want to go down the same road they were led by speaker ryan when it came to repeal and replace of the aca which failed and are there going to be dollclashing proposals or they going to come to a compromise between the house in white house the house and the senate. Border tax of course we sat here so many times and talked about the possibility of it. Or lack thereof. Lately i have been hearing, well, is it possible you could bring it down, not from 20 but to 10 . You raised the idea of walmart the other day it didnt go past me although we didnt discuss it that much on the show. Maybe they can live with a border tax because it would put them in a better Competitive Position versus the rest of retail which cant necessarily take the cut or i should say take the increase in taxes they would see. Anybody whos watched the ellison interview with Courtney Reagan which runs in a heavy rotation on our Network Makes it clear that jcpenney is questioning the solvency if this happened. The one yesterday explained the math, a dollar worth of profit on a 10 worth of sale and is paying 35 cents, theyd be paying 1. 40 in tax. So the tax would be far above the profits. The thing that matters is that the people who elected President Trump would be the most affected by this. Paul ryan is a selfstyled academic who believes this is good for our nation. You lower the Corporate Tax rate for the fat cat big wigs and you raise the genuine everyday sales tax for the individual . Thats about as counterintuitive and about as antiwhat President Trump stands for of anything we have heard so far. Thats why i said, if you listen to ryan, what he is saying is its a battle of the forms and their form is dead on arrival whatever they put up. And they have the ability to say dead on arrival to whatever comes out of the Trump Administration. Unless they can bring on democrats. The president has potentially at least offered the idea of linking infrastructure with tax reform. He did that in the New York Times interview yesterday as a way to bring on democrats which theyll conceivably need should we see two competing proposals from the white house and the house clash. Right. But im concerned when the speaker talks about how this could take even longer than health care reform. I have to tell you that means longer than never. Theres no such thing longer than never. Lets get back to the market. Here the fed says maybe things are overvalued. Some people believe we have a lot embedded here in expectations for tax reform. Others say its only a cut coming and repatriation which well still get. Are we ahead of ourselves given what youre hearing out of washington . If we get the latter and it comes in 2018 were ahead of ourselves. The most people expect this to happen during late spring or early fall. I think that the speaker basically just said thats not going to happen. I dont think hes going to let it happen. I think that thats really, really significant. So but lets remember, the fed is 0 for 2 when it talks about stocks. Rational exuberance, what a great time to buy. Biotech greenspan. Abbott, j j, a lot of the Big Pharmaceutical Companies didnt listen to the fed chief because they have no pipeline. Put that in the notes. Yellen or one of her staff. That was ill advised. Ill advised thing to put in. But david, it cant be 2018. And sustain these prices. It cant be. All right. By the way, well hear from speaker ryan. At least well take the g,q a. Speaker buy puts ryan. When last week you were calling him einstein, but in a sarcastic way i thought i picked that up. Yep. Was i wrong . Facetious. Selfstyled einstein. Like einstein bagels. Owned by j. A. B. They own einstein. I got hungry yesterday talking about j. A. B. Really . Still to come, unilever. By the way they own a bunch of food stuff too. And their ceo they dont like that country crock anymore. Its got low single digit growth. See you later. Theyre outlining the growth. They sent kraft heinz packing when they wanted to buy unilever. And also ahead, jeff bezos wants you to take you to space. How hes financing blue origin. See things your way. You have access to the right information at the right moment. And when you filter out the noise, its easy to turn your vision into action. Its your trade. E trade. Start trading today at etrade. Com its been over 100 years since the first stock index was created, as a benchmark for average. Yet a lot of people still build portfolios with strategies that just track the benchmarks. But investing isnt about achieving average. Its about achieving goals. And invesco believes doing that today requires the art and expertise of highconviction investing. Translation . Why invest in average . If youre gonna needatch dom, a little help. Im in love. Rubber bullets, big mistake. I was a little aggressive. Oh damn no no no no no no lovin that lambo now . Ooooo ahhhhh rated pg13. Experience it in imax. But weve got the get tdigital tools to help. Now with xfinitys my account, you can figure things out easily, so you wont even have to call us. Change your wifi password to something you can actually remember, instantly. Add that premium channel, and watch the show everyones talking about, tonight. And the bill you need to pay . Do it in seconds. Because we should fit into your life, not the other way around. Go to xfinity. Com myaccount unilever announcing plans to overhaul the operations and promising to return money to shareholders as well. This after rejecting the takeover offer from kraft heinz a few weeks back. Earlier on squawk box, the ceo paul polman made it clear he isnt ruling out future deal making for the company. Being a unified company, something that we have studied every ten years by the way. Having a unified company would make this simpler to do. It would allow us with one share capitals instead of anglo dutch having one company to participate in future major m a activity, where to come along and where of interest to unilever. We want to prepare that optionality to position us peter for the future. Wanted that specific sound cut, jim, because it is important what he was talking about. Of course, remember its an anglo dutch company, two separate entities. It was in play, the fact that they have a shticking in the netherlands could have come to their defense. They had no interest in dealing a deal with kraft heinz from the very beginning. Clearly that was not understood by kraft heinz and their backers at 3g. Nor did Warren Buffett in any way, shape or form expect anything of a hostile nature. Something i reported on not on air, but finding out what exactly happened there and they come out with a plan that they told us they would. Not only about putting together the anglo and the uk into one company, but the divestitures and the buy back and a few other things. I had a good talk with paul this morning after he did his conference call. It was a good statement about what has to happen at the company. And remember this is the best this has done the best of the big Consumer Products because they understand the emerging markets. The business hes selling the spreads business has no growth. It hasnt grown in years and years and years, its just been losing. Theres a lot of pe money out there. 5 or 7 billion. These are large deals. And private equity is typically interested if theres a more or a less Sustainable Cash Flow model where they can conceivably cut some costs and layer on some debt. It can find its ways into the hands of private equity. The only division thats actually declining, so you have to think about that. Hes got a lot of divisions you can go and see all those that were winning. What is most interesting is where hes putting his dollars for advertising. 50 online. Including google, facebook. Mentioned that he likes snap. Amazon is a good partner. In the middle of it he starts he says everything has changed. I want you to join the Dollar Shave Club. Watch the video, and i said, well, i want to good morning b talking about what do you think about the big no, i want to talk about gillette. And this is obviously an attack on gillette. Got 3. 5 million in Dollar Shave Club. Its about millennials. 3. 5 million subscribers dubin is hilarious. You have to if you look at my twitter feed, people love dollar shave. Im a subscriber. You do . I do he comes at gillette. You have to open the key. This is not about going to cvs. Did a great job of building value and selling it to unilever. Whats interesting, polman this morning talked about being too long term in terms of his thinking and needing to kind of come to at least an intermediate if not short term view of what shareholders want. Contrast that yesterday with ron shaich who was talking about i hate the quarterly pressure. Im going to be so happy to be private. Obviously unilever cant be private. But paul suppressed displeasure to me he has to do that. But the people reward him for a 1 gain. Obviously also by the way, polman is a big thinker about stakeholders. Big thinker of employees. The model very much about culture. Hard to imagine how the kraft heinz guys could have really thought that there was going to be like oil and water. Paul polman is a statesman by the way. Hes been a big thinker a long time about what needs to be done in the emerging markets. Also by the way if hes putting 50 in the web, thats the most of anybody that i know. Plus hes trying to get millennials. You cant get millennials. I mean, if you go to the Dollar Shave Club commercial, they use words that i would not use with you. Really . Because i wouldnt understand them or because they would be too risque. Would offend me . More kind of more of a youtube approach. I see. Youtube. Wow. Dont forget it, you and i are completely out of touch. Completely. I did join the club. I have been spending 748 a year for gillette. I think the packaging not to fill nine land fills. Yeah. Sitting there and waiting for someone at cvs to open that thing. Im so happy. Could you come over and open t the gillette hey, ill get to you pal. Im jammed. Well see what unilever meant by big acquisitions. Did not sound as if thats near term. Take that off the table like paul ryans tax reform. Back to paul ryan. This is going to be good. Up next hes not jack ryan, okay. Paul ryan is not jack ryan. What happened between the two of you . Nothing whatsoever. I was on meet the press hes really nice. A nice guy. All right. Get ready for your mad dash. I dont want it to be on ryan. Fine. Also ahead, one of the nations Largest Trucking Companies is going public here. Well talk about schneider national. Well have an interview with the ceo. We have only nine minutes until we get an opening bell. Pause a spontaneous moment . Cialis for daily use treats ed and the urinary symptoms of bph. 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We have six minutes before we get an opening bell here. Thursday. Its raining yesterday again. Where do you want to go on th