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Tariff Saga Has a Hollywood Storyline By Spencer Jakab

Stocks are set to open roughly unchanged after erasing the last of their losses for the year yesterday. The dollar is weakening , though, and Treasury yields are near the same levels that spooked investors in April. Investors are wondering whether a returning CEO at UnitedHealth, which singlehandedly dragged down the Dow on Tuesday, can cure what ails it .

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When President Trump proposed 100% tariffs on foreign-made films last week following a meeting with Jon Voight, social media rose to the occasion.

Some gems from the "add a tariff, ruin a movie" prompt: A Tax of the Clones, The Shawshank Exemption, Ferris Bueller's Laid Off and Levy Things Everywhere All at Once.

More serious entertainment analogies have been made to describe the broader tariff saga. On Tuesday, Deutsche Bank Strategist Jim Reid wondered whether the past six weeks would be something like season nine of Dallas after Bobby Ewing's death. The event and aftermath are later revealed as a dream and Season 10 continues as if nothing happened. The S&P 500 erasing all of its post-Liberation Day losses made it feel that way to him.

Also on Tuesday, Peter Berezin, chief global strategist at BCA Research, mused that celebrating eased levies on China could unfold like Jaws "where the inhabitants of Amity Island sigh in relief after they catch a great white shark, only to realize that a much bigger one is still stalking beachgoers. Tariffs are the small shark; a fiscal crisis is the bigger one."

Movie and TV comparisons are apt: When a plotline has to be compressed into 60 or 90 minutes, things happen fast and boring details fall by the wayside. Likewise, trade policy has been made and unmade at movie speed this year thanks to the White House invoking emergency powers. Normally it's a deliberate process that takes months or even years and goes through Congress, not social media.

The constant tension and catharsis have a cinematic quality too. That helps explain why this week feels incredibly calm despite plenty of market-moving news. It also highlights a potential danger.

Most presidents shun the limelight when anything but pleasant economic developments are in the news. The reality TV star in the Oval Office seems to relish the drama and to have an innate ability to keep the audience in suspense.

Future economic plot twists from the White House needn't have anything to do with trade or tariffs. As Berezin notes, there's a larger danger out there in the form of scary federal-debt math. With yields on Treasury bonds approaching their level of five weeks ago when Trump said the market was getting "a little bit yippy," extending, and even expanding, his 2017 tax cuts without enough offsetting revenue could stoke anxiety.

Tariffs were shocking. Some proposals related to the Treasury market that have been floated by Trump advisers would-another 1970s entertainment flashback- really jump the shark .

Stocks I'm Watching

Super Micro Computer : The AI server maker's stock gained almost 9% in premarket trading, following a big jump Tuesday as part of a broader tech rally. Raymond James analysts also gave Super Micro an "outperform" rating.

UnitedHealth : Shares staged a modest rebound, rising about 3% premarket. The healthcare stock fell 18% Tuesday after its chief executive stepped down , following a punishing period for the company, and it suspended its financial outlook.

JD.com : The online retailer's stock climbed 3% in Hong Kong. JD reported better-than-expected earnings Tuesday as demand from Chinese consumers strengthened despite trade uncertainty.

Cisco Systems is due to report earnings after markets close.

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Should UnitedHealth's Blowup Ring Alarm Bells for Insurers?

UnitedHealth Group is the nation's largest health insurer and is often seen as a bellwether for the managed-care industry, shaping how investors view the whole sector. This time around, though, its problems may be its own .

What I'm Reading Republicans looking to muscle through tax cuts and spending reductions in President Trump's sprawling "big, beautiful" bill got an instant reminder Tuesday of how hard it will be. ( WSJ ) Insurer UnitedHealth joins Walt Disney, Starbucks and others in turning to a former leader to guide the company through tough times. Boomerang CEOs oftn struggle to recapture the old magic. ( WSJ ) The president's tactics to get a China deal done undercut his own rationales, while in some ways treating China better than allies. ( WSJ ) Hospital stocks got a reprieve on Medicaid spending-for now. ( WSJ ) U.S. consumers are better off when poorer countries pay lower prices for drugs than we do. Here's the (literal) Econ 101 explanation. ( Marginal Revolution ) This Day in Markets History

On this day in 1997, Amazon went public on the Nasdaq, offering 3 million shares at an initial price of $18 per share. (Its stock has split more than once since then).

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About Me

My name is Spencer Jakab and I've been musing about money and markets for more than 30 years, including editing The Wall Street Journal's Heard on the Street column for a decade, writing two investing books and running a team of stock analysts at a global investment bank.

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This article is a text version of a Wall Street Journal newsletter published earlier today.

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May 14, 2025 06:28 ET (10:28 GMT)

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