The Economic Policies of Harris VP Pick Walz & Everyone is Taking Ubers
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Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Fryman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, so you were just turned into a meme at the Olympics. What now? Then Elon has a bold new business plan to get advertisers back on X, suing them. It's Wednesday, August 7th. Let's ride. Let's ride.

Kamala Harris chose Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her VP pick yesterday, which we'll break down a little later in the show. But one person who was overjoyed at the news is Brooklyn-based trademark lawyer Jeremy Green Esch. And that's because back in 2020, when Harris was running for president the first time, he bought the domain HarrisWalz.com for $9.

I just tried to grab her name in all of the Heartland governors I could think of, he said. Well, that could pay off in a big way. He's currently shopping the domain for $15,000, the same price he sold ClintonCain.com for in 2016. That's some 3D chess, Toby, though it's not necessarily guaranteed that

the Harris Walls campaign will actually want to buy it. Yeah, this is a real thing though, cyber squatting, where you just get all these domains hoping that they become newsworthy or noteworthy or valuable in some way. Think of it as a very, very niche sort of investing, but I do respect the hustle and I have to ask you, are you squatting on anything right now? Well, I can do 225 for reps right now. Oh, you mean domain? Oh yes. Well, yes. Yesterday I just bought

BilesPalmelHorseGuy.com for about $15. So maybe 20 years down the line, we'll see that pay dividends. See, I'm sitting on Howell Freiman in 2028 right now. Very, very cheap. You wouldn't believe how cheap it was. Now a word from our sponsor, Beehive. Neil, how long have you been hearing the phrase email is dead? Oh, as soon as Alex and Austin founded Morning Brew, we were hearing it left and right. But 4 million subscribers later, it turns out that email is not dead.

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Okay, moving on. 25 years ago, Tim Walls was a high school football coach in small town Minnesota, turning a struggling 0-27 team into a state champion three years later. Now, he's Kamala Harris' vice presidential nominee on the Democratic ticket. Walls, the current governor of Minnesota, was picked by Harris yesterday as her running mate to square off against Donald Trump and his vice presidential pick, J.D. Vance, on the Republican side ahead of November's elections.

Now, if you said you heard of Walls a month ago and weren't from Minnesota, I would not believe you. He was not a well-known politician at the national level until Biden dropped out of the race and he started doing cable news hits that went viral. And in one of his interviews, he called the Republican ticket weird, which has become a key talking point for Democrats in recent weeks and raised his profile.

In Walls, Harris sees a down-to-earth, plain-spoken, prairie populist Midwesterner who could circle the wagons in the crucial Rust Belt swing states, home to a large unionized workforce. If you weren't convinced that this is the region both candidates are focused on, remember that Trump's pick, J.D. Vance, is from Ohio. It's a similar playbook. But back to Walls, Toby, what stands out to you about his record as governor of Minnesota? Yeah, I mean, he's done a lot of stuff that has pleased progressives and probably angered conservatives. He's helped

legalized recreational marijuana, passed background checks on guns. He's expanded LGBTQ protections. He's also worked on implementing tuition-free college for some lower-income people, passed universal free lunches at schools. He's also signed a bill granting family and medical leave. And usually with a resume like that, you would assume it would open them up to these attacks from Republicans saying he's all about expanding government at the expense of business.

But he actually has the data to back it up that Minnesota is a very business-friendly state. CNBC ranked it as number six in its 2024 rankings for the best states for business. So it's kind of reduced that vector of attack a little bit. Big infrastructure guy as well, which I can let you get into. He...

defies sort of putting him in a particular bucket because he comes from a very small town in Nebraska. He went to the Army and then he was a small town school teacher in Minnesota where he was a high school football coach. He also is a hunter and is a gun owner. He was actually endorsed by the

NRA at one point. So it's hard to just put him in a particular bucket as governor. He also enacted the large tax cut in Minnesota history, uh, last year. So he definitely, uh, Harris sees him as someone who could appeal to a wide spectrum of voters. She is trying to make her pitch that she's not this Silicon Valley elite, uh,

ticket because she does come from California. Democrats have been pegged as, you know, the coastal elite in recent elections. And the battle is for the heartland. And in Wallace, she thinks she sees somebody who she wants to call the football coach, right? Like he's just like you. He's from Nebraska. He was a coach in small town Minnesota. So he understands both progressives, as you see from his record. Those are very progressive things that

he did which pleased Democrats, but also he's a gun owner. At one point was endorsed by the NRA, so can speak to the middle as well. So remember too, the Harris campaign has taken this very online capital V capital O approach to this election. We've seen how she's embraced Brat Summer with the meme and the TikTok edits and the green Twitter header. So how does waltz fit into that? Well,

Chapel Roan has an album called The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess. So the internet has dubbed Walls as the aforementioned Midwest Princess to Kamala's brat. The uniform of this Midwest Princess too is this camo hat with the words written on it in hunting words. So the Harris Walls campaign has begun selling hats in a similar style, but instead of Midwest Prince written

Princess written on them. It says Harris Wall. So just as the Trump campaign has kind of the MAGA, the red MAGA hat, this has the chance to be the Harris-Walls uniform. So they are waging a war online here, and I think that they have some big guns to bring to the fight. One final note that's interesting is that both VP picks have served in the U.S. military. J.D. Vance was in the Marines, and Tim Walls was actually the highest-ranking enlisted member of the military to serve

become a member of Congress when he did that in the 2000s. So it's a very interesting pick. I think a lot of Democrats are very excited about it and we'll see who wins the heartland. I mean, the UAW, the United Auto Workers Union, which is a key endorsement, came out in full throated support of Wall. So maybe you're starting to see the union unionized vote, which is so important, sort of fall in line for the Democrats here.

Uber reported earnings yesterday with some strong revenue and ridership numbers helping them beat expectations. But there's one line from CEO and friend of the pod, Dara Khosrowshahi, that stood out to me. Khosrowshahi said on the earnings call that the Uber consumer has never been stronger. Not just consumer, the Uber consumer. And what does the Uber consumer entail? Well, according to Dara, they tend to be higher income, though he went on to say that Uber isn't seeing any softness or trading down across any income cohort.

And therein lies a fundamental tension at the heart of the economy right now that company earning calls are revealing. Despite a shakier job market, soaring housing costs, higher utility prices, and rundown savings, consumers are still spending but being more deliberate about it. Another example of this divide is between Chipotle and McDonald's.

Chipotle has higher prices, but it's still getting customers through the door, while McDonald's has reported falling foot traffic despite being cheaper. It can be confusing, but The Economist wrote that years of elevated inflation have made consumers more picky than panicky. So we have this

surprisingly resilient consumer right now, Neil, that is behaving more choicefully. What do you make of it in the context of some of these earnings reports that have been filtering in? I mean, we're just getting more mixed signals than a menu serving jumbo shrimp. I mean, is the American consumer strong or weak? And it depends on who you ask. Just

If you just select a certain amount of companies, McDonald's, Amazon, PepsiCo, Walmart, then they say that the consumer is very weak, is very stretched. They're trading down and they're seeing sales dip. If you just pick another set of companies, Coca-Cola, Colgate, Royal Caribbean, Carnival, Kenview, which makes Tylenol, Listerine and Neutrogena and Uber, and then there's Uber, you're saying, oh, the consumer is very resilient. So the consumer

So the economists and myself just don't really know exactly what to make of this current situation. And the stakes could not be higher with jobs report coming in a little weaker than expected. The stock market getting quite jittery and we don't know what the Fed is going to do with rate cuts in September. So and at the center of this is the U.S. consumer propping up 70 percent of the entire U.S. economy. So personally, I do not know what to make of this. I think

another good example of this picky consumer that we're talking about is Yum Brands. So this is a big restaurant conglomerate that owns KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell. And they reported soft same-store sales for KFC and Pizza Hut. But Taco Bell had rising sales because they say it's been innovating more. And innovation in Taco Bell form means

They've introduced big Cheez-It items. They have nacho fries with secret aardvark sauce. So they're saying essentially that... What's aardvark sauce? It's secret. It's secret aardvark sauce. I haven't frequented Taco Bell enough to know. But essentially, they're saying that as long as you innovate and you introduce customers to something new, it's not just...

price that customers are looking at. They're looking at innovation. They're looking at stuff that will get them in the door. I think Chipotle is just the greatest example of that because Chipotle is a lot more expensive than McDonald's, but we've just seen a massive influx in same-store sales there. Foot traffic is rising there. So it's clearly that consumers are not just focusing exclusively on price. Of course,

it plays a role. They also just want new stuff. They want innovation and they want to be happy wherever they take their business. And while we're on the subject of sort of the macro economy, remember Monday, stocks sold off in a big way, had their worst day in a couple of years. Yesterday, much better. It seems like a lot of

the meltdown was contained to Japan and Japan's stock market had one of its best days ever. And stocks ended up in the green, all three indexes. And we're looking pretty already today. So maybe it was a little minor freak out. I think there are still some jitters about a potential recession, but it does seem like everything is pretty hunky dory for now, at least.

The Environmental Protection Agency did something yesterday it hadn't done in nearly 40 years. Take emergency action to instantly stop the use of a weed killer that is linked to serious health risks in unborn babies. The weed killer, known as DCPA, is used on crops such as broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage and olives.

onions. But when pregnant farm workers are exposed to it, it can cause changes to thyroid hormone levels in fetuses, leading to low birth weight, decreased IQ, impaired brain development, and impaired motor skills later in life. According to the EPA, the herbicide is so dangerous that it needs to be removed from the market immediately. Some ag workers groups cheered the decision, calling it a great first step to protect the reproductive health of farm workers. Others said, yo, what

What took you guys so long? The EU banned DCPA in 2009, but the EPA in the U.S. took longer with its decision, 15 years longer. But Toby, why now? Yeah, essentially, there's only one manufacturer of this pesticide, AMVAC chemical. And for years, EPA has been kind of knocking on their door saying, hey, we want more information around the health side.

health risks of this product. But the company dragged their feet, refused to turn over data. There was this study that they conducted on DCPA on development and the function of the specific thyroid problem in infants. And they never turned over the data until November 2023. So the company had tried to avoid this sort of emergency action, though. In December, they pulled all of the use on turf, which reduced the risk to

golfers, actually other athletes as well, but still you're seeing these farm workers not getting sufficient protection. So it really was just a case of a single manufacturer doing everything in its power to not give the EPA what they needed to make this decision. But some of the data on this is a little alarming. The agency, the EPA, estimates that pregnant women handling DCPA products could be subjected to exposures four to 20 times

greater than what the agency has estimated is safe for fetuses. Meanwhile, this thing can linger on agricultural products, on plants and vegetables way longer. So they tested 10 kale samples and they found that nearly six in 10 of them were found to have DCPA revenue in 2017. So I think after all of this, there was a swirling of pressure on the EPA to act. And they're like,

Up next, Elon is fed up with advertisers not spending on X, so now he's suing them. Church's original recipe is back. You can never go wrong with original.

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Elon Musk thinks he is being bullied by the advertising industry and is taking them to court over it. His social media platform X just filed a federal antitrust lawsuit against the Global Alliance for Responsible Media, aka GARM, which includes big ad spenders like CVS, Mars, and Unilever, alleging the companies illegally boycotted his platform. The suit says the companies conspired to withhold billions of dollars in ad spend to

to force the former bird app to maintain certain safety standards. For context, at least 18 brands associated with the coalition stopped advertising on Twitter between November 2022 through December, according to the suit, while additional companies cut back on spend.

But let's emerge from Elon land for a second and look at what this suit is getting at. It's an antitrust lawsuit, but it doesn't really look like one. Stephen Calkins, a professor that specializes in antitrust law, told the Wall Street Journal that if people have simply switched purchasing ads from one platform to another, it's not clear how that is going to be harming competition and ending up in higher prices. So, Neil,

You have Elon trying to make the case that these companies have been coordinating to deprive X of advertising revenue, but framing it as an antitrust lawsuit might be trying to fit a round peg into a square hole here. I don't think we've ever seen this in business history where advertisers left and instead of talking to them nicely and trying to get them to return, maybe listening to their concerns, they are suing them to force them to pay for ads. I

It is a very perplexing strategy, but one that X things is the last resort. Elon Musk tweeted, we tried peace for two years. Now it is war. They're saying this comes on the heels of a Republican led house of representatives committee on the judiciary report that

looked into Garm, this advertising network, and found that they colluded to boycott Twitter after Musk's acquisition. And the idea is that how they're framing this in an antitrust way is that these advertisers are working together to compel X to change its safety policies

just because of their market power. If they did unilateral ad deals, like I'm, you know, some of these brands are Unilever, like I, Unilever, I negotiate with UX unilaterally, just individually us. And then Mars does its own, does its own negotiation. But the fact that they all,

working in cahoots together to bring about changes in X's policies. That's how they're suing on antitrust grounds. Right. This committee report kind of used the language that they're demonetizing certain viewpoints, which is what Elon and Linda Iaccarino, CEO of X, have seized on. They're kind of making this a free speech thing that they're harming free speech by colluding to

you to dilute the power of the marketplace of ideas. That's what they're calling Twitter in this or X in this sense. So you can see where it comes from. But again, take a step back here and say, just from a business one-on-one perspective, if you want these advertisers to return to your platform, you should do things like smooth over your relationships with them. Instead, he's going by force. He's trying to force them into returning their ad dollars, which the

doesn't seem like something that will ever work. So even if he wins, it feels like he's losing by filing the suit at all. And there's certainly no guarantee he's going to win. I mean, the defense is that advertisers also have a right under the First Amendment to choose with whom they want to associate. They should not have to subsidize viewpoints that they don't agree with. This is what you're hearing from First Amendment people who are on the side of the advertisers. They're like, do you...

You can't force me to spend money with you. It's just not the way the business world works. But Elon Musk has been sort of at war with advertisers for years. Remember, at the Dealbook conference, he said, go F yourself to Disney CEO Bob Iger. But the

there is a big problem here and that is X is just losing a ton of money in the first quarter. They posted a 25% decline in revenue. Uh, and that was a 50% drop from the year before, right after Musk bought the platform. When all of those advertisers put, uh, pulled out revenue dropped 25%. So they're just not making a lot of money. And to make this business a sustainable one, they need to figure out a way to get advertisers back, whether that's by carrot or stick. Yeah.

And just to zoom out, Musk has definitely gotten more litigation happy in recent months. On Monday, he revived his lawsuit against Sam Altman in OpenAI. He's also sued the watchdog group Media Matters for America. X is bankrolling a lawsuit against Disney as well. He's also facing down a lot of lawsuits himself. Remember, there's still some lawsuits out there from Twitter employees that he fired. There's one from Don Lemon who had that

very brief partnership deal with XO. Clearly the legal bills are starting to mount both ones that he's proactively pursuing and then ones that are coming in against him as well. The Olympics are undefeated when it comes to turning people you've never heard of into mini celebrities, pommel horse guy, matrix sharpshooters, the well-endowed French pole vaulter. They've all enjoyed their 15 minutes of fame over the past week in Paris.

Now they need to pounce by linking up with brands to turn their fleeting stardom into sustained attention that can boost their personal brands as well as their under-the-radar sports. American sprinter Noah Lyles understands this deeply. After winning the epic 100-meter dash and becoming the fastest man alive, he singled out Adidas with a request –

I want my own shoe, he said. I want my own trainer. I'm dead serious. There ain't no money in spikes. There's money in sneakers. It's an instantly iconic quote that could find receptive ears at Adidas, which has sponsored Lyle's since 2016. From Michael Jordan to LeBron James, basketball players have a long history of launching their own shoe lines.

which has made a ton of money for both them and Nike. But for sprinters like Lyles, there hasn't been a similar opportunity. Toby, do you like this pitch from Lyles? And what do you think of the broader strategy of these athletes trying to capitalize on their sudden fame? Yeah, I love this from Lyles, especially because he is...

one of the more recognizable faces of the Olympics. It's not just 15 minutes of fame for him. You've seen him in NBC marketing materials. He's very much a person that they want to uplift at this Olympics. So he's never one to be afraid of being outspoken. So I think going to bat for himself in this case and trying to win a shoe deal would set a good precedent about these athletes

that only get this one event for the year to truly be on a global stage. So I do love that he's trying to push the agenda forward, trying to win these more lucrative deals for these athletes that don't get year-long attention. Yeah, speaking of the more obscure athletes that...

Truly no one has ever heard of before the Olympics. Steven Nedrosik, the pommel horse guy, was sitting there like Clark Kent with his glasses. You could expect maybe Warby Parker to approach him for a deal. There was an American runner, Kendall Ellis, who got stuck in a porter potty at the U.S. Olympic Triathlon.

And she landed a sponsorship deal with Charmin. And you can't talk about this without talking about Alona Mar, who may be the best at it, at building a personal brand. She has 5.5 million followers across all social media platforms. She has her own skincare line. She's talking about body positivity. She probably is just

You know, they won the bronze in the rugby, and she's probably just like in the boardroom right now talking deals. She fully understands how to build a personal brand and how to carry her, you know, mini stardom that she's captured over the past month into not just...

a sustained attention for her, but also for the sport. I also think that this is becoming a much more repeatable playbook outside of Olympic athletes. I mean, if we go back to the NCAA March Madness tournament, a similar event where you see these lesser-known names be elevated to a global stage. Remember, Jack Golke was the Oakland basketball player who suddenly became worldwide famous for beating Kentucky. He signed a bunch of NIL deals in the wake of this. It is something that...

a byproduct of internet culture now is that these lesser known athletes can erupt into superstardom. So I'm glad we are seeing this playbook where they can cash in financially because they deserve it. They are stars. I realize this is my favorite part about the Olympics is to see these niche sports, these niche athletes that you've never heard of become even more famous or get more talked about than LeBron James or all the NBA basketball players playing in on the men's

basketball team because those are global superstars. But honestly, no one's talking about them and everyone's talking about people who are on rugby teams and are doing the pommel horse and pole vaulters. And I, you know, I just was reflecting. I was like, that really is one of my favorite parts about the Olympics that these people get their time in the spotlight. And I hope they get they get paid for it.

When you call yourself Mr. Worldwide and Mr. 305 like the rapper Pitbull does, that comes with a certain set of expectations. You got to do big stuff, and you got to do big stuff in Miami specifically. And Pitbull knows this, which is why he bought the naming rights to the Miami-based Florida International University's

football stadium, which will henceforth be known as Pitbull Stadium for the next five years. And I have to say, people, he got a great deal. The rights cost him $6 million, but in return, he can use the stadium for up to 10 days a year. Pitbull-affiliated performers get preference to play at games, and of course, he gets his own suite. Neil, I didn't even know you could name stadiums after living people, let alone tangentially-affiliated musical artists, but I am so on board with it.

A pit bull performance at Pit Bull Stadium. Are you kidding me? Dale, indeed. I just can't believe this is real, but it's just a sign of the times of what's happening in college football where athletic departments need to come up with a lot more money. There was this big, big,

multi-billion dollar settlement between the NCAA and athletes who sued them for compensation. And now these athletic departments need to come up with millions of dollars per year to start sharing revenue with athletes. So you're going to see not just FIU with Pitbull, but maybe a bunch of other, you know,

Maryland with logic or, uh, I don't know, Boston with the dropkick Murphys, Boston university, but you'll, you will start seeing more deals, more sponsorship deals come through the pike because big five conference, uh, uh, athletic departments are going to need to fork over $22 million to athletes in a revenue sharing agreement starting in 2025. So the college football, if it didn't already start looking like the NFL, it is going to start looking like it now. And, uh, I guess, well,

I guess this Pitbull thing is a little unique. The Pitbull thing is incredible. I mean, can you imagine actually showing up to a Pitbull concert at Pitbull Stadium? What about a football game? That's true, too. In return, what is FIU getting out of this deal? It's quite funny. Pitbull will appear at one fundraising event per year. He will donate $1.2 million every year for five years as well. He's also going to make an FIU anthem for the university sports teams, which

That will go extremely hard. He's also required to post about FIU on social media 12 times a year. So I'm kind of for this deal. I mean, he is Mr. 305. It is a little bit more. You can see how this partnership was formed. So I love it. I love that this athletic department is getting creative. And I love Pitbull's always down for a little bit more Pitbull intention. Yeah, he seems to think that this is going to be the start of a wave of more musicians buying the naming rights to stadiums.

I don't know whether that's the case. I think FIU is just not that good, so he may have gotten, as you said, a pretty good deal on this. But we'll see. He's so affiliated with the region. I mean, Mr. 305, he's so proud to be part of Miami, and I don't know how many other musicians are so proud of where they came from, and it's such a part of their identity. But for fans of major college music,

uh, football teams. Just don't, don't get used to your stadium just being called Ohio stadium or Beaver stadium, because it's going to get that sponsor soon as these, as these schools need to pay out. I mean, they're Beaver stadium in Penn state is doing a $700 million, uh, renovation right now. And the athletic director is there is like, guys, I can't promise you. We're going to keep it Beaver stadium. We need to make some money here. So I might, you know, they got bills to pay. They got bills to pay. I don't know. What's a big Pennsylvania, uh,

was a big thing. I'm going to leave that one to you. And then not even just Penn State, but Ohio State too, which they're vaunted Ohio Stadium. The AD there also is like, I can't promise you we might get a stoncer for this stadium too. And I was looking at Maryland where I went, which used to be called Bird Stadium, Capital One Field at Bird Stadium. Now it's S-E-C-U Stadium.

Don't know. If I ever went to a college football game, I'm not going to one now. All right. That is all the time we have for the day. Thanks so much for listening and have a wonderful Wednesday. For any questions, comments, general feedback, send an email to morningbrewdailyatmorningbrew.com. Let's roll the credits. Emily Milliron is our executive producer. Raymond Liu is our producer.

Olivia Graham is our associate producer. Ed Lewis is our technical director. Billy Menino is on audio. Intern Grant ran graphics and did a hell of a job. Hair and Makeup Stadium, coming to a college campus near you. Devin Emery is our chief content officer, and our show is a production of Morning Brew. Great show today, Neil. Let's run it back tomorrow.