Source in the room tells me this is a rough transcript of the comments Treasury Secretary Bessent made yesterday at a closed door event that are moving markets today:

“The next steps with China are, no one thinks the current status quo is sustainable at 145 and 125 [percent]. So I would posit that over the very near future, there will be a de-escalation. And I think that that should give the world, the markets, a sigh of relief… We have an embargo now, on both sides, right?” Bessent says he expects 'de-escalation' in U.S.-China tariff fight soon cnbc.com/2025/04/22/bes…

The political problem for the Trump administration is simple: economic pain from the tariffs will come almost immediately, but the gain- long term restructuring of the economy- will take years. President Trump seems willing to bet that American voters are willing to tough it out with him. But American voters are not famous for their willingness to tight things out. They’re more likely to vote them out.

Some drama yesterday involving an off the record session with some of the nation’s top CEOs and a secret recording - and it’s important because it shows how this Trump term is different from what many in the business community have been expecting. Here’s what happened: FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson went to the Yale CEO conference in DC yesterday and delivered a bracing message to CEOs - many of whom had largely assumed that the Trump era guarantees an M+A boom to come. The closed door event was supposed to be off the record but someone secretly recorded it.

BREAKING: For months, I have been working w/ a great @CNBC team on a new documentary about Vladislav Klyushin, the Russian oligarch who was traded back to Moscow today. We were slated to pub tomorrow, but for obvious reasons, we are going live right now: cnbc.com/2024/08/01/put… This is the inside story of an incredible criminal scam that reveals why the biggest insider trading scam on Wall Street for years… was based in Moscow. It was a hack-to trade scheme the resulted from a “bromance” between a Klyushin and his partner, a former Russian government intelligence hacker. Together, they generated millions of dollars in illicit gains at the expense of investors in American markets, fueling a spending spree on Porsches, yachting and private jet trips.

My view of the standing ovation for Chinese President Xi Jinping tonight in San Francisco from a ballroom full of some of the most powerful American CEOs and Chinese officials. I’ll have more Thursday morning on ⁦@SquawkCNBC⁩ on ⁦@CNBC⁩. It’s a little difficult to read, but here’s my pic of the program last night, listing who hosted the dinner honoring Chinese president Xi Jinping and who paid for it.

The Washington Post obtained the transcript of JPMorgan exec Mary Erdoes’ deposition transcript in the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking lawsuit: washingtonpost.com/business/2023/… The Post: “The deposition transcript shows Erdoes said she had been made aware of Epstein’s convictions for sexual offenses, his status as a high-risk sex offender, and public allegations of abuse of minors and human trafficking.“

This is a great piece, and highlights the question: What is college for? It is absolutely linked to the conversation @JoeSquawk and I had on Squawk Box this morning. If costs are crippling, people will make different decisions about what they can afford.
newyorker.com/magazine/2023/… It may be that colleges have simply priced the English major out of the market. Getting a degree in literature at $20K might make sense, but how many can afford to take on a lifetime of debt to buy that degree at $80k?

At Chatham House in London this morning, DOJ's Lisa Monaco signaled a stepped-up effort to protect US tech and US companies from autocratic regimes. That will include a new focus on US capital outflows -- to make sure Americans aren't funding advances in hostile countries. "We are exploring how to monitor the flow of private capital in critical sectors and ensure that our own 'outbound investment' in dual-use technology doesn’t provide our adversaries with a national security advantage," she said.

A judge just unsealed records showing that Larry Kramer, dean emeritus of Stanford Law School, co-signed a $500,000 bond on behalf of now disgraced former FTX crypto CEO Sam Bankman Fried. I asked Kramer why he supported SBF, and here's what he emailed me just now: "Joe Bankman and Barbara Fried have been close friends of my wife and I since the mid-1990s..."

I had a fascinating conversation with a high ranking US intelligence official about Snowden recently. I asked the official if there’s a chance Snowden was a Russian spy all along - after all, can it be a coincidence he ended up in Moscow?

https://twitter.com/washingtonpost/status/1598686161333063680

This official said no. Having looked into it extensively, his take is that Snowden was a disgruntled narcissist who didn’t feel he was getting enough respect from his bosses.

Wait… what?

https://twitter.com/phil_lewis_/status/1580167757953634306

“it adds up to potentially one of the biggest heists ever pulled off from inside an American prison – made even more startling by the fact that the inmate was in the Georgia Department of Corrections’ Special Management Unit, a maximum security facility …”

DOJ: U.K. Businessman Graham Bonham-Carter arrested today for conspiracy to violate U.S. sanctions imposed on Russian Oligarch Oleg Deripaska, wire fraud in connection with funding Deripaska properties and efforts to expatriate Deripaska’s artwork in the United States. DOJ says it will seek extradition to the US of Bonham Carter, who continued to work for Deripaska after he was sanctioned and refer to Deripaska as his “boss.”

Andrii Yermak, speaking from the office of the president in Ukraine, says there is no practical military value in Russia’s recent missile strikes. “There is a simple logic behind these actions,” he says: Russians want to provoke a humanitarian crisis in Ukraine before winter. At the Cipher Brief conference in Sea Island Georgia, Yermak says “Moscow is blackmailing the wider world.” Says negotiations can only come after deescalation, but “Russia is doing something completely opposite.”

Just got off the phone with a senior official at the Department of Justice who walked me through the changes coming tonight in the way prosecutors handle corporate criminal enforcement. Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco will lay these out officially in a speech at 5:30 tonight. It's all about going after, and ultimately jailing, individual corporate executives at companies that commit fraud.

Grassley opens Twitter hearing by going right after the company’s CEO: “If these allegations are true, I don’t see how Mr. Agrawal can maintain his position at Twitter.” Twitter whistleblower “Mudge” opens his statement saying “I’m here today because Twitter leadership is misleading the public, lawmakers… and even its own board of directors.”

So what did Merrick Garland just do? The government requested the court unseal the Notice of Filing in the Mar a Lago case and its attachment *absent objection by former President Trump.* DOJ says the attachment to that Notice consists of:
• The search warrant signed and approved by the Court on August 5, 2022, including Attachments A and B; and
• The redacted Property Receipt listing items seized pursuant to the search, filed with the Court August 11, 2022.

NEW: Attempted murder of John Bolton: DOJ says a member of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is charged in connection with murder-for-hire and plot attempting to arrange the murder of fmr National Security Advisor John Bolton: justice.gov/opa/press-rele…
h/t @jimforkincnbc DOJ says, beginning in October 2021, Shahram Poursafi, aka Mehdi Rezayi, 45, of Tehran, attempted to arrange the murder of Bolton, likely in retaliation for the January 2020 death of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps – Qods Force commander Qasem Soleimani.

DOJ announces indictment of Sherry Xue Li and Lianbo "Mike" Wang for conspiracy to commit telecommunications fraud, money laundering conspiracy, + obstructing campaign law. Alleged scheme involved providing foreign funds to political campaigns + selling access to US politicians. PG 38 of the criminal complaint shows a picture of Li with then President Donald Trump taken at a 2017 fundraiser. The complaint states that Li obtained photos of herself, Wang and 12 foreign nationals with Trump at the event. justice.gov/usao-edny/pres… h/t @jimforkincnbc

There were several tactical and presentation decisions that made last night’s Jan. 6th Committee hearings so effective:
1. They dispensed with the dumb “every member gets 5 minutes” rule. Congressional committees cling to the format, and it makes many hearings incoherent. 2. It was bipartisan. Yes, Rep. Liz Cheney is on the outs with her fellow Republicans for her role here. But she is a leader and from one of the most prominent Republican families. The hearing showed Democrats and Republicans working together for a common cause.

New report from the US-China Commission expresses concerns about the Chinese gov't-connected firm Fufeng Group's purchase of 370 acres in a Grand Forks, North Dakota agribusiness park.

Why?

https://twitter.com/USCC_GOV/status/1529815138039173120

The report says the property is "about 12 miles from the Grand Forks Air Force Base, which houses some of the United States’ top intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities."

I'm old enough to remember the *first* time MicroStrategy was at the epicenter of a market crash -- in fact, @jimcramer called the company's accounting scandal the pin that popped the entire Dot Com bubble in 2000. cc: @MarkLeibovich
washingtonpost.com/archive/politi…

https://twitter.com/CNBC/status/1524761012536287235

I was at Michael Saylor's 35th birthday party, which is detailed by @MarkLeibovich in the WPost piece above. We were in Adams Morgan in February of 2000, just weeks before the bubble popped. I remember that Saylor made a speech about Roman emperors.