Tariffs Sow Trouble, AI Sparks a Second Act

Happy Monday, deal hunters 👋 — if you thought farms were only about tractors and crops, think again. Tariffs are shaking the fields, eBay is betting its future on AI, and Musk just pitched a pay package so wild it makes Powerball look boring. Let’s dig in.

🏭 Fields of Gold Turn Sour

Farm Equipment Stocks Were Ripe for the Picking — Until Tariffs Spoiled the Harvest

For a minute, American agriculture looked like Wall Street’s safe haven 🌾. Farmers were flush with cash, upgrading tractors and combines, while companies like Deere ($DE), AGCO ($AGCO), and Tractor Supply ($TSCO) posted double-digit stock gains.

Then came tariffs.

• Fertilizer prices shot up 35%.

• Corn and soybean futures slid to multi-year lows.

• Deere warned of $600M in extra costs this year, slashing forecasts and announcing layoffs.

👉 Farmers now face higher bills with thinner margins, and equipment makers are starting to feel the squeeze. Deere projects large tractor sales could fall up to 20% this year, with pain lasting into 2026.

Investor Takeaway: Machinery stocks aren’t dead fields, but tariffs mean slower harvests. If you want exposure to ag without tariff headaches, farmland REITs like Farmland Partners ($FPI) and ETFs like $VEGI offer diversification — a way to plant seeds without Washington pulling the weeds.

🃏 eBay 2.0: From Auctions to AI

“The AI Era Reset the Clock for Us.”

Remember when eBay ($EBAY) was the quirky auction site where you could snag Beanie Babies and rare baseball cards? Well, CEO Jamie Iannone wants to bury that past and relaunch the company as an AI-powered shopping platform.

• Rolling out AI shopping agents + “magical listings” that auto-generate descriptions from photos.

• Profit last quarter: $368M, up from $224M YoY.

• Three decades of buyer-seller data are being fed into eBay’s new LLMs.

CTO Mazen Rawashdeh admits they were “trailing in the race,” but with AI, eBay thinks it has a second wind 🏃.

👉 Niche is the play: Analysts say eBay doesn’t need to beat Amazon. Growth in categories like luxury goods and trading cards could be enough to keep Wall Street happy.

📰 Other Nuts You Should Know

• 🇯🇵 Tariff pact drama: Trump finalized a 15% tariff deal with Japan in exchange for a $550B investment in the US. The fallout? Japan’s PM Shigeru Ishiba is resigning.

• 💊 Healthcare costs spike: US corporate health spending could jump 9% in 2026, the biggest increase in a decade, fueled by GLP-1 demand and AI billing.

• 🚗 Musk’s mega payday: Tesla ($TSLA) floated a record $1T pay package for Elon Musk, which could make him the richest human in history (again).

• 👔 OpenAI’s LinkedIn killer: OpenAI is reportedly building an AI-powered jobs platform, plus an “Academy” aiming to certify 10M Americans by 2030.

• 📱 Apple’s big reveal: Tomorrow’s “Awe Dropping” event is expected to feature the iPhone 17 + iPhone 17 Air, new Apple Watches, and AirPods. Foldable iPhone? Not yet.

• 📚 Anthropic pays up: The AI company will shell out $1.5B to settle claims it trained models on pirated books.

• 📈 IPO lineup: Klarna, Gemini (Winklevoss twins’ exchange), and four other firms are set to hit the market this week.

Together with Money

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💡What else are we reading and seeing?

• Why 'The Great Lock In' is trending

• Alphabet nears $3T valuation as key risk clears

• Italy’s flat tax sparks a super-rich boom in Milan

• Lab-grown meat makers sue Texas over ban on cultivated protein

• After 100 years, trillion-dollar fund manager Wellington wants you to know its name

• OpenAI is backing a feature-length, AI-made animated film it expects to debut at the Cannes Film Festival in May

• Ex-Astronomer executive Kristin Cabot files for divorce after viral kiss cam incident with married boss

🌰 The Bottom Line

From cornfields to code, markets are running on uncertainty — and AI seems to be the wild card in every sector. Whether it’s eBay reinventing itself or healthcare costs climbing, the only thing growing faster than tariffs is the hype around AI.

Thanks for cracking today’s nut with us 🥜. See you tomorrow for more bites from Wall Street to Silicon Valley.