Editor’s Note: Yesterday, I shared my approach to President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariff plan. While I’m sticking with my “Keep Calm and Carry On” strategy and staying focused on lowly valued, “unpopular” stocks, my InvestorPlace colleague Louis Navellier offers a different perspective worth considering.
You can hear Louis’s take in this insightful video interview with InvestorPlace Editor-in-Chief Luis Hernandez.
Though this market selloff is understandably causing anxiety, both Louis and I want to reassure you: Solid investment opportunities are still very much present. And I’ll be sharing some of my own in this space in the coming days and weeks.
Meanwhile, here’s Louis…
Well, it’s official, folks. Liberation Day is here, and we now know the details of President Donald Trump’s tariffs.
I just recorded a short video to answer the questions on all our minds:
“How will the tariffs impact the market, and how should I position myself accordingly?”
Here’s what we know…
Trump announced a 10% baseline tariff on all imports starting April 5. Other countries that Trump considers “bad actors” will pay a reciprocal tariff.
These higher tariffs will be half of what the White House estimates other countries are charging us, either through outright tariffs, trade barriers, or currency manipulation.
Duties include 24% on Japan and 20% on the European Union, and those are effective April 9. There’s also a new 34% tariff on Chinese goods on top of already announced 20% duties.
Now, this is all fascinating to watch, and the market is clearly up in arms over this right now. But I want to be very clear, folks…
What we are witnessing is a profound transformation of the way we do business. The goals of the tariffs have always been the same: level the playing field on trade, increase tax revenue, and ultimately create a massive wave of onshoring to the United States.
We’re already seeing that play out, as there has been roughly $6 trillion in onshoring already announced – and we could soon approach $10 trillion.
So, once the dust settles and the market realizes the effects of this mega-wave of onshoring, the U.S. economy could be primed to boom.
That’s why I just sat down with Luis Hernandez, Editor-in-Chief of InvestorPlace, to explain what investors can expect from the tariffs – and how they can profit.
Just press “play” below to watch this short video.
Now, the bottom line is I don’t want you to let the tariff headlines throw you off track.
The reality is that once everything is in motion, I expect growth to accelerate drastically, especially as the current administration clears away more red tape and unleashes the next wave of innovation in the AI Revolution.
You see, these tariff changes are just one part of a massive convergence that’s taking place between Trump’s policies and the AI Revolution.
As this Trump/AI Convergence happens, I expect it to unlock powerful gains for investors.
That’s where my Accelerated Profits service comes in. My Buy List is full of stocks that hold up when the market gets choppy – and sprint ahead when things turn around.
That’s why my Accelerated Profits subscribers had the chance, over the past year or so, for gains such as…
- 90.25% from Celestica, Inc. (CLS)
- 95.13% from Builders FirstSource, Inc. (BLDR)
- 114.49% from Targa Resources Corp. (TRGP)
- 187.28% from YPF Sociedad Anonomia (YPF)
- 604% from Vista Oil & Gas (VIST)
In fact, my system has identified the companies best positioned to thrive in this new Trump/AI Convergence – stocks with superior fundamentals and persistent institutional buying pressure.
Regards,
Louis Navellier
Editor, Market360
Louis hereby discloses that as of the date of this email, Louis, directly or indirectly, owns the following securities that are the subject of the commentary, analysis, opinions, advice, or recommendations in, or which are otherwise mentioned in, the essay set forth below:
Celestica, Inc. (CLS) and Targa Resources Corp. (TRGP)
Transcript
Luis Hernandez: Hi, I’m Luis Hernandez, Editor-in-Chief at InvestorPlace. Well, it’s the day after “Liberation Day” when President Donald Trump announced his plans for the introduction of a series of new tariffs. Here are the basics…
A 10% baseline tariff. These are across-the-board levies on all imports starting April 5. Other countries will pay a discounted reciprocal tariff. So higher rates for some nations that Trump considers bad actors. Duties include 24% on Japan and 20% on the EU in lieu of the universal 10% tariff, and those are effective April 9. A new 34% tariff on Chinese goods on top of already announced duties such as the 20% tariff Trump imposed over fentanyl. That means the base tariff rate on Chinese imports will be 54% before adding tariffs imposed during Biden’s presidency or Trump’s first term.
Canada and Mexico are excluded from the reciprocal tariff regime. Trump said he’s imposing 25% tariffs on all foreign-made autos as of midnight last night.
Today I’m here with investing legend Louis Navellier, to explain what it all means for investors today and what they can expect to happen over the coming weeks. Whether you’re a free trade believer or think trade tariffs are a great idea, you need to be prepared for whatever happens next. And as we always like to say, if you don’t prepare, you’ll be left behind.
Louis, thanks for taking the time.
Louis Navellier: Well, I think the first obvious comment I have is that Howard Lutnick is in charge. He’s the commerce secretary, and he’s the one that’s been pushing for the tariffs to eventually eliminate the income tax. Now, that’s a tall task and I don’t think he’ll get there, but he may be able to reduce the income tax more with these tariffs.
Just to be academic, and I don’t want to get anybody upset, in America we do have huge underground economies. You have 20% of Californians, for example, don’t even have bank accounts. This is part of the crypto economy and other things that are out there. So if you have an underground economy that you can’t tax, and those underground economies are throughout America, you either have to put on a national sales tax or a value-added (VAT) tax. Excuse me, the tariffs. It’s either a VAT or the tariffs.
So they’ve chosen to go the tariff route and it is going to hurt some consumers, but the bottom line is you’re going to not pay as much income tax as longer term.
The other thing is the dollar opened up weak today because the British pound surging and so is the euro. That’s going to reverse. The dollar’s going to get its mojo back, be super strong and the strength of the dollar might entirely offset the 10% tariffs, the baseline tariffs.
As far as the reciprocal tariffs on everybody else that are much higher, Trump pointed out, they’re half of what they do to us. And it’s going to be fascinating to see how all this unfolds. This is really hurting Southeast Asia a lot, and we had huge tariffs with Vietnam, Thailand, I can go on and on. And so somebody like Nike Inc. (NKE) that makes shoes in Vietnam, they’re going to be impacted immensely.
But the tariffs on the chips, semiconductor chips, I’m not too worried about because obviously we have that big Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited (TSM) plant in Gilbert, Arizona that they’re investing literally a hundred plus billion additionally. So I think that’ll just cause more onshoring.
Of course, the whole objective of this is to onshore everything. And Trump already announced that there’s over $6 trillion onshoring that he knows of. But if we get the German auto plants to beef up their facilities in Alabama, South Carolina, Tennessee, we could be approaching almost $10 trillion in onshoring, which is mind-boggling.
I am also fascinated that there’s a 10% tariff on Britain where we run a trade surplus. We also run a trade surplus with Australia, so there’s a 10% tariff on them, but there’s a 20% tariff on the European Union (EU). There’s no doubt Trump’s going to war with the EU.
And if I’m Chancellor Merz in Germany, I think he has to surrender. I know he wants to have a strong response with French President Macron on Monday, but I think they need to surrender. They can’t compete. Their electricity is four times higher than ours in America. Trump has already said, I’ll give you the visas for your workers. They already have plants in America. Oh, and by the way, if you stay in Germany, guess what? You can only make electric vehicles by 2035 and you’re not making any money on them. So why don’t you just pick up your entire manufacturing business, which you have been losing because of high electricity prices, move the whole thing to America and you can go back to your old business model of not only EVs but hybrids and ICE vehicles, internal combustion engine vehicles.
So I think this is fascinating. I also think the death of the EU is coming. The U.S. has sent a very strong signal, not to ignore the populace. What happened in France with Marine Le Pen is shocking. The party that wanted to turn on Germany’s nuclear plants to save their manufacturing base, they got 21% of the vote. The second-biggest party in Germany has been totally ignored. So this is J.D. Vance’s assertion.
These negotiations are not going to be nice. Scott Bessent is a straight guy. He’s made it very clear that if they try to retaliate in any manner, it’s not going to end well. So we have all the leverage, but in the end, the dollar will be very strong.
The final comment I have, this is going to accelerate the collapse of interest rates that I keep predicting. You already have Treasury yields down sharply, but the European Central Bank is going to have to be slashing rates. And as global rates collapse, our rates will come down. We’ll be the last to cut, but that’s why I’m still expecting four rate cuts this year.
And China, I want to remind everybody, rates are lower than Japan. China will be at or near zero for the next two decades. And this is going to be just fascinating to watch.
Luis Hernandez: You hit on a couple of points there that I just want to follow up on.
So you mentioned auto manufacturing may be coming over to the United States. Is that the only one or are there other kind of manufacturing sectors that could potentially move to the United States?
Louis Navellier: Well, the auto tariffs are 25%. And what’s confusing to everybody is this USMCA (which is the U.S.-Mexican-Canadian trade) agreement that was modified under Trump 1.0 in its first term, it expires in 2026. And the way I understand it, if your Dodge pickup or your Chevy Equinox, which is made in Mexico, comes over and has 40% non-U.S. content, you’ll be paying a 25% tariff on that non-U.S. content.
General Motors Co. (GM) has outsourced immensely, so they’re really hurt by this. Stellantis NV (STLA) even more so. Obviously, the most domestic auto manufacturer is Tesla Inc. (TSLA). Tesla will benefit from this; they’re about 87% domestic.
Ford Motor Co.’s (F) is about 80%, but Ford does use a lot of aluminum, and that aluminum comes predominantly from Canada because they have the cheap hydroelectric you need to make aluminum, aluminum is very energy intensive. And even the engines on the F-150 are made in Canada.
So we’ll have to see if the shifts. Canada and Mexico are already in recessions and they are in dire shape. And I think the country they’re retaliating the most against is Mexico because their deficit used to be $40 billion and it went to $178 billion because China was doing sub-assembly in Mexico trying to sneak their goods across the border under USMCA and North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) rules.
That’s going to be the big fight, and I’m sure they’re just aghast right now, not only China but also Mexico and Canada.
Luis Hernandez: You also mentioned your prediction that we’re going to see at least four rate cuts this year from the Federal Reserve. What will that do to the market? What do you think the effect is going to be on the stock market when they have to do that?
Louis Navellier: Oh, it’ll cause us to explode. It’s very bullish. The main thing the U.S. has going for it that Europe and Asia don’t have is we have demographic growth. We have household formation. In America, we’re still pro-family, in the South, the Mountain West. Also in America, we assimilate our immigrants no matter how they got here. If you look around the rest of the world, and I’ll pick on Europe for example, they’re losing households. They’re giving away free homes in Sicily, Greece (I think you got to pay a dollar and agree to maintain them or pay a euro and agree to maintain them.)
They have immigration, but they’re not assimilating their immigrants. Britain used to, Germany used to, but they’ve been overrun. And France, of course, has never assimilated their immigrants.
So we just have a better model in America than everybody else. We’re younger, we’re more dynamic. Our 50 states compete with each other. So no matter who we elect, we’re going to win. We’re also food and energy-independent, which a lot of other countries can’t say.
But Asia’s pretty old. The highest birth rate in Asia is in Japan of all places. You would think it would be in Indonesia or Malaysia or Thailand or Vietnam, but it’s not. It’s in Japan.
So something interesting is going on around the world and the only countries that are expanding are the U.S., India and Brazil. And Brazil is about to stop expanding. So it’ll be the U.S. and India leading the way. But if you didn’t notice, Trump really slammed India with a lot of big tariffs.
Luis Hernandez: So let me ask you about the AI megatrend. That is what has been pushing the market for the last couple of years, of course. So is there an intersection here between what’s going on with tariffs and the AI megatrend, the Magnificent 7 and what that’s going to look like in the near term?
Louis Navellier: Well, Europe is going to try to punish America for these tariffs and they’re going to zero in on the tech companies.
If we just go back and look at what Europe’s doing, they obviously fined Apple Inc. (AAPL), they’ve been openly hostile to all U.S. tech companies. They want this thing called open-source software. And if you go back to the airplane crash on the Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) Azure Cloud, Microsoft didn’t blame CrowdStrike Holdings Inc. (CRWD) for that crash because there was an upgrade that crashed. Microsoft blamed Europe for the open-source software.
So Lina Khan, our former Federal Trade Commission (FTC) chairman, that’s all she wanted was open-source software. Keir Starmer, when he met with President Trump, is trying to get Apple to open up the iCloud so they can read everything in there and find if anybody’s bashing the Labour Party. Because if you do criticize the Labour Party, you can be imprisoned in Britain. They’re pursuing their opponents.
So all the tech companies have had a run to President Trump for protection. So Apple is getting protection from President Trump, and of course, President Trump got him to do half of $500 billion in investments. You can see the flip that Facebook – Meta Platforms Inc. (META) – did by embracing Trump. Google, of course, has a Justice Department ruling that they have to split up, so they need protection from Trump too, from the previous Justice Department. When they won that ruling against Google, it’s like the equivalent of a dog catching a car. What do they do now? You want to think about what you’re doing.
But Lina Khan was pushing for everything to be open source. And of course, she was suing Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN).
These are legal monopolies, our Magnificent 7, our tech companies and they’re all seeking the protection of President Trump and against Europe. And that’s the epic battle we’re having, and I expect them and us to win because what’s the alternative? The alternative would be opening up their architecture, having constant crashes as the regulators got in and read everything we do and try to humiliate us and imprison us and all that kind of stuff. Whatever they do over there to their opponents.
I mean, Europe is going to break up. The most popular guy in Romania cannot run for president. The Brussels has just disallowed him. The gal that runs the French Parliament, Marie Le Pen, now cannot run for president. Giorgia Meloni in Italy wanted to deport some people that the European courts have said she can’t.
So it was one thing to have a monetary union or a trade union. So the EU makes sense from that point of view. But when they start to run your governments and tell you what to do, that’s another matter.
So trust me, I guarantee you can talk to all these German engineers at the auto companies. They don’t want to do what the EU is telling them to do.
The other thing that’s so fascinating about what’s going on is that there’s been a big pushback against all the green movement. Obviously, that’s why they’re burning Teslas. And that makes no sense. But we’re learning, at least in America, we learned that the green movement was a front to enrich people. So I’m originally from California, from Berkeley, and I’ve been indoctrinated in all this stuff and I’m not anti-green energy. It works great in sunny places like Southern California or Arizona or Las Vegas. But what happens is they took this movement and they figured out how to enrich their friends. So we now know that Stacey Abrams got $2 billion for her non-governmental organization (NGO) to basically upgrade people’s appliances if they cut off natural gas. So for $2 billion, she upgraded the 89 homes and appliances.
I don’t know, I don’t think that’s cost-effective. It’s the same thing with the broadband for America. They spent a fortune on that never got built. You can use Starlink now, you don’t need it.
What’s happening is the U.S. is going to be more productive. We’re purging government now, obviously Elon’s doing that, and AI is going to make us super productive. It’s going to be driving all our cars. GM already announced the alliance with NVIDIA Corporation (NVDA) at NVIDIA’s Summit, and who else is aligned with NVIDIA is Toyota, BYD Company (BYDDY), Mercedes, Volvo, I can go on and on.
And then we have the Tesla autonomous system, the NVIDIA autonomous system. We’ve got dueling robotaxis. You’ll be having the driverless cars in Washington D.C. soon, so good luck with that, the Waymos. Basically, Google versus Tesla, who has the best system, because they’re different. One’s LiDAR with the NVIDIA stuff and one’s based on the mapping that Tesla does.
And every decision in the boardroom, well, there’ll be an AI opinion there. And then AI will be on the factory floors.
With all the manufacturing onshoring, it’ll be fascinating how much of it can be done with robots. There’s a good video out there of all the robots running around with goods on their backs, dumping them into holes, and then when their batteries run out, they all go back to their little charging stations. But it’s fun to watch them run around and not hit each other because of the sensors.
The U.S. is going to lead the world in productivity.
And by the way, Japan’s been pretty good in productivity too. Japan’s been one of the few societies that can age and still get more productive.
So I think us and Japan will lead the way. And I think AI is the key to profitability and prosperity, to be honest with you.
Luis Hernandez: Okay. So you’ve said before that over the short term the market acts like a manic herd, but now that we’ve had the Liberation Day announcements, and if these tariffs are more of a ceiling and not a floor, do you think the market’s going to act a little bit more rationally going forward from here?
Louis Navellier: Yeah, I do. First of all, you have to understand the reason the market’s gapping down is Asia gap down.
So there was a reaction. The bigger the board, the lower the IQ, the bigger the crowd, the lower the IQ. What happens is the market is a manic crowd. So all we’re getting is just Asia’s shock and Europe’s shock. But that doesn’t affect us. I’m recommending 80 plus stocks, I don’t have one analyst cut, not one. And we’ve already seen the earnings work. Argan Inc. (AGX) reported last week gapped up 20%. We saw one of our other stocks get bought out, Mr. Cooper Group Inc. (COOP).
We’re still going to lead the world.
The only thing that’s so confusing is we are going to have negative Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth because they dumped… Our gold reserves went up 43% in January, 25% in February. They dumped goods in America in January and February (I don’t have the March numbers.) And so the trade deficit got so out of whack that it’s going to have negative GDP growth in the first quarter. But we just don’t have the signs of that. We don’t have the labor signs or anything. And I think we’ll be fine.
My other comment is that we do recommend five gold stocks. So it’s important that people own those because when we get the really bad days, they definitely zig when other things zag.
Luis Hernandez: Yep. So I know you well enough to know that you’re not going to be changing your style here after 40 years of success. And you mentioned that you’re not having a lot of analyst revisions downward. Can you give us a couple of your favorite stocks right now just for folks to take away?
Louis Navellier: Well, lock and load on NVIDIA. I mean that’s a stock that’ll change your life and it will dominate through the end of the decade. They have two more reiterations of the Blackwell chip, they already got fancy names for them. And then after the end of the decade, they can’t make their chips much faster because they’re approaching the atomic level of the transistors. You can’t split items to make your chips faster. So then they have to switch to quantum computing, which of course they had that contest. And we’ve done some research reports on the winners of that cloud computing challenge, excuse me, the quantum computing challenge.
So NVIDIA is definitely a stock you should hold through the end of the decade. It’ll change your life. I love Jensen. He’s one of the few founders that can run a company. So that’s the first one.
The second one is I really like Eli Lilly And Co. (LLY). Lilly is onshoring. The weight loss drug phenomenon is real and they are beating Novo Nordisk A/S (NVO) in the weight loss medication. Novo Nordisk dominates diabetes medication. We sold Novo Nordisk quite a few months ago, mainly because Lilly’s beating them. So if you want to play that trend, Lilly’s a good buy here near term.
But our small-cap stocks are bunnies. They sit, they hop, they’re very erratic. There’s a lot of great small-cap buys like Powell Industries Inc. (POWL). I’ve lost track of how many great ones there are, but they’ll all pop around their earnings. I’m very comfortable and confident of that.
Luis Hernandez: Terrific, Louis. Thanks so much for your insights. It’s going to be a fascinating time for sure.
Louis Navellier: Oh, it’s going to be very exciting, but it can only get better.
And by the way, they got Scott Bessent out and about. They got Howard Lutnick out and about. There’s a big PR push underway right now, so let’s just let that push.
And Europe is totally screwed. So they think they’re going to retaliate on Monday, they’re not. Whatever they do, they just hurt themselves and it’s going to be fascinating to watch, but we have all the leverage. I don’t think Trump enjoys tormenting people, but I think he does like to have leverage in negotiations, and there’s no doubt he’s asserting that. And there’s no doubt that it ends with how much are you going to onshore. And the more they onshore, the more we win.
So that’s what’s happening.
Luis Hernandez: Okay. Thanks, Louis. I appreciate it.
Louis Navellier: Thank you.
Luis Hernandez: Folks, below this video, you should see a link to Louis’s Accelerated Profits product. This is Louis’s fastest-moving service focused on finding stocks that are making short-term moves to the upside so you don’t have to endure the constant market swings.
Besides frequent new buys, usually at least two every month, every Tuesday, Louis identifies his top three stocks to buy right now. So when you join, you’ll see Louis’s latest favorite picks today and then get them every Tuesday going forward.
Thanks again for your attention.
