Trump's First 100 Days, Tariffs Impact Trade, AI Agents, Amazon Backs Down

Historical price data for Uber Technologies, Inc. (ticker: UBER) show that after the podcast release on May 2, 2025, the stock did in fact rise above $88 per share.

• Macrotrends reports that Uber’s all‑time high closing price was $100.10 on October 6, 2025, and that the 2025 intrayear high was $100.10, both well above $88. (macrotrends.net)
• StatMuse’s month‑by‑month table for UBER shows that in May 2025 the stock reached a monthly high of $93.60, and in subsequent months (June through October 2025) hit highs in the mid‑90s to just above $101, all clearly exceeding $88. (statmuse.com)

Because the prediction only required that Uber stock "break 88" at some point in the future (with no time limit), and the stock has since traded well above $88, the prediction is right.

Key elements of Friedberg’s prediction have occurred.

1. Trump administration executive/regulatory action on foreign direct‑to‑consumer imports (including Amazon‑linked traffic)

   • On April 2, 2025, Trump signed Executive Order 14256, which eliminated the Section 321 de minimis exemption for all imports from China and Hong Kong effective May 2, 2025. This ended duty‑free treatment for low‑value parcels (<$800) from those locations and subjected them to tariffs and formal customs procedures. (en.wikipedia.org)
   • Reporting on the May 2 change explicitly notes that it hit Chinese platforms (Temu, Shein, AliExpress) and U.S. companies like Amazon, which had used de minimis to send low‑value goods directly to U.S. customers. (wired.com)
   • Earlier and subsequent tariff moves targeted the same loophole, with Reuters and others describing how shutting de minimis impacted Shein, Temu, and Amazon’s “Haul” discount channel, raising prices on their direct‑from‑China imports. (reuters.com)
   • Later in 2025, Trump signed an additional order ending the de minimis exemption globally as of August 29, 2025, so that all low‑value packages into the U.S. became subject to duties; coverage frames this as closing a major loophole that had enabled foreign e‑commerce sellers to ship goods directly to U.S. consumers duty‑free. (en.wikipedia.org)

   While these actions were not framed as being only about Amazon, they directly targeted the foreign low‑value import mechanism that Amazon’s cross‑border and third‑party sellers (e.g., Amazon Haul) had used, matching the substance of “acting on” abusive foreign direct‑to‑consumer import practices.

2. Congressional legislation to shut down or heavily restrict such foreign DTC imports

   • In mid‑2025, House Republicans advanced reconciliation legislation that proposed ending the Section 321 de minimis privilege worldwide on July 1, 2027 and adding sizable civil penalties for misuse, explicitly framed as cracking down on the de minimis import channel. (usfashionindustry.com)
   • Those provisions were enacted in Trump’s flagship reconciliation package, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), which passed the House on May 22, 2025, the Senate on July 1, 2025, was agreed to again by the House on July 3, and was signed into law on July 4, 2025—all within two months of the May 2 podcast release. (en.wikipedia.org)
   • Trade‑law summaries confirm that OBBBA repeals the Section 321 de minimis exemption for commercial shipments from all countries effective July 1, 2027 and creates new civil penalties of up to $5,000 for a first violation and $10,000 for subsequent violations of Section 321, effective August 3, 2025. These analyses explicitly describe the aim as eliminating the de minimis privilege worldwide and punishing abuse of that import channel. (cmtradelaw.com)

   Taken together, this is precisely Congress “passing legislation” that shuts down and heavily restricts the key foreign direct‑to‑consumer import mechanism used by offshore sellers shipping directly to U.S. consumers.

3. Nuance: “foreign import of records”

   • A narrow reading of Friedberg’s off‑the‑cuff phrase about “foreign import of records” (vinyl, CDs, etc.) is not borne out literally. Due to the Berman Amendment, physical music media (including vinyl records) remain exempt from Trump’s tariffs and related measures as “informational materials,” and reporting in late 2025 notes that vinyl, CDs, and cassettes are specifically spared despite the broader de minimis crackdown. (nypost.com)
   • However, the normalized prediction you provided treats “foreign import of records” as shorthand for the broader foreign DTC loophole, and on that more general interpretation, both branches did exactly what he anticipated: an executive crackdown plus Congressional legislation to close the foreign low‑value import channel.

Bottom line: Within months of the May 2, 2025 episode, the Trump administration and Congress jointly executed a sweeping crackdown on the de minimis system that underpinned foreign direct‑to‑consumer imports (including Amazon‑related flows). That matches the core substance and timing of Friedberg’s prediction, even though the specific niche of imported vinyl “records” was not uniquely targeted.

The prediction window is explicitly nine months after the May 2025 discussion, i.e. roughly until February 2026. The claims to evaluate by that time are:

1. New trade deals under Trump’s trade policy will have been concluded.
2. There will NOT be a significant shrinkage in foreign direct investment (FDI) into the U.S. or domestic investment due to policy uncertainty.
3. The U.S. economy will “end up in a good spot” after iterating through the new tariff/trade framework.

Today’s date is November 30, 2025, which is about six to seven months after the May 2025 discussion and before the February 2026 horizon the predictor set.

Because the predictor explicitly said this should be judged in nine months and that date has not yet arrived, it is too early to decisively determine whether the full prediction is right or wrong. Therefore the correct classification, as of now, is “inconclusive (too early)”.

The prediction explicitly sets a timeline of about four years from the May 2025 episode, i.e., by the end of the current presidential term, for models, chips, and data‑center capacity each to be ~100× more powerful, yielding roughly a 1,000,000× combined increase in effective AI compute.(speakai.co) As of today (November 30, 2025), only about seven months have elapsed since the prediction, while the horizon is around May 2029, so the specified deadline has not yet arrived and the claim cannot be definitively evaluated. Current reports focus on plans and build‑outs for very large AI clusters and multi‑gigawatt data centers targeting the later 2020s (e.g., 1 GW–class clusters and massive new hyperscaler data‑center investments), underscoring that much of the projected capacity is still under construction.(80000hours.org) Because the key date is still in the future and the relevant metrics (true realized 100× gains in algorithms, chips, and deployed capacity) cannot yet be measured for 2029, the accuracy of the prediction is presently inconclusive/too early to tell.

The prediction’s timeframe is “in the next several years” from May 2025, which is reasonably interpretable as by around 2030. As of November 30, 2025, that horizon has not yet arrived, so the prediction cannot be fully evaluated.

On the factual side as of late 2025:

• Industry reports and news articles describe very large data centers and AI-specific campuses in the hundreds of megawatts (MW) range, with some roadmaps and power‑purchase agreements targeting ~1 GW-class campuses over time, but there is no credible evidence of a single AI/data‑center facility with 5–10 gigawatts of total power draw already existing and operating.
• The largest publicly discussed hyperscale projects (including AI compute clusters and multi‑building campuses) still cite capacities well below 5 GW; where higher multi‑GW numbers appear, they generally refer to multi‑site regional plans or long‑term utility interconnection capacity, not one individual facility.

Since:

1. The relevant deadline (≈2030) has not yet passed; and
2. The prediction is about what will exist by that future time, not what exists by 2025;

the correct status as of now is inconclusive rather than right or wrong.