Game of 'roids, trader Trump, and searching for Shakira's tax residence | The Indicator

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[00:00:00]NPR >> [music] >> This is the indicator from Planet Money.

[00:00:13]I'm Wailin Wong. And I'm Darian Woods.

[00:00:15]And I'm Nick Fountain. Hi. And Nick, it is awesome to have you back in the indicator sandbox because today is indicators of the week.

[00:00:27]>> So it's that day of the week when we talk about our favorite numbers from the news. And on today's episode, we're talking about the savvy stock trades that President Trump's been doing. A high-stakes athletic [music] competition that Dare asks, "What if all the athletes were doping?" And pop star Shakira's Spanish tax drama. All of that after the break.

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[00:01:46]It's indicators of the week. Darian Woods, you're up first. My indicator is 3,642.

[00:01:52]And that's how many financial trades President Trump disclosed he made in the first 3 months of this year. He bought the shares of companies like Uber, Chipotle, Tesla, Verizon, Disney. The list goes on. And when you say President Trump, is this him making these trades or is it someone else? It's mostly his financial advisor and the White House has said in response to this disclosure that the president's accounts are managed by independent third-party institutions.

[00:02:20]That said, there were hundreds of trades marked unsolicited.

[00:02:25]These are trades that aren't Trump's financial advisor's recommendations. So, it implies that hundreds were Trump.

[00:02:33]Trades like purchasing somewhere between 1 to 5 million dollars worth of Microsoft shares on March 19th, even though his advisor didn't bring it up.

[00:02:42]Was there anything policy-related happening on March 19th? A lot was happening. So, Microsoft, we should remind everybody, is OpenAI's big backer.

[00:02:53]And the next day, the White House released its national AI policy framework. It was a document imploring lawmakers to, quote, lead the world in AI by removing barriers to innovation, and, quote, accelerating deployment of AI applications across sectors.

[00:03:10]This framework also told Congress that it shouldn't create a new federal body to regulate AI. That definitely does sound like it would benefit Microsoft.

[00:03:18]And by the way, we should mention Microsoft is a financial supporter of NPR. But, was this just a coincidence?

[00:03:25]It could be, but journalist Judd Legum, he was the founder of the progressive website ThinkProgress, he found some examples that do seem much more than a coincidence. Like, in a call with Fox News the day after the president bought Micron stocks, President Trump said, "It's one of the hottest companies." He also bought stock in the medical supplies company Thermo Fisher the a before he visited its factory. Dell, Nvidia, AMD, these companies were also implicated in trades suspiciously close to major publicity or policy. You know, I understand that it is legal for the president to make trades, but you would think that, you know, to avoid even the whiff of a perception of insider trading or anything fishy, you would just only invest in something boring like the S&P 500. Speaking of not caring about perception, Waylon, I think you have something related to that. I do. My indicator is $25 million.

[00:04:31]That is the amount of prize money potentially at stake in the first-ever enhanced games. This is an athletic competition that's taking place in Las Vegas next week. An enhanced, uh, I think I'm picking up what you're putting down, but explain it. Yeah, so the athletes in this competition can take performance-enhancing drugs. And in fact, they are encouraged to. The company behind enhanced games makes products like testosterone injections and peptides. So, these athletes could all be doping? Yeah, and actually CNN described the enhanced games as a doping free-for-all. The organizers say they are offering an alternative to the Olympics, which they say vilify enhanced athletes. All right, so the organizers sell peptides. I feel like I've heard that word many, many times in the last month, but still don't really know what it means. What's a peptide? Yeah, so just to do a little peptide 101, peptides are these small chains of amino acids. If you put them together, you get protein. And there are thousands of different kinds of peptides out there. One that you've almost certainly heard of is GLP-1s like Ozempic and Wegovy. And those are FDA-approved. A lot of the peptide injection products you might be hearing about from influencers or on social media are not FDA approved. They're being marketed as ways to build muscle or promote anti-aging. And a big fan of peptides is Health Secretary Robert F.

[00:05:58]Kennedy Jr. You reckon he might compete in the enhanced games?

[00:06:02]>> [laughter] >> I did not see him on the roster of athletes on the website, but there's about like 40 plus athletes from around the world who are set to be competing in weightlifting and swimming and track.

[00:06:15]One of those athletes is actually that Icelandic guy who played the Mountain on Game of Thrones. Oh yeah, huge guy. He's huge. He's going to be trying to deadlift some record-breaking amount of weight, which I will not be doing that over Memorial Day weekend, but >> [laughter] >> um he will.

[00:06:32]Sounds like quite the spectacle. Yeah, the head of the US Anti-Doping Agency told CNN he thought the enhanced games were a dangerous clown show. You can tune in >> that though?

[00:06:43]>> [laughter] >> Who would He would say that. He would say that though, wouldn't he? It goes against everything. It's whole life's work. It's whole life's work.

[00:06:49]>> Ruined. But you know what? Uh you can tune in next weekend and decide for yourself. All right, last but not least, Nick, what's going on in your neighborhood? Yeah, uh my indicator is 55 million. That's the number of euros that Spain's tax authority has been ordered to pay pop star Shakira. I have been reading headlines about Shakira and her tax troubles for what feels like literally years. So what's what is happening? Right. This has been a saga, as you mentioned. Uh it all has to do with what counts as being a resident for tax purposes. So the Spanish authorities have been in this long battle with Shakira for multiple calendar years that they say she avoided Spanish income taxes. For some of those years she settled, but for the year 2011 she did not. She's been fighting back uh because while the Spanish tax authorities said she was a resident of Spain that year, she said, "No, actually, I only spent 143 days in Spain that year." And pop quiz, you two, what do you think is the legal threshold for residency according to Spanish law? So, she said 143. Is it like 145? I [laughter] mean, it's 6 months in most places, right? So, what's that? 182?

[00:08:03]182.5 is exactly half of They go with 183. Uh and since Spain's tax authorities could not prove that Shakira was in Spain for that many days in 2011, a court ordered that they pay her back for the various fines she paid them plus interest. I will say there is an interesting question behind this. Like, Shakira says she was a resident of the Bahamas that year. Conveniently, they do not have an income tax. It's unclear if she actually even spend any time there that year.

[00:08:34]What we do know is that she spent a bunch of time on the road that year touring. This was the year after she released that earworm that was the official song of the 2010 uh World Cup.

[00:08:46]This time for Africa. [music] You remember that?

[00:08:52]Oh, I do know this song.

[00:08:55]Pretty good one.

[00:08:56]>> Yeah, that's a good one. So, the question is like, what if you are such a globetrotter that you don't spend a majority of the year in any country? I mean, does the country you spent the most time have a claim on your income? Yeah, according to some reporting I read in the Spanish newspaper El País, the government might try to appeal this decision to the Spanish Supreme Court saying essentially that that sure, Shakira didn't spend 183 days in Spain, but she spent more time there than anywhere else, so she should pay taxes there. So, they're essentially saying, "Wherever, whenever, Shakira should pay her taxes." [laughter] Yes, exactly. And she's essentially saying, um >> [music] >> "Trips don't lie, I was on the road.

[00:09:40]Hey.

[00:09:41]I'm giving up that.

[00:09:44]>> [music] >> This episode was produced by Corey Bridges and engineered by Kwesi Le was fact-checked by Andrew Carreras and Julia Richey. K K Cannon edits the show and The Indicator [music] is a production of NPR.

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