Recapping Biden's first days as U.S. President

Yahoo Finance's Zack Guzman, Akiko Fujita, and Rick Newman discuss Biden's first week as President, and outlook.

Video transcript

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ZACK GUZMAN: The clock is striking noon on Wall Street, and you are watching Yahoo Finance Live. I'm Zack Guzman. Thanks for joining us here today on this fine Friday.

Right now, we are watching as all three major indices continue to trade lower today to wrap up the week. Some big tech companies, though, continue to flex their strength. Could a Dow theory buy signal from last week have been signaling this week's move higher all along? We'll break that down in just a minute.

Plus, the cannabis company pouring more than $200 million into a deal to expand ahead of the expected marijuana reforms coming in the Biden administration. We'll chat with the CEO of Cresco Labs. Charlie Bachtell will join us to break down what lies ahead in the sector and why the company just made a big bet on Florida.

But, first, the Bush administration focused on more pressing policy agenda items, including that $1.9 trillion stimulus package President Biden proposed ahead of his inauguration. That plan already seemingly facing challenges from Republicans, but that has not stopped what has been a very busy week for President Biden. For more on that, I want to bring on Yahoo Finance's Rick Newman to break it down.

And, Rick, I mean, the message has clearly been unity, but that's about to be put to the test, as we're hearing Mitch McConnell seemed to stress that he's not going to be going anywhere in moving against that $1.9 billion package.

RICK NEWMAN: I never expected any unity, certainly not in Congress. And I don't think it's any surprise that Republicans are saying, ah, $1.9 trillion, that seems like way too much. So I think that there's a good chance Biden could get half of what he's asking for, maybe 2/3 of what he's asking for.

The trick with this one-seat majority is, first of all, you need every single Democrat to sign onto this bill, and there are two or three or four conservative Democrats who have said they're not going to sign onto everything that comes down the pike. So, first of all, you have to negotiate inside the party. And then, even if you can get 50 Democrats, you would have the one tiebreaking vote from Vice President Kamala Harris. But then you have to decide, are you willing to do this just with your 50 votes, or do you want to get something that's bipartisan, which would require 60 votes or about 10 Republicans to overcome the Senate filibuster?

So this gets into the weeds of dealmaking. I think the bottom line here is, Biden is probably going to get-- he wants $1.9 trillion. He might get $1.2, $1.3 trillion. That's still a lot of money. It's just not going to be as much as he's advertising right now.

ZACK GUZMAN: Yeah, it's still a lot of money, but perhaps some of today's movement could be stemming from the idea that this pushback is very real and very present right now.

To your point on maybe some of those more moderate Republicans, it is going to be coming at a time where perhaps some of those Republicans had already joined in on the idea that President Trump had committed impeachable offenses, and that impeachment trial will be moving forward it sounds like next week. So what does that do to maybe challenge this idea of unity as well?

RICK NEWMAN: One of the first concerns was that this impeachment trial would get in the way of Joe Biden's cabinet nominees, and that does not seem to be happening. We've seen Janet Yellen confirmed. We've seen the director of national intelligence confirmed, defense secretary confirmed today. The Senate seems to be able to do that.

Now, what happens once the Senate delivers these-- excuse me-- the House delivers these articles of impeachment, the Senate rules say it is supposed to begin a trial on the following day. So if they go over on Monday, the trial would begin on Tuesday, and then you get into this question of, how long is it going to last? And if it ends up being fairly lengthy, I think it's-- it's not going to necessarily affect Biden's cabinet nominees, but it definitely could affect action on some of these legislative things, so the relief bill we were just talking about. Biden also has an immigration bill that he wants to pass.

And it does not look likely that the Senate is going to convict former President Trump. That would require-- I think the number is 17 Republicans to go along with conviction. And while there might be a few, I don't think that's going to happen. So there's a debate over whether this is a miscalculation to have impeached Trump in the first place, because now you're forcing the Senate to take it up. I think the House had to impeach Trump. I don't think they really had a choice. But I just don't-- like the last time around, it's probably not going to lead to a conviction.

ZACK GUZMAN: Yeah. And it all comes almost exactly one year from the date last time we saw President Trump dealing with that impeachment question as well. But Yahoo Finance's Rick Newman, appreciate you coming on here to chat. We'll keep our eyes on DC, of course, for the updates.