Axios

Powerful Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley, who as Finance Committee chairman will oversee Trump's trade agenda, sat down with Axios on Friday to discuss this fraught moment in international trade.

Behind the scenes: Trump's principal trade negotiator Robert Lighthizer had just left Grassley's office as we entered, a Grassley aide told us, and we began the trade discussion by asking Grassley what he learned from that conversation with Lighthizer. Grassley said they discussed the ongoing China negotiations, the early moves toward a U.S.-Japan bilateral trade deal, and the USMCA (Trump's re-negotiated NAFTA, which Congress has yet to approve).

The more urgent brinkmanship in Washington is surrounding the government shutdown, which is now officially the longest ever, with no end in sight.

The big picture: If furloughed workers are not on the government payroll, then there's an extremely high chance that the record 99-month streak of positive payrolls growth will come to an end this month.

In a sign of the times, the Lord & Taylor department store has closed its flagship New York City location; the building will become a WeWork.

The big picture: Other department stores are struggling too, not least Sears, which is in bankruptcy and is also this close to liquidation. (Sears includes Kmart, which declared bankruptcy in 2002.)

This week brought news from WeWork, the co-working unicorn, that it has decided to downgrade its main business to a mere subsidiary. WeWork has a famously complex corporate structure, but lift your eyes above the newly demoted WeWork to the very apex and behold — The We. (I am not making this up.)

The big picture: WeWork is not the only company to demote its flagship brand and name the holding company something silly, or worse.

Millennial women — those aged 25–34 — are participating in the U.S. job market at levels not seen since the turn of the millennium, Bloomberg reports.

Why it matters: With young women responsible for 46% of the gains in the prime labor market since late 2015, the shift highlights an increasing gender gap that's empowering women, including attending college, voting, donating to campaigns and running for office — and winning. It's fueled by shifting cultural norms as younger women delay getting married and starting families in order to build their careers.

Go deeper: Being 30 then and now

McAfee assesses that the ransomware attacks that hobbled the distribution of the Los Angeles Times and other Tribune papers in late December were carried out by a criminal group, not a nation, as the Times itself had reported.

The intrigue: Attackers used Ryuk ransomware, a variant of Hermes ransomware that has been used by the North Korean Kim Jong-un regime to funnel cash to the nation. But McAfee notes that Ryuk and Hermes have each been offered commercially on a Russian hacker forum, which appears to be the source of recent infections. That doesn't mean it's impossible for North Korea to be behind the Tribune attacks, but Ryuk's use alone doesn't strongly suggest the attack was from North Korea.

If Main Street is going to be saved, enduring American vanity will be among the primary reasons.

If you are one of the tens of millions of Amazon Prime members in the U.S., it’s easy to presume that online shopping will be future for everyone.

But over the next five years we will see an America that is divided by how and where we shop, with low income and rural Americans depending on discount outlets like Dollar General and Family Dollar, where the primary value proposition is not convenience but price — a fact that isn't likely to change.

For two decades, Amazon has grown like wildfire, eschewing profit, pouring all its revenue back into itself, and leaving a wake of destruction in retail. Now it's going in for the kill.

Amazon has launched more than 100 private-label products, by market research firm Gartner L2's count. “That’s going to be a major part of what we think of as the future of retail," says Donald Ngwe, a professor of business administration at Harvard Business School.

Millennials, now firmly in their adult years, have been blamed for “killing” everything from mayonnaise to fabric softener to department stores.

But a closer look at the data shows the emphasis on high net-worth millennials is skewing our perspective.

With their high volume foot traffic, grocery stores are ideal labs to test bold ideas meant to save brick and mortar retail.

China's Alibaba is leading the way. In its Hema supermarkets shoppers can choose groceries in store, then get them delivered, or they can order online, then drive over to pick up.

It turns out that even Amazon can't automate a community.

The big picture: As Amazon fueled the collapse of chain bookstores, independent bookstores were quietly thriving. In the last 10 years, independent bookstores have grown by nearly 50% across the country, from 1,651 to 2,470 stores.

Historically, generic products were associated with low prices and no frills. But fancy "generic" companies like Brandless, Italic and Hims are selling consumers a modern definition: affordable prices and better quality and experience.

When San Francisco-based Brandless debuted its online store in 2017, it aimed to provide items that are both affordable (everything is $3) and high quality. By sourcing its products directly it cuts out what it calls the “brand tax."

Arcade Providence, which, when it opened 188 years ago, was America's first shopping mall. Today, its a collection of 48 apartments, restaurants, a coffee shop and a salon.

"If you've got a dead mall, look at that as an opportunity," says Ellen Dunham-Jones, a professor of urban design at Georgia Tech who is tracking more than 1000 mall carcasses across the U.S.

Rep. Rashida Tlaib's (D-Mich.) profanity about impeaching President Trump received five times more coverage on cable news than Rep. Steve King's (R-Iowa) questioning of why white supremacy is considered offensive, according to data collected by the liberal non-profit Media Matters for America.

Details: Tlaib's call to "impeach the mother***er" got more than two-and-a-half hours of air time from MSNBC, CNN and Fox News, 24 hours after the comment was made. The bulk of the coverage came from Fox News, which devoted 52 minutes to Tlaib. King's comments on white supremacy received less than 30 minutes of cable news time from the same three outlets in the first 24 hours. Fox News covered it for 42 seconds.

Megyn Kelly has officially split from NBC, but will be paid the remaining sum of her $69 million contract, CNN reports.

"The parties have resolved their differences, and Megyn Kelly is no longer an employee of NBC."

The big picture: While her exit was long in the making due to low ratings and "growing tensions" between Kelly and executives at the network, her defense of the use of blackface for Halloween costumes in October reportedly "sealed her fate." Kelly told photographers on Thursday that she will "definitely" be back on TV, but has yet to announce her next move.