Axios

Donald Trump isn't the only world leader making hey from protectionist rhetoric and policy — more than 800 new protectionist trade measures have been implemented around the globe since November 2008, including many "Buy American" provisions signed into law by President Obama. The Wall St Journal reports that this dynamic is forcing companies like GE to build factories abroad to win contracts, even if their U.S. operations are more efficient.

One example is a $2.5 billion contract the manufacturer won from Indian Railways, which the company says it couldn't have won without first building a factory complex there in 2014. And if it wanted what is now one of GE Transportation's largest-ever contracts, building a second facility in the remote town of Marhuara, India — a location handpicked by a powerful Indian politician for development reasons — was its only choice.

Why it matters: Once poor countries like China, India, and Indonesia are building infrastructure and human capital necessary to handle sophisticated manufacturing, and they are demanding that multinational firms hire domestically if they want to sell domestically.

President Trump's cutting tweet toward Morning Joe hosts Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough has run the news cycle with GOP senators and even Michael Flynn Jr. and Richard Spencer condemning his reaction. There has always been drama between Donald Trump and the Morning Joe crew. In 2015, there were claims of their relationship being too cozy. Here's what's gone down since.

FedEx and UPS have won a battle in Kentucky to deploy slow electric golf carts operated by part-time, $15-an-hour drivers, a 20% cut to the starting rate of $18.75 paid to union drivers and less than half the average $35 rate, per the Wall Street Journal.

Kentucky's Republican-controlled legislature has passed a law pushed by the two delivery companies allowing them to operate the carts in neighborhoods and on slow-speed roadways.

Why it matters: The erosion of wages comes as the security of driving jobs has become a major issue — delivery trucks will relatively soon contain autonomous driving technology, threatening some 3.4 million professional driving jobs.

Meal-kit company Blue Apron began trading today on the New York Stock Exchange, after raising $300 million in an IPO that priced shares at $10. This was a pretty big disappointment for Blue Apron, which had originally filed to sell shares at between $15 and $17 (a difference that cut more than $1 billion of its valuation goal).

But Blue Apron co-founder and CEO Matt Salzberg was upbeat in a post-listing call with Axios. Highlights:

Here's the a clip from this morning's Morning Joe segment of Joe Scarborough and Mike Brzezinski mocking President Trump for the fake TIME magazine covers hanging in his country clubs. This came shortly before Trump sent his tweet ripping apart the show and personally attacking Mika.

President Trump bashed Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski this morning for "speaking badly" of him on Morning Joe, tweeting, "Then how come low I.Q. Crazy Mika, along with Psycho Joe, came to Mar-a-Lago 3 nights in a row around New Year's Eve, and insisted on joining me. She was bleeding badly from a face-lift. I said no!"

Quick thought bubble from Jonathan Swan: Trump continues to make a mockery of news reports that his staff would install some kind of vetting system for his tweets. Trump never allowed his impulses to be "managed" during his business career and he sure as heck won't now he's proven all the squares wrong and become President.

Interminably long on-line job applications are a horror for job-seekers. But it's not much better for hiring managers, who can only guess they are culling out the best job candidates.

Hirevue, Utah-based firm, has developed a machine-learning algorithm to appraise applications done by video. The system grades the applicants according to their suitability for the job, as set out by the hiring company. Human hiring managers can do the rest. "It allows hiring managers to not just randomly throw people out. You can spend time in ways uniquely human, rather than looking at resumes all day," said Lindsay Zuloaga, a data scientist with Hirevue.

As such systems improve, AI can take over more of the hiring process. Unilever, for example, is using online games and videos to weed out applicants before its human hiring people take a look at them. "It would be very cool if algorithm could get better and better at assessing people, and could hire someone," Zuloaga tells Axios."[A]n algorithm could say, 'This person is your best bet. They're going to stick around awhile,'" she said.

Sportswear giant Nike announced an agreement earlier this month to sell its products directly through Amazon.com, despite resisting the online retailer's entreaties for more than a decade.

The Wall Street Journal reports the decision was made after third-party sellers offering Nike products began to proliferate on the site, loosening the firm's control over pricing and distribution. Nike can't stop third-party sellers from reselling lawfully-purchased product, and following the liquidation of bankrupt Sports Authority's inventory last year, the market was flooded with Nike product that could be resold at deep discounts. Nike therefore decided to strike a deal to sell its products on Amazon in exchange for its help in stopping unauthorized third-party sales.

Why it matters: When consumers want to buy any type of product, be it electronics or apparel, an increasing share think of Amazon first.

If you want to work in coal, forget using a shovel. As Bloomberg's Tim Loh writes: "Coal…executives are starting to search for workers who can crunch gigabytes of data or use a joystick to maneuver mining vehicles hundreds of miles away."

The coal industry's workforce composition is increasingly going to be skilled workers, and overall hiring is likely to dip. As Heath Lovell, a spokesman for coal producer Alliance Resource Partners LP, puts it: "Whether coal comes back or not is not necessarily directly related to jobs," since as tech makes the industry more efficient it will be able to produce the same amount with fewer employees.