Axios

The implosion of Big Retail has hit the U.K.'s two biggest grocers, Tesco and Sainsbury, which are slashing thousands of jobs to combat competition and rising wages, Bloomberg reports. Tesco is cutting 1,700 management positions, but adding another 900 "roles with broader responsibilities." Sainsbury is also cutting jobs in management across 1,400 stores.

The big picture: They're facing "cost pressure stemming from a rise in the minimum wage and the pound’s decline following the Brexit vote," per Bloomberg. Competition with discount grocers such as Aldi and online retailers such as Amazon is also keeping Tesco and Sainsbury from hiking up their prices.

The conventional wisdom quickly hardening around the White House decision to impose four years of tariffs on imported solar panel equipment is that it will likely slow solar power deployment to some degree, but is not nearly as aggressive as developers and their allies feared.

Why it matters: The solar trade case has been among the biggest energy policy battles of the young Trump administration and, more broadly, is an early test case of President Trump's willingness to translate his hawkish trade stance, especially toward China, into firm policy.

"The bottom line is it could have been much worse," Ethan Zindler, a top analyst at Bloomberg New Energy Finance, tells Axios.

Telecom companies like AT&T and Verizon are racing into the digital advertising space — currently dominated by Google and Facebook — now that Washington has given them the ability to sell data to third-party advertisers.

Why it matters: The growth rate in the digital ad market is expected to decrease over the next four years, according to eMarketer, meaning that any market share internet service providers are able to gain will eventually come at the expense of other advertising-based businesses, mainly Google and Facebook.

President Trump announced the first sweeping trade actions of his administration, enacting tariffs on solar panels and components (as well as washing machines) from nearly every country around the world. Even though Trump was right to blame Chinese government subsidies to its solar manufacturers for bankrupting U.S. solar producers, his "America First" tariffs are a decade too late to matter.

Solar manufacturers across Asia can now stand on their own feet without public handouts, and their massive scale enables them to win brutal price wars. As they have driven down the cost of solar panels by three quarters over the last decade, the global share of U.S. solar manufacturing has dwindled to less than 5%.

What's next: Expect minimal investment in U.S. solar factories (any that are built will be highly automated), net U.S. job destruction as higher solar panel prices shave the boom in solar installations by 10%, and Chinese trade retaliation. Ultimately, the WTO may well rule Trump's tariffs illegal.

Varun Sivaram is the Philip D. Reed Fellow for Science and Technology at the Council on Foreign Relations and the author of "Taming the Sun: Innovations to Harness Solar Energy and Power the Planet."

Sheriff David A. Clarke, Jr. is the latest conservative media personality and Trump supporter to have his Twitter account hacked by the Turkish cyber group Ayyıldız Tim. The pro-Erdogan collective has taken over a variety of prominent accounts, changing their photos and username — which results in the loss of the verified checkmark — while posting pro-Turkey messages and claiming to obtain contents of the victims' direct messages.

Why it matters: The right-leaning Twitter accounts appear to have been targeted due to their proximity to President Trump, as the hackers have messages critical of American foreign policy toward Turkey. In some cases, Ayyıldız Tim have used their control of accounts followed by Trump's famous @realDonaldTrump account to send direct messages straight to his inbox.

Hulu has attracted about 450,000 subscribers to its new live TV service, while competitor YouTube Live has signed up just over 300,000, according to CNBC.

Why it matters: Both services (Hulu Live TV: $39.99/month; YouTube Live: $35/month) launched last year as alternatives to traditional cable packages. Despite strong early numbers, they still trail Dish's Sling TV (2 million) and DirecTV Now (1 million).

Unveiling the annual Edelman Trust Barometer in conjunction with tomorrow's opening of Davos, president and CEO Richard Edelman told Axios that the U.S. has fallen to "an Iraq war level of trust" around the world.

"It’s the first time we've seen such a trust drop delinked from either a major event, or economic chaos."

President Trump tweeted thanks to Republican consultant Brad Blakeman for giving the first year of his presidency an "A" during an appearance on Fox News this evening — while a crucial Senate vote looms later tonight to end the ongoing government shutdown.

Trump in November: "And believe it or not, even when I'm in Washington or New York, I do not watch much television. I know they like to say that. People that don't know me, they like to say I watch television — people with fake sources. You know, fake reporters, fake sources."