Online retailer Jumia, which launched in Nigeria in 2012 and is attempting to become "Africa's Alibaba", has won the backing of Goldman Sachs and other big investors, the WSJ reports.
The big picture: "Jumia’s growth story outlines the scale of the challenge for African online retail. Faced with poor internet connections and tight bank lending for vendors and consumers, the startup has had to build from scratch much of the economic infrastructure within which to operate."
The latest Star Wars movie “Solo,” which tells the story of Han Solo, is estimated to gross $101 million over Memorial Day Weekend — a record low for Star Wars movies, CNBC reports.
The big picture: Star Wars films have historically been knock out successes for Disney, but “Solo: A Star Wars Story” has performed far below expectations in the U.S. and overseas. Last week, Disney estimated the film would gross as much as $150 million over the holiday weekend.
Very few Americans have enjoyed steadily rising pay beyond inflation over the last couple of decades, a shift from prior years in which the working and middle classes enjoyed broad-based wage gains as the economy expanded.
Why it matters: Now, executives of big U.S. companies suggest that the days of most people getting a pay raise are over, and that they also plan to reduce their work forces further.
One of the biggest puzzles in economics is why U.S. productivity growth is so sluggish despite low unemployment and record corporate profits — apart from a spurt during the dotcom boom, the rate has been under half the historical trend since 1970.
What's going on: A group of economists say they have an answer: we are in the middle of a gigantic but invisible technological transition. And, when it's over, productivity growth will return closer to its historical trend.
Two of Trump's top economic advisers, including Larry Kudlow, fear that one of the proposals closest to his heart — automobile tariffs — would kill American jobs. And his lawyers aren't sure the national security argument underpinning the idea is solid. Meanwhile, U.S. allies and free traders have been freaking out over a Trump request to use a “national security” law — the same one he used to impose massive steel and aluminum tariffs — to put new tariffs of as much as 25% on automobile imports.
Between the lines: The proposal for these tariffs didn’t emerge from a policy process assessing the economic or geopolitical pros and cons of such an approach — they came from the president’s hard-wired instincts.
The death of the U.S. retail mall will be worse than forecast — with just a quarter of the current 1,200 or so surviving, says former J.C. Penney CEO Mike Ullman.
Quick take: Until now, most experts have said that a quarter of the malls will close. But, speaking on a panel at a conference at the Dallas Fed on technological disruption Thursday, Ullman reversed the numbers, estimating that only about 300 malls will make it. The rest will close over the next five years, becoming victims of decades-long changes in consumer taste, including the recent impact of Amazonization.
