The European Union slapped $3.2 billion worth of tariffs on U.S. goods on Thursday, the New York Times reports.
The big picture: The move escalates the international trade war that was spurred by the Trump administration's steel and aluminum tariffs. The EU's tariffs will hit products out of areas that largely support president Trump, like peanut butter, Harley Davidson motorcycles, tobacco, and cranberries, the BBC reports, as well as bourbon and orange juice, according to the NYT.
India has announced tariff hikestotaling $235 million on 29 U.S. goods — including agricultural products, steel and aluminum — in direct retaliation to U.S. tariffs.
The big picture: Despite decades of economic frictions, the strategic partnership between the world’s two largest democracies has continued to strengthen. Recently, however, President Trump’s trade policies have inflamed frictions with India, to the potential detriment of security cooperation across the Indo-Pacific region.
Days after finalizing its deal to acquire Time Warner, one of the largest content companies in the country, AT&T has unveiled is newest video package called WatchTV, which includes 31 channels for $15 — significantly cheaper than its offering with DirectTV Now.
Why it matters: The company has wasted no time integrating Time Warner's assets into its new package, which will include channels like HLN, CNN, Cartoon Network, TNT and more. In fact, roughly 20% of the channels offered in the new bundle currently come from Turner, the cable subsidiary of Time Warner.
The Supreme Court today paved the way for states to begin collecting sales taxes from online vendors. In a 5-4 decision, the court threw out a precedent that had blocked online sales taxes.
Why it matters: Online retailers likely will have to pay billions more in taxes each year. Although some large online retailers like Amazon already collect sales taxes, smaller vendors don't.
Tilray, a Canadian cannabis cultivation and distribution company owned by Privateer Holdings, filed for a $100 million IPO.
Why it's a big deal: The filing came just one day after Canada's Senate voted to legalize recreational cannabis sales. Tilray currently focuses on medicinal marijuana, but says it will move into the "adult-use" space once legalization is implemented this October.
Yes, but: Environmentalists and steady-state economists (i.e., those who study the physical constraints on economic growth) might secretly want to cheer. Why? More global economic activity translates to more natural resource extraction and greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions, and vice versa. If you want to lower GHG emissions, tanking the economy is one way to do so.
Chinese workers and businesses are bracing for impact in the escalating trade war with the U.S., but they don’t tend to blame President Trump, according to David Rennie, the Economist’s Beijing bureau chief.
The bottom line: “Partly because they get their information from very, very strictly controlled Chinese state media, there isn’t a kind of anti-Trump wave that you see in so many other countries," Rennie explains on the Money Talks podcast. "The idea that an election in a place like America could change everything — that an insurgent outsider who kind of speaks to the interests of one part of the country, or one class of voter, could overthrow everything, could be a kind of revolutionary figure — that is very alien to the way that China likes to present politics.”
All major German automakers, including BMW AG and Volkswagen AG, want the Trump administration to back off its threatened auto tariffs on the European Union, The Wall Street Journal reports, so they've come up with a big proposal: eliminate all automobile import tariffs between the U.S. and the EU.
Why it matters: It's a tactic that could play well to President Trump — and his favorite trade buzzword "reciprocal" — and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross called it the "right approach to resolving this trade disagreement among friends." But removing tariffs on this side of the Atlantic could alienate some key Trump supporters in Detroit who want him to protect the U.S. auto industry.
The rise of automation is hurting middle-skills jobs — those that require some training beyond a high school degree but not a bachelor's degree.
The bottom line: Not all middle-skills jobs are created equal. Some entry-level positions — human resources assistant or computer support specialist — are full of opportunities for advancement and a middle class lifestyle. In other sectors, like manufacturing, 62% of these jobs are dead ends, per a new report by JFF and Burning Glass Technologies provided first to Axios.
Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell made the case for the central bank to continue raising interest rates on Wednesday, CNBC reports:
"But with unemployment low and expected to decline further, inflation close to our objective, and the risks to the outlook roughly balanced, the case for continued gradual increases in the federal funds rate is strong."
The details: His quote comes after the Fed announced last week it raise interest rates by a quarter of a percentage point. It was the sixth rate increase since December 2015 after rates had remained relatively flat over the years prior in the aftermath of the Great Recession.
Starbucks announced it will be closing 150 stores in the next fiscal year after Chief Executive Officer Kevin Johnson said the company's growth isn't moving fast enough, reports Bloomberg.
The details: The company's comparable sales are projected to rise just 1% for the quarter, down nearly 2% from expectations. The company is also having a rough quarter in China — where it hopes revenue will triple over the next five years — with sales either flat or slightly negative.
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After China matched the United States on its initial round of $50 billion in tariffs, President Trump threatened tariffs on an additional $200 billion in Chinese goods — and then threatened to respond to any further Chinese retaliation with yet another $200 billion in tariffs. That sounds a lot like a real trade war.
Why it matters: It is possible to pick a tariff list that covers $50 billion of imports from China that does minimal damage to the U.S. economy. It isn’t possible, however, to come up with a list that covers $450 billion in imports without including sectors where China is the dominant supplier — and thus where tariffs are likely to raise consumer prices.
AMC is creating a VIP tier of its loyalty program, a subscription movie theater pass called AMC Stubs A-List, which will allow users to see three movies a week in AMC theaters for $20 a month, the company announced Wednesday.
Why it matters: The offering rivals that of MoviePass, a subscription movie service with longstanding tensions in negotiating pricing and theater distribution agreements with AMC.
The European Union will begin charging a 25% tariff on $3.2 billion dollars of U.S. products on Friday in response to President Trump's decision not to exempt Europe from sweeping tariffs on aluminum and steel, per Reuters.
The backdrop: The EU's retaliatory tariffs, announced earlier this month, target politically-sensitive products here in the U.S., like bourbon from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's home state of Kentucky and dairy products from House Speaker Paul Ryan's Wisconsin.
Voters in Washington, D.C. approved a ballot initiative, known as Initiative 77, Tuesday that will gradually increase the $3.33 “tipped wage” for restaurant servers and bartenders to match the city’s minimum wage, currently $12.50 per hour, by 2026.
Why it matters: D.C. has become the latest battleground over minimum wage for tipped workers in the restaurant industry. The industry, which opposes the measure, argues that the initiative would force businesses to cut employee hours, pay, and jobs. But advocates and labor rights groups say it will help workers who are currently at greater risk of wage theft, and that they would no longer have to rely on tips from customers as a steady income.
AT&T is looking to acquire AppNexus, one of the largest privately-owned ad exchanges, Cheddar reports.
Why it matters: The acquisition would help AT&T build its automated digital advertising business that could compete with Google and Facebook’s massive ad tech businesses.
