The U.S. could well have a new trade deal by tomorrow, and a trade war of staggering proportions by next week.
The big picture: President Trump has been fighting on three fronts — contentious NAFTA negotiations, tariffs on allies in Europe and Asia with the threat of more to come, and a multi-pronged standoff with Beijing. The China dispute pits the world’s two largest economies against one another, and has by far the greatest stakes for the global economy.
Twitter and Facebook CEOs Jack Dorsey and Mark Zuckerberg, in their wildest dreams, would love the Donald Trump Jr. notion of "one of the two Silicon Valley conservatives" would start up a conservative social network.
Don Jr. tweeted Thursday: "Heck, I’d even support an unbiased version of any of them. I’m not looking for an echo chamber, I’m just looking for a level playing field. No more bias! No more BS!" [Update]
The bottom line: You can't create a Fox News for social. Snap stock is flat because it's struggling to grow, with just 188 million daily active users. "Hannity," by contrast, the most-watched show on Fox News, attracts a mere 3 million viewers. For a conservative social network to succeed, it would need orders of magnitude more reach than Fox News. Which isn't going to happen.
The National Enquirer, the tabloid that has famously supported President Trump, is seeing a decrease in circulation, the Associated Press reports.
Why it matters: The tabloid explained its friendliness toward the president as a business decision — Trump sells — but the latest numbers show that this tactic may no longer be working. National Enquirer's parent company, American Media Inc., lost $72 million in the last fiscal year and has amassed $882 million in long-term debt.
Stocks fell sharply on Thursday afternoon, following a Bloomberg report that President Trump will move forward with his plan for $200 billion worth of tariffs on Chinese goods, perhaps as soon as next week when the public comment period ends.
Why it matters: Stocks have had a relatively muted response to trade tensions, but this report — along with a looming deadline for the U.S. and Canada to strike an agreement — is giving investors anxiety.
Axios' Kim Hart hosted a conversation on the future of retail, discussing the innovation and security threats transforming the industry. She sat down with 25 topic-matter experts to dig into the trends shaping how we buy things and how these trends will impact consumers, businesses, and workers.
Why it mattered: Not only are we all consumers, but retail is also the largest single source of American jobs — meaning that changes in this industry impact the livelihoods of many.
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DENVER — Speakers at a recent Axios event, including Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper, all agreed that the state is importing too much of its talent from other states and needs to get better at building a home-grown, skilled workforce.
By the numbers: Colorado has a humming tech scene, a highly educated population, and an unemployment rate under 3% — a study from U.S. News and World Report ranks the state as the No. 1 economy in the nation. Yet, it ranks 46th in teacher pay (the $46,155 average salary is $7,000 shy of the national average) and 42nd in spending per student.
President Trump raged on Twitter Thursday morning against the "totally dishonest" media, lashing out at the heads of NBC and CNN, before turning his ire to "fake books."
The big picture: His tweetstorm comes after continued attacks on Google and other Big Tech giants for allegedly silencing conservative voices. For Trump, it's not just "Fake News" anymore — he's waging a war on fake everything.
President Trump and his then-personal lawyer Michael Cohen had a plan in 2016 to buy all damaging information that the National Enquirer and its parent company American Media had collected on him back to the 1980s, reports The New York Times.
The big picture: David Pecker, American Media's chairman and a Trump ally, ordered his tabloid to stay away from sensitive allegations about Trump for two decades. Pecker, who reportedly kept a safe of documents related to these coverups, has been granted immunity by federal prosecutors, while Cohen has plead guilty to violating campaign finance law and implicated Trump as an unindicted co-conspirator.
Campbell Soup Company will sell several brands, including two international units and its fresh-food business, in an effort to cut costs and focus on the North America market, the company announced on Thursday.
The big picture: The century-old soup company has had a rough year. Its packaged foods business has slumped, and CEO Denise Morrison abruptly stepped down after 15 years at the helm. Shares of Campbell fell in early trading Thursday — and, as the Wall Street Journal points out, selling select brands will likely not be enough to appease activist investor Dan Loeb, who has called for the company to sell itself.
