Feb 4, 2017

​Trump tweet gives hope to border tax boosters

Jonathan Swan

Supporters of the border adjustment tax were thrilled to see Donald Trump's late night tweet on Friday:

Countries charge U.S. companies taxes or tariffs while the U.S. charges them nothing or little.We should charge them SAME as they charge us!

Between the lines: Paul Ryan knows he needs the President's enthusiastic backing to push this $1.2 trillion revenue proposal through Congress. Backers of border adjustability — a well-funded coalition that includes Boeing and GE — saw Trump's Friday tweet as a step in the right direction.

Trump's chief strategist Steve Bannon already favors the plan to hike import taxes and lower export taxes, but the President has been uncertain. He didn't like the complicated branding of the "tax." As we revealed, however, in several pieces, Ryan has been working behind the scenes to explain the proposal in nationalist (read: Trumpian) terms.

What's next: Trump is hardly a sure thing here. He's still blending the language of "tariffs" and "taxes." This unsettles Republicans. They'll need him to fully embrace the border adjustment proposal — and quit talking about targeted tariffs — to have any hope of persuading a skeptical Senate.

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Axios

China tries to contain coronavirus, as Apple warns of earnings impact

Data: The Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins, the CDC, and China's NHC; Note: China refers to mainland China and the Diamond Princess is the cruise ship offshore Yokohama, Japan. Map: Danielle Alberti/Axios

As China pushes to contain the spread of the novel coronavirus — placing around 780 million people under travel restrictions, per CNN — the economic repercussions continue to be felt globally as companies like Apple warn of the impact from the lack of manufacturing and consumer demand in China.

The big picture: COVID-19 has now killed at least 1,775 people and infected more than 70,000 others, mostly in mainland China. There are some signs that new cases are growing at a slower rate now, although the World Health Organization said Monday it's "too early to tell" if this will continue.

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Ina Fried

Apple will miss quarterly earnings estimates due to coronavirus

Apple CEO Tim Cook

Apple issued a rare earnings warning on Monday, saying it would not meet quarterly revenue expectations due to the impact of the coronavirus, which will limit iPhone production and limit product demand in China.

Why it matters: Lots of companies rely on China for production, but unlike most U.S. tech companies, Apple also gets a significant chunk of its revenue from sales in China.

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Orion Rummler

America's dwindling executions

The Trump administration wants to reboot federal executions, pointing to a 16-year lapse, but Pew Research reports the government has only executed three people since 1963.

The big picture: Nearly all executions in the U.S. are done by states. Even those have been steadily dropping for two decades, per the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) — marking a downward trend for all executions in the country.

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