New York Times (August 13)
“Not content to steer the ship of state, our president apparently wants to run the ship of commerce, too. Literally. The entire Fortune 500.” President Trump thinks “he is the C.E.O. of Everything…. In ripping up numerous business regulations, Donald Trump seems intent on replacing them with himself.” This “is bad for corporations, consumers and capitalism. Please just run the executive branch, Mr. President, and let real executives run the businesses of America.”
Tags: Bad, Business regulations, C.E.O. of Everything, Capitalism, Commerce, Consumers, Content, Corporations, Executives, Fortune 500, Ship of state, Trump
Wall Street Journal (August 12)
“President Trump views tariffs as a toll that he alone gets to set for access to U.S. markets. Now he’s charging fees on U.S. companies for the purported privilege of exporting artificial-intelligence chips to China. Mark this as another step toward government control of private business.”
Tags: Access, Artificial intelligence, China, Chips, Companies, Exporting, Fees, Government control, Private business, Privilege, Tariffs, Toll, Trump, U.S. markets
The Economist (August 9)
“With every passing day, America’s new trading order comes into sharper relief. In place of rules, stability and low tariffs is a system of imperial preference. Duties are not just higher, they are set by presidential whim.” While President Trump “thinks America is winning. It is not.”
Tags: Duties, Imperial preference, Low tariffs, New trading order, Presidential whim, Relief, Rules, Stability, System, Trump, U.S., Winning
Reuters (August 8)
“President Donald Trump is instructing agencies to scrap ‘reputation risk or equivalent concepts’ from the customer assessment equation.” Banks will like the reduction in paperwork, but this move will “make it harder to spot fraud.” Trump has already “rolled back enforcement of all sorts of financial misdeeds. Further clearing the way for more of them is a far bigger threat than the fanciful idea that profit-seeking banks turn away good business on purely ideological grounds.”
Tags: Agencies, Banks, Customer assessment, Enforcement, Financial misdeeds, Fraud, Ideological, Paperwork, Profit, Reputation risk, Threat, Trump
Barron’s (August 6)
“President Donald Trump has touted major trade partners’ pledges to invest billions in the U.S. as a win for his fluctuating tariff policy. But trade experts say these commitments leave more questions than answers.” Important details like enforcement mechanisms are unknown and there is no effective way for trading partners to compel “private-sector companies to invest.” In addition, “analysts and veteran trade experts note that investment pledges—as well as commitments to buy U.S. goods—haven’t lived up to expectations in the past.”
Tags: Analysts, Commitments, Enforcement mechanisms, Experts, Fluctuating, Investment pledges, Private-sector, Tariff policy, Touted, Trade partners, Trump, U.S., Unknown
New York Times (August 5)
U.S. retail investors are “unsinkable” at the moment. “Economists were alarmed last week when President Trump fired Erika McEntarfer, the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, after a weaker-than-expected jobs report.” Markets sneezed, then “largely shrugged it off, despite potentially disastrous long-term effects to assets like the dollar. One big reason: retail investors didn’t seem as concerned as economists.” Retail investors are fearlessly buying on dips and “emerging as a potent investing force beyond meme-stock booms.”
Tags: Alarmed, Assets, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Buying, Dips, Disastrous, Dollar, Economists, Fired, Investing force, Jobs report, Markets, McEntarfer, Retail investors, Trump, U.S., Unsinkable
Institutional Investor (August 5)
Series A and B is the “inflection point…. where institutional capital typically expects clarity; clinical data, market readiness, and a signal that someone else has de-risked the science. But in women’s health, those signals often do not arrive. Not because the companies aren’t progressing but because the validation layers that used to feed the pipeline e.g. public grants, translational studies, pilot programs have eroded.” Because validation doesn’t arrive, “promising science stalls, not because of bad data, but because no one wants to be first.”
Tags: Clarity, Clinical data, De-risked, Inflection point, Institutional capital, Market readiness, Pilot programs, Promising, Public grants, Science, Series A and B, Signals, Stalls, Validation, Women’s health
The Guardian (August 4)
“The Swiss stock market has plunged, the cabinet has held crisis talks and the country’s president, Karin Keller-Sutter, has been accused of mishandling a vital phone call with the White House after Donald Trump hit the country with a shock 39% export tariff.” Roughly one-sixth of Switzerland’s exports go to the U.S. and prior to the phone call “negotiators believed they had secured a 10% tariff on exports.” Instead, Switzerland now confronts “one of the steepest US duties – only Laos, Myanmar and Syria had higher figures, at 40-41%.”
Tags: 10%, 39%, Cabinet, Crisis talks, Exports, Keller-Sutter, Laos, Myanmar, Negotiators, Phone call, Plunged, Shock, Stock market, Swiss, Tariff, Trump
Financial Times (August 3)
“Companies denied votes on a record number of resolutions during this proxy season after US regulators made it harder for shareholders to demand changes related to climate, diversity and labour rights.” As a result, the number of shareholder proposals is down from last year. “ISS-Corporate found that 21 per cent of environmental and social proposals were omitted this year, compared with only 9 per cent last year.” The SEC granted nearly a third more “no-action” requests, which allow companies to omit shareholder proposals from proxy materials.
Tags: Climate, Companies, Denied, Diversity, Environmental, ISS, Labour rights, Proxy season, Regulators, Resolutions, SEC, Shareholder proposals, Social, U.S., Votes
Washington Post (August 2)
“For months, the U.S. economy appeared to be weathering the disruptive effects of President Donald Trump’s trade and immigration policies. But over the course of 72 hours, that sunny outlook darkened, as the latest government data this week showed the president’s revolutionary remaking of the world’s largest economy had hit a snag.”
Tags: Darkened, Data, Disruptive effects, Economy, Government, Immigration, Outlook, Remaking, Revolutionary, Snag, Trade, Trump
