New York Times (July 23)
“G.M. was the second automaker this week to show the toll that the Trump administration’s trade policies are taking on the industry. Stellantis, the maker of Chrysler, Jeep and Ram vehicles, said on Monday that it lost 2.3 billion euros ($2.7 billion) in the first half of the year partly because of tariffs and other Republican policies.” Automakers employ roughly “one million manufacturing workers. Eroding profits will make it harder for them to invest in new technologies to withstand growing competition from Chinese automakers that have been expanding abroad.”
Tags: $2.7 billion, Automakers, China, Chrysler, Competition, G.M., Industry, Invest, Jeep, Manufacturing, Profits, Stellantis, Tariffs, Technologies, Trade policies, Trump, Withstand, Workers
The Economist (May 3)
“Relations between America and China are at a low ebb. Tariffs of well over 100% on both sides have severed trade. Each is striving to dominate 21st-century technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI). A massive military build-up is under way. In the previous cold war such rivalries came to a head over flashpoints like the Berlin airlift and the Cuban missile crisis. Today American resolve is likely to be tested over Taiwan—and sooner than many think.”
Tags: AI, Berlin airlift, China, Cold war, Cuban missile crisis, Dominate, Flashpoints, Low ebb, Military build-up, Relations, Resolve, Rivalries, Severed trade, Tariffs, Technologies, Tested, U.S.
Seeking Alpha (January 27)
“A war over silicon is brewing between the world’s two largest economies as the U.S. looks to isolate China from one of the most important technologies of the future.” As America tries “to protect the rest of the advanced chip supply chain by forging an alliance that will curtail China’s ability to produce its own domestic silicon…. Restrictions are likely to be imposed on ASML, Nikon and Tokyo Electron, building on earlier business rules and trading regulations, and marking the latest salvo in the semiconductor war.”
Tags: Advanced, ASML, China, Chip, Future, Isolate, Nikon, Protect, Restrictions, Semiconductor war, Silicon, Supply chain, Technologies, Tokyo Electron, U.S.
The Economist (November 23)
Management consulting is being disrupted. “Advice on strategy, which used to be meat and potatoes for firms like McKinsey and its peers, Bain and the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), is now a side dish; it accounts for about a tenth of revenues.” These days clients “want consultants to provide and install products, including new technologies, that transform them from top to bottom and keep disrupters at bay.”
Tags: Advice, Bain, BCG, Clients, Disrupted, Management consulting, McKinsey, Revenues, Strategy, Technologies, Transform
Financial Times (June 13)
“We live in an age judged to be one of exciting technological change, but our national accounts tell us that productivity is almost stagnant. Is the slowdown or the innovation an illusion?” The truth is we don’t yet know and it might be something else. There might be a measurement error or a lag before big gains from AI and other revolutionary technologies kick in.
Tags: Change, Illusion, Innovation, Lag AI, Measurement, Productivity, Revolutionary, Slowdown, Stagnant, Technologies
Washington Post (March 21)
“The truth is, the world is leaving the Industrial Age and entering a Digital Age of equal significance. The steel mills and coal mines of the past will not shape our future. Instead, efforts to harness control of digital technologies will be the new global race—and one that the West simply can’t afford to lose.” And yet, the West is at risk of “being trapped in a steel conflict, which bears virtually no relevance to the economic order of tomorrow. It’s all worse than stupid. It’s tragic, too. The only likely victor in all of this is China.”
Tags: China, Coal mines, Digital age, Future, Industrial Age, Race, Steel mills, Technologies, The West
Wall Street Journal (July 5)
“The bosses of America’s biggest and best-known companies are learning a common lesson this year: The pay is great, but job security has rarely been shakier.” During the first five months of 2017, CEO turnover at large companies more than doubled. The “churn reflects a broader reality for the country’s business elite: An array of challenges—from increasing impatience on Wall Street and in boardrooms to a corporate landscape rapidly transformed by new technologies and rival upstarts—have made the top job tougher and more precarious than just a few years ago.” Today, “even the biggest companies are vulnerable to shareholder disapproval and competitive forces that their size and stature once helped them fend off.”
Tags: Boardrooms, CEO, Challenges, Elite, Impatience, Job security, Pay, Shareholders, Technologies, Turnover, U.S., Upstarts, Wall Street
USA Today (November 9)
“Innovation is the key to moving from dirtier fuels to cleaner ones.” To the joy of environmentalists, President Obama rejected the proposed Keystone pipeline to carry oil from Canadian tar sands to the U.S. “The main factor behind Obama’s decision is something environmentalists hate even more than Keystone: hydraulic fracturing, or fracking,” which has added over 3.5 million barrels per day to U.S. domestic production. “The lesson for climate change is obvious… If we want to keep oil (and coal) in the ground, we need to make other forms of energy cheaper. That means nurturing technologies such as natural gas extraction. It also means promoting another technology that environmentalists love to hate: nuclear energy.”
Tags: Canada, Climate change, Coal, Environmentalists, Fracking, Fuel, Innovation, Key, Keystone, Nuclear energy, Obama, Oil, Pipeline, Tar sands, Technologies
