While You Were Working - April 4 - SmartBrief

All Articles Finance While You Were Working - April 4

While You Were Working – April 4

Trump holds true on tariffs, US Chamber soft sells Amazon support, Big tech and investment advice, money and guns, and Liverpool and Barca roll.

2 min read

Finance

Farming

Lots of farmers seem to have forgotten that Trump would be Trump. (Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

The tariff truther that is Trump

Now that China has decided to fire back with tariffs of its own, lots and lots and lots and lots of people in the agriculture industry are voicing concerns about the impact President Trump’s festering trade war with China is poised to have on their business. The funny thing is, Trump is doing exactly what he promised those people he would do during the campaign – go toe-to-toe with China on trade deals.

Many of the complaints today are coming from parts of the US that are Trump strongholds. Did all these people in the agriculture industry not realize a trade war would be bad for them before they voted for Trump?

US Chamber whispers support for Amazon

I wrote yesterday about the silence from corporate executives, lobbyists and academics over President Trump seemingly trying to pick winners and losers in his verbal war with Amazon. I guess the US Chamber of Commerce hasn’t been totally silent. The voice of “American enterprise” did issue a less-than-full-throated statement from a guy a rung or two down the chain of command.

In other news about Amazon

A report from Cerulli says tech giants like Amazon are not as likely to enter the investment advice business as many financial execs have feared. Financial services of every shape and kind have been sweating an invasion by big tech for quite some time, so Cerulli’s prediction is music to their ears.

I’ve never really thought the investment advice space was a place big tech was looking to hang its own shingle. Instead, it is far more likely that big tech firms will become dominant data providers for the advisory industry. In fact, judging from all the new details that continue to surface in the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica debacle, I’d bet tech giants are already selling their data to investment advice firms.

WYWW Appetizers