This Week in Business: Flying Ubers and Pricey French Cheese
Making Moves
Elon Musk, the chief executive of Tesla, celebrated the company’s new factory in Shanghai by dancing onstage — badly — in front of a cheering crowd. (The internet was less impressed.) Known as the Gigafactory 3, the plant is Tesla’s first outside the United States and will produce its Model 3 sedan and, eventually, the Model Y sport utility vehicle. It also helps Tesla tap into the Chinese market without paying tariffs caused by trade rifts with the United States. The company’s stock price mirrored Mr. Musk’s enthusiasm, rocketing past the combined market values of General Motors and Ford on Thursday for the first time.
What’s Next? (Jan. 12-18)
Do We Have a Deal?
President Trump is to sign the “Phase 1” trade deal with China in Washington this week. But there’s already more trade trouble on the horizon, this time with the European Union. On Tuesday, Europe’s new trade chief will meet with American officials in an effort to patch up relations that were strained by a new French tax on American tech giants like Facebook, Google and Amazon, which do a lot of digital business in France but have managed to keep their physical footprint — and taxes — to a minimum. In retaliation, Mr. Trump threatened punitive tariffs of up to 100 percent on French imports like wine, cheese and handbags. Let’s hope they get this straightened out, for all of our sakes.
Another Strike Against Boeing
Just when you thought things couldn’t get worse for Boeing, the company turned up yet another bunch of damning internal emails. The latest included messages that mocked regulators and joked about safety flaws in the company’s 737 Max jets — two of which later crashed, killing everyone on board and costing the company billions of dollars in lost business and legal fees. “This airplane is designed by clowns, who are in turn supervised by monkeys,” one employee wrote in 2017. The exchanges certainly won’t help Boeing win back customer trust, or get its 737 Max fleet, which has been grounded since last year, back in the air anytime soon.
Brexit Gets the Green Light
British lawmakers approved Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal by a wide margin this past week, paving the way for the country to split from the European Union by the Jan. 31 deadline — finally! But don’t expect a clean break. Brexit’s second phase will require the country to wrangle a trade agreement with the European Union by the end of the year, which could be even trickier than getting Parliament on board. Given how messy this process has been so far, European officials have already offered to push the deadline to 2022, but Mr. Johnson is having none of it. So British businesses are still on alert for a “no-deal” Brexit at the start of 2021, which could disrupt trade and hurt the country’s economy.
Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/12/business/this-week-in-business-flying-ubers-and-pricey-french-cheese.html?emc=rss&partner=rss