DealBook Briefing: The C.E.O.s Taking on Trump Over Immigration

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Today’s DealBook Briefing was written by Andrew Ross Sorkin in Cannes, France, and Michael J. de la Merced and Jamie Condliffe in London.

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No one’s backing down in the Trump-China trade fight

A stock market swoon yesterday wasn’t enough to sway President Trump from his aggressive stance on trade. He thinks the U.S. has the upper hand against Beijing, because China relies on exports for growth, and might find it hard to replace its imports.

That belief could lead the White House to further clampdowns — perhaps blocking Chinese investments in sensitive industries like science and technology. (Chinese investments in the U.S. have already fallen drastically.)

Beijing doesn’t appear to be backing down either, and it could use regulations to make life harder for U.S. companies in China. But things aren’t yet bad enough for it to unleash its trade nuclear weapon: a threat to stop buying U.S. Treasury bonds.

Elsewhere in trade news: The Kochs’ political network will run ads against the Trump tariffs on conservative talk radio.

G.E. will leave the Dow after 111 years. There’s an upside.

After two world wars, the Great Depression and a global financial crisis, G.E. — the last remaining original component of the Dow Jones industrial average — will finally fall off the stock market index.

The reason? Its shares have fallen too far. The drugstore chain Walgreens Boots Alliance will replace it.

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Brooke Sutherland of Bloomberg Opinion argues this could free G.E.’s chief, John Flannery, to take the big steps required to fix the troubled industrial conglomerate:

I don’t think it’s a good thing that G.E. was dropped from the Dow, but it’s one less shackle to the past that might discourage Flannery from undertaking a complete top-to-down rethinking of its identity.

SoftBank’s Vision Fund may be in too much of a hurry

The FT took a look at the nearly $100 billion technology investment fund, whose enormous coffers and bold bets have transformed private equity. It found a highly aggressive team pushed to strike as many deals as possible, as fast as possible.

What an unnamed person who has worked with the fund told the FT:

The setup seems to be made for maximum speed. There is just such an urgency to get deals done. There is really fierce competition between the different teams, everything is moving incredibly fast.

That person’s potentially worrying payoff: “There aren’t the sort of systems in place that you might expect to formalize it all.”

A big question: The fund’s huge investments make for impressive headlines. But will its haste lead it into bad blockbuster deals?

In other Vision Fund news: SoftBank will reportedly put in $5 billion of employee money to reach its goal of $100 billion in assets.

Why a video push makes sense for Instagram

This afternoon at 1 p.m. Eastern, the image-sharing social network plans to make a major announcement. TechCrunch reports that the event could be about video features, including allowing users to post longer clips and a new video hub. Instagram would then become more of a competitor to YouTube (and to some extent to its owner, Facebook).

Why make that move? DealBook has some data from eMarketer that spells out the opportunity:

• Video is a big part of advertising, making up 17 percent of American digital ad spending.

• People are watching way more of it. The average U.S. adult likely will watch 24 minutes of video a day on a smartphone in 2018.

• Video ad spending is going to grow — fast. Mobile video ad spending in the U.S. will grow nearly 25 percent this year, to $7.87 billion.

• Unlike Facebook, Instagram is still growing quickly. Its user base is expected to increase by 13 percent this year.

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Goldman Sachs, which rarely brings in outsiders to lead important businesses, has hired Wei Cai from FountainVest as its co-head of investment banking in China. (FT)

Walt Disney named Jennifer Lee and Pete Docter as its chief creative officers. She will lead its animation studios; he, Pixar. (NYT)

Booz Allen Hamilton has hired Stephen Labaton as its executive vice president for corporate affairs.

The speed read

Deals

• The British government formally cleared the way for 21st Century Fox to continue its pursuit of the satellite broadcaster Sky. A bidding war is now open. (WSJ)

• Endemol Shine, the production company partly owned by Fox whose shows include “Black Mirror,” has reportedly hired Deutsche Bank and LionTree to explore a sale. (CNBC)

• AT&T is said to be in talks to buy AppNexus, an ad tech company, for $1.6 billion to bolster its targeted advertising after buying Time Warner. (WSJ)

• A recent paper by the I.M.F. found that corporate consolidation hurts innovation and worker pay. (WSJ)

Policy

• Joseph Hagin, a deputy White House chief of staff, will step down next month amid questions about his loyalty to President Trump. (NYT)

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• House Republicans proposed a way to balance the federal budget: make the big cuts to Medicare and Social Security that Mr. Trump said he wouldn’t allow. (WaPo)

• Prime Minister Theresa May of Britain faces a big test today as her government seeks to defeat an effort to give Parliament a “meaningful vote” on Brexit. (Guardian)

Tech

• Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile said they would stop selling location details to data brokers. (NYT)

• Amazon investors have urged the company not to sell facial recognition technology to police forces. (DealBook)

• The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has awarded its 10 millionth patent. (The Verge)

• The Chinese device maker Huawei is squaring up for a fight with Australia. (NYT)

• How tech companies conquered America’s cities. (NYT)

Best of the rest

• As the economy improves and requirements tighten, far fewer people are applying for disability benefits. (NYT)

• Greece is preparing to end its last bailout from the E.U. Creditors want to ensure it doesn’t get into trouble again — but now they face troubles elsewhere. (NYT)

• An in-depth investigation into OneTaste, an “orgasmic meditation” start-up accused of being a cult. (Bloomberg Businessweek)

• A McKinsey retirement fund held investments in six companies where the consulting firm was an adviser. (WSJ)

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