Good morning,
President Trump dragged Amazon into the political crossfire yesterday, writing in a twitter rant that the “#AmazonWashingtonPost, sometimes referred to as the guardian of Amazon not paying Internet taxes (which they should) is FAKE NEWS.” There’s a lot to unpack in those 140 characters, which our Alana Abramson does nicely here.
But what’s interesting is a separate SurveyMonkey poll showing Amazon is one of the very few companies that’s highly respected on both sides of the political street fight—at least prior to the President’s tweet. When Trump voters are asked to name which companies have had the most positive impact on the U.S., they go mostly industrial:
- UPS
- Caterpillar
- Ford
- Amazon
- Boeing
When former Clinton voters are asked the same question, they lean tech and media:
Amazon has somehow managed to cross the divide. Which makes me think Bezos should be negotiating the health care bill.
Meanwhile, as corporate enthusiasm about artificial intelligence continues to climb the hype cycle, consulting firm PwC put out a new report at the World Economic Forum meeting in Dalian, China, yesterday saying AI could add $15.7 trillion to world GDP by 2030, making the global economy 14% larger than it would otherwise be.
News below.
Alan Murray
@alansmurray
alan.murray@timeinc.com
Top News
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Around the Water Cooler
• Coming to America, Episode 94
Two more big foreign companies talked up their job creating in the U.S. against the background of President Trump’s pressure to re-onshore production and services. Wipro, India’s third-largest exporter of software services, said it had hired 1,600 people in the U.S. in the last six months and added that over half of its U.S. workforce is now made up of locals. Samsung, meanwhile, announced it will open a $380 million plant for making home appliances in South Carolina. The announcement came on the eve of a meeting between Trump and South Korea’s new President Moon Jae-in. The two will discuss, among other things, a U.S.-Korea trade deal that Trump had sharply criticized in the past. Fortune
• Blue Apron Trims IPO Price
Shares in Blue Apron are due to list later Thursday, in an important test of market sentiment towards unicorns. The company’s bankers have already cut the price range by around a third in response to lukewarm demand. That has shaved a cool billion off its valuation but still values the company at just over $2 billion. In addition to broader market nerves caused by Janet Yellen’s comments about “rich” valuations, the deal has also been overshadowed by the Amazon/Whole Foods deal, which many fear could create powerful long-term competition for the meal-kit delivery service. By contrast, Delivery Hero, a German-based app provider that power various food delivery services across 40 countries, priced its IPO at the top end of its range, valuing it at nearly $5 billion. Fortune
• Canada Court Deals Google Another Blow
Google’s bad week in the courts continued, as Canada’s Supreme Court ruled, in a temporary injunction, that the company should suppress search results about pirated products globally, not just in Canada. The presiding judge Rosalie Abella ruled that stopping the unlawful sale of goods was more important than any potential implications for free speech and freedom of information. Google wasn’t a party to the suit, which revolved around a trademark dispute between two third parties. The ruling chips away further at the broad freedoms guaranteed to Internet companies in U.S. law at the birth of the Internet Age, a process that appears to be gathering momentum globally. Fortune
• Manafort Registers as Foreign Agent
President Donald Trump's former campaign chairman Paul Manafort registered with the Justice Department as a foreign agent for political consulting work he did for a Ukrainian political party. His move acknowledges that he coached party members on how to interact with U.S. government officials. Manafort said in a Justice Department filing that his firm, DMP International, received more than $17 million from ex-President Viktor Yanukovych’s Party of Regions, for consulting work from 2012 through 2014. While Yanukovych and the PoR are typically thought of as pro-Russian, they were pursuing a course that would have integrated Ukraine with the EU more closely for almost all of the time that Manafort worked for them, and would likely have sealed that deal if the EU had been more accommodating on transitional measures. Fortune
Summaries by Geoffrey Smith Geoffrey.smith@fortune.com;
@geoffreytsmith
