Bloomberg The US said it will begin imposing 25 percent duties on an additional $16 billion in Chinese imports in two weeks, escalating a trade war between the world’s two biggest economies. Customs will begin collecting the duties on 279 product lines, down from 284 items on the initial list, as of August 23, the US Trade Representative’s Office said ...

Bloomberg Salesforce.com Inc., a maker of cloud-based customer-relations software, is the latest technology company to embrace the idea of having two chief executives, by promoting Keith Block to run the company alongside co-founder Marc Benioff. Block started with the San Francisco-based company in 2013, became chief operating officer in 2016 and also serves as vice chairman. He’ll remain a director, ...

Bloomberg Dry, hot and windy conditions are threatening to expand California’s largest wildfires, which so far are burning in largely rural areas, muting their economic impact. The fires, which have killed 12 people and burned an area almost as big as Rhode Island, have hit the tourism industry around Yosemite National Park but left agricultural areas mostly unscathed. “While the ...

As the Brexit shambles rolls on, I’ve been puzzled by the hostility of Brexiteers to the proposal that Theresa May is trying to sell at home and to the European Union. A weird domestic alliance of hardline Leavers and zealous Remainers could block May’s plans, regardless of how the EU responds — and the result might well be a no-deal ...

The S&P 500 Index rallied, coming within 0.3 percent of its intraday record set in January. If a new high is rea-ched in coming days, it wou-ld cap an incredible come- back from the sell-off in late January and early February that drove the benchmark into a correction. It would also renew criticism that investors are too complacent. If only ...

Health-care sector stalwarts may be right in thinking that the joint venture between Amazon.com Inc., JP Morgan Chase & Co. and Berkshire Hathaway Inc. poses no near-term existential threat. It will likely be years before the initiative develops the potential to have a meaningful impact on the industry’s behemoths, particularly insurers. But things are happening elsewhere in the meantime. Employers ...

For Samsung Electronics Co, the answer was 180 trillion won ($161 billion). For Apple Inc. it was $350 billion. The question was: How much are you going to contribute to your home economy? But for the smartphone giants’ finance teams, it might just as well have been – what’s the biggest number you can rustle up to impress politicians? Samsung ...

The manner in which Elon Musk disclosed that he was “considering taking Tesla private” shows why this would be the best possible outcome for all involved. The stock jumped 4 percent on Musk’s tweet, on top of an existing rally that had taken hold 30 minutes earlier on a Financial Times report that Saudi Arabia had bought stock in the ...

It’s time for FAANG stocks to break up, at least in investors’ minds. Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google parent Alphabet can’t get away from one another. Every time one grabs the spotlight — as Apple did last week when it became the first US company with a $1 trillion market value — it brings along the other four. They’re ...

Snapchat has defined itself in opposition to the internet establishment. It didn’t want to be a digital hangout like Facebook that lured the masses to perform for strangers. Snapchat’s advertisements wouldn’t be “creepy” like other internet ads. Web-video programs from partners such as ESPN wouldn’t be the schlock people saw elsewhere. Now, though, Snapchat is borrowing liberally from the internet ...