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Bloomberg The US sounds confident that proposed tariffs on steel and aluminum won’t break global trade rules, despite warnings from other countries that such a move could trigger a flurry of retaliation. It’s up to the president to decide if that’s a risk he’s willing to take. The Commerce Department laid out a range of options for President Donald Trump ...

Bloomberg Coca-Cola Co.’s push to diversify its drinks and spin off company-owned bottlers is bearing fruit. The company posted sales that beat analysts’ estimates in the fourth quarter, helped by its growing beverage portfolio and reformulations. Profit also topped projections. Coke’s results validate its strategy of become a marketing and drink-formulation company — rather than a bottler. The Atlanta-based company ...

Bloomberg The US Justice Department is fighting AT&T Inc.’s search for evidence that President Donald Trump is behind the agency’s antitrust challenge to the takeover of Time Warner Inc. Trump’s criticism of Time Warner’s CNN doesn’t justify AT&T’s “fishing expedition” for communications between the White House and the Justice Department, government lawyer Craig Conrath told US District Court Judge Richard ...

Bloomberg Airbnb Inc. cafeteria workers are joining the United Auto Workers, a new twist in the home-rental company’s troubled relationship with organised labour. The United Auto Workers won a union contract covering nearly 150 cafeteria workers at four Airbnb facilities. It’s the latest development in a unionization trend among tech companies’ sub-contracted staff. “Every worker should be treated with dignity ...

Bloomberg Get ready for what could be another record year for corporate borrowing. The US tax overhaul is freeing up cash for companies and the Federal Reserve is hiking rates, but chief financial officers are still eager to borrow, UBS strategists wrote. The Swiss bank and Wells Fargo both expect businesses to sell as much US investment-grade and junk bond ...

“MASON CITY. To get there you follow Highway 58, going northeast out of the city, and it is a good highway and new.“ —Robert Penn Warren, “All the King’s Men” (1946) Appropriately, Warren began the best book about American populism, his novel based on Huey Long’s Louisiana career, with a rolling sentence about a road. Time was, infrastructure — roads, ...

The best start to a year since 2014 in Singapore’s property market seems to have finally lifted the spirits of investors in its banks. A 37% jump in new home sales in January ought to be making lenders optimistic about what the Year of the Dog holds for their all-important mortgage businesses. Yet when the property data were released Wednesday, ...

More than 40 years ago, Congress adopted the Community Reinvestment Act to ensure that banks would serve everyone in the areas where they do business, regardless of race or class. Now, the Trump administration is considering how it might reform this long-controversial law. There’s reason for concern about the administration’s intentions. Done right, though, an update could actually be a ...

After enduring something of a sudden trauma last week, many market participants now wish for a rapid return to calm. That’s understandable, but it may not be in their longer-term interest to simply revert to the highly unusual market conditions that prevailed before. Instead, they should hope for a new, less abnormal market paradigm with respect to asset-price volatility, correlations ...

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and Boris Johnson traded barbs this week over how far the EU intends to push its integration agenda. In a speech on Wednesday, the UK foreign secretary accused the EU of seeking to create an “overarching European state.” Not true, Juncker responded: “I am strictly against a European superstate. We are not the United States ...