fortune--2020-10-28--Supreme Court conservatives lay out a path to help Trump win a contested election

The U.S. Supreme Court’s conservatives started carving a path that could let President Donald Trump win a contested election, issuing a far-reaching set of opinions just as Amy Coney Barrett was getting Senate confirmation to provide what could be a crucial additional vote.
In a 5-3 decision released minutes before the Senate vote Monday night, the court rejected Democratic calls to reinstate a six-day extension for the receipt of mail ballots in Wisconsin, a hotly contested state that is experiencing a surge of COVID-19 cases. The Supreme Court as a whole gave no explanation for the decision.
The outcome was bad enough for Democrats, but an opinion by Trump-appointed Justice Brett Kavanaugh bordered on catastrophic. Kavanaugh suggested sympathy for Trump’s unsubstantiated contentions that votes received after Election Day would be tainted by fraud, warning that “charges of a rigged election could explode” if late-arriving ballots change the perceived outcome.
Most states “want to avoid the chaos and suspicions of impropriety that can ensue if thousands of absentee ballots flow in after election day and potentially flip the results of an election,” Kavanaugh wrote. “And those states also want to be able to definitively announce the results of the election on election night, or as soon as possible thereafter.”
Although Trump is trailing Democrat Joe Biden in national polls, the race is tighter in Wisconsin and other swing states that will determine who wins and are the focus of the two campaigns. Two other pivotal states, Pennsylvania and North Carolina, are awaiting Supreme Court action in cases raising similar issues.
Kavanaugh’s vote—and those of fellow Trump appointees Barrett and Neil Gorsuch—could be crucial in any post-election dispute. With Chief Justice John Roberts showing less willingness to second-guess state election decisions, Trump could need the support of all three of his appointed justices to overturn election results that seem to favor Biden.
All three Democratic appointees dissented Monday night. Writing for the group, Justice Elena Kagan blasted Kavanaugh’s word choice, as well as his reasoning.
Nothing to ‘flip’
“There are no results to ‘flip’ until all valid votes are counted,” Kagan wrote for herself and Justices Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor. “And nothing could be more suspicious or improper than refusing to tally votes once the clock strikes 12 on election night.”
The court’s decision Monday means ballots must be received by Election Day to count in Wisconsin. Democrats were seeking to revive an extension that had been ordered by a federal trial judge because of the Covid outbreak and then blocked by an appeals court.
Kagan said the worsening pandemic in Wisconsin means that without without the extension voters would have to “opt between braving the polls, with all the risk that entails, and losing their right to vote.” Kavanaugh countered that the high court order wouldn’t disenfranchise any voter who had adequately planned ahead.
The dueling opinions, however, went well beyond the Wisconsin circumstances. Kavanaugh embraced a legal theory that could let Republican-controlled state legislatures override results certified by Democratic officials. That argument, developed by three conservative justices in the 2000 Bush v. Gore case, says the Supreme Court should intervene in a presidential election dispute even when a state court is interpreting its own laws.
Dueling electors
Citing that opinion, Kavanaugh pointed to a constitutional provision that says state legislatures get to determine how electors are appointed to the Electoral College, the body that formally selects the U.S. president.
“The text of the Constitution requires federal courts to ensure that state courts do not rewrite state election laws,” Kavanaugh wrote. He was one of three current justices, including Roberts and Barrett, who worked as lawyers for Republican George W. Bush in the 2000 election fight.
Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Michigan all have Republican-controlled legislatures and Democratic governors, creating the possibility those states could send dueling slates of electors to the Electoral College in the event of a disputed election.
Kavanaugh’s opinion doesn’t necessarily mean he would invalidate votes that arrive after Election Day in states where extensions are in place, said Edward Foley, director of the election law program at Ohio State University’s Moritz College of Law.
“There’s a due process principle, at least that’s recognized by lower courts,” Foley said. “You’re not supposed to change rules governing elections after ballots have been cast. That might come into play.”
Roberts alone
The Kavanaugh opinion nonetheless left many liberals alarmed at the growing possibility of a replay of Bush v. Gore, when the Supreme Court reversed the Florida Supreme Court and stopped ballot recounts that might have led to Democrat Al Gore’s election.
Kavanaugh “signaled that at least some of the conservative justices are willing to stop both state and federal courts, and state agencies, from easing voting restrictions and fixing voting problems when doing so deviates from the wishes of the state legislature,” said Rick Hasen, a election-law expert who teaches at the University of California, Irvine School of Law.
Gorsuch expressed views similar to Kavanaugh’s, if in less detail. “The Constitution provides that state legislatures—not federal judges, not state judges, not state governors, not other state officials—bear primary responsibility for setting election rules,” Gorsuch wrote in an opinion Kavanaugh joined.
Kavanaugh’s and Gorsuch’s opinions distinguished them from Roberts. Although Roberts joined the majority in the Wisconsin case, he wrote his own opinion to explain why he previously voted to allow an extra three days for ballots to arrive in Pennsylvania. The court split 4-4 in that case last week, leaving the extension intact for the time being.
Roberts said the difference was that the Pennsylvania case involved a state court applying its own constitution.
“Different bodies of law and different precedents govern these two situations and require, in these particular circumstances, that we allow the modification of election rules in Pennsylvania but not Wisconsin,” he wrote Monday.
Pennsylvania Republicans have now filed a new request to block the extension, aiming to take advantage of Barrett’s arrival on the court.
Barrett, who began work as a justice Tuesday after taking the second of two required oaths, could now be positioned to cast the deciding vote in a 2020 version of Bush v. Gore. The dynamic “is putting Justice Barrett on the spot to make that decision,” Foley said.
Although Democrats have called on Barrett to disqualify herself from Trump-related election cases, she has given no indication she will do so.


fortune--2020-10-28--Who will decide the election? It may come down to Pennsylvania seniors

When Congress is likely to make a deal to send more stimulus checks

It’s highly possible that a single demographic, in a single swing state, will determine who becomes America’s next President.
That group is the roughly 1.5 million seniors in Pennsylvania likely to vote, a citizenry that went big for Trump in 2016 but is hugely unhappy with his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. Recent polls show a gray wave toward Biden so gigantic that, right now, he’s expected to carry the 65-and-over crowd by what could equal Trump’s 10 point margin four years ago. “The senior vote is incredibly important in Pennsylvania,” says Christopher Borick, political science professor at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, and director of its Institute of Public Opinion. “The big story of this election is that as a Republican, you can’t afford to lose ground with seniors and expect to win. Trump still has a path to victory, but the loss of seniors presents an overwhelming challenge in the home stretch.”
Put simply, it’s a good bet that one state holds the key to the White House, and that’s the Keystone State. “We’re the tipping state,” says Borick. “If I knew nothing else, and you told me Trump won Pennsylvania on Nov. 4, I’d feel solid he won the presidency.” To carry Pennsylvania and gain a lock on reelection, Trump must make up, ballot for ballot, for the tens of thousands of votes he’ll lose because seniors are swinging to Biden. Hence, Trump will need to rally a red wave in the western oil tier and rural and suburban areas outside of the Philadelphia metro that far surpasses the big numbers he garnered in 2016.
Trump is going all-in on Pennsylvania, blitzing this must-win territory in the final days harder than any other battleground. On Oct. 26 he hosted no fewer than three, hour-plus rallies there that took him from Martinsburg in the south-central rural tier to Allentown in the industrial belt north of Philadelphia. Seniors are a prime target. At every stop, a banner theme was his opponent’s alleged efforts to undermine the two entitlements dearest to the elderly. “[Biden] repeatedly tried to cut Social Security and Medicare…and Bernie Sanders is the one who exposed him on that,” Trump trumpeted in Allentown.
Four years ago, Trump took Pennsylvania by a slender 44,000 votes or 0.76%, the narrowest margin since 1840. The senior bloc formed a cornerstone of his victory. According to exit polls, he carried 54% of the 65-and-over demo, prevailing by roughly 150,000 votes. Seniors are an especially important group in the Keystone State for two reasons. First, of all the battlegrounds, Pennsylvania at 18.6% has a higher proportion of those folks than any state besides Florida (at 20.6%). Second, seniors vote in much bigger numbers than their share of the electorate. “In a presidential election in Pennsylvania, of the entire electorate, 23% or 24% can be seniors,” notes Borick. “That’s why seniors are such a coveted demographic.”
Today, Trump is trailing Biden by a significant margin both in the polls and betting odds. The latest Muhlenberg Institute of Public Opinion survey has Biden ahead by 7 points, 51% to 44%. The RealClearPolitics average of the eight most recent polls puts Biden’s lead at 3.8 points, 49.6% to 45.8%, and Trump’s overall standing on the RealClear roster of six political gaming sites is 35% to Biden’s 64%, meaning the gamblers rate Biden a nearly 2-to-1 favorite. On the PredictIt exchange (not included in the RealClear numbers), Trump’s odds at midday on Oct. 27 were a bit better at 41%. It’s a gauge of the Keystone State’s importance that on PredictIt, his chances in that one battleground mirror his 39% shot at taking the White House. In fact, it’s the ebb and flow in Pennsylvania, more than any other factor, that drive the ups and downs in the President’s odds for reelection.
Though the President is still a long shot in Pennsylvania, his fortunes are improving. On October 21, the day before the second debate, he lagged Biden on PredictIt 68% to 32%, meaning he’s narrowed that gap by 8 points to reach 40%. In RealClear’s collection of polls, he’s climbed from down 7 points on Oct. 13 to the current shortfall of 3.8. “The debate was a positive for the President in Pennsylvania,” says Borick. “He put Biden on the defensive on fracking.” Still, it’s not clear that Biden’s gaffe in calling for an end to the oil and gas industries, and Trump’s manic barnstorming from Allentown to Erie, are enough to compensate for the shocking erosion of support from the seniors who carried him to an historic upset in 2016.
Trump’s in that hole for an overriding reason: What the elderly perceive as his botched handling of the pandemic. In the latest Muhlenberg survey, 20% of respondents said that the most important issue was COVID-19, and 15% cited health care. “The number for COVID is far higher among seniors,” says Borick. “Among that group, Trump gets horrible ratings on his handling of the pandemic. He also gets bad ratings on health care.” In the Muhlenberg poll, 60% of folks 65 or older disapproved of Trump’s performance, versus 34% who approved. Asked if they’ll vote for Trump or Biden, only 39% of seniors picked the President, giving Biden a 20-point advantage. In comparison, voters aged 30 to 64 preferred Trump by 5 points, 50% to 45%. If Trump were polling anywhere close to his 2016 numbers among graying Pennsylvanians, he’d be in a much stronger position to carry the state, and probably a favorite to claim the White House.
To grasp what it would take for Trump to take Pennsylvania, it helps to retrace his path in 2016. Hillary Clinton pretty much matched Barack Obama’s showing in Philadelphia and the metro’s four surrounding counties: Bucks, Chester, Delaware, and Montgomery. She also won handily in Allegheny, home to Pittsburgh, and in Lackawanna and Dauphin, whose respective hubs are Scranton and Harrisburg.
Trump notched his narrow win by getting a huge turnout in the oil-rich southwestern tier that’s been trending heavily Republican in recent elections. He won 65% of the vote in Fayette, Greene, Washington, and Westmoreland counties, beating Clinton’s total by 118,000. That’s 56,000 better than Mitt Romney’s margin in 2012. In addition, Trump flipped Rust Belt icon Erie County, capturing a prize that went to Obama by 19,000 votes in 2012. He scored a stunning reversal in Luzerne, whose base is Wilkes-Barre, winning by 26,000. He also polled a lot better in the Scranton area, narrowing the Democrats’ margin in Lackawanna County to 2,500 from 27,000. Trump unleashed a red onslaught in rural, Rust Belt, and fracking regions that edged Clinton’s strong showing in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.
All told, 6.11 million Pennsylvanians voted in 2016. In Philadelphia, the four surrounding counties and Pittsburgh’s Allegheny, Clinton won a total of 1.693 million of 2.615 million ballots cast, or 65%. Trump swept 56 of 67 counties, taking 59% of the 3.5 million voters in those chiefly manufacturing, oil patch, and farming regions.
It’s hard to predict what Trump’s senior share will be on Election Day. It’s possible that a number of elders in the industrial or fracking regions that revile the President on COVID might turn on Biden because of his stance on energy, and reluctantly support Trump once again. If Trump’s senior share goes from 54% four years ago to 45%, better than the Muhlenberg poll is forecasting, he’d have a deficit of 135,000 votes versus 2015. Since he won by just 44,000, he’d have to make up just over 90,000 to eke out a win.
Trump can triumph only if the increase in his turnout over 2016 is much greater than the number of Democrats who didn’t vote four years ago but this time post absentee ballots and flock to the polls. If Trump can get an extra 8% of the 3.5 million in the regions that went for him heavily, and again win 60% of their votes, he gains by 170,000 votes over 2016.
But even then, he wins only if Democratic turnout doesn’t rise nearly as much. Borick doesn’t see that happening. He predicts that both Republican and Democratic voters will vote in far bigger numbers than in 2016. “The Republicans are energized by Trump, while the Democrats aren’t excited about Biden but galvanized by opposition to Trump,” he says. Borick doubts that Trump’s extra recruits can exceed a surge in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh suburbanites—folks who yawned in 2016 and stand up for Biden this time—by enough for the President to win. His only path is to recoup some of his losses with seniors, and at the same time marshal a gigantic turnout from his base, says Borick.
“The way he’s antagonized seniors over COVID has blunted his momentum,” says Borick. “The timing of the latest explosion in cases couldn’t be worse for him.” He thinks Trump can still win. “He could do it if he moves just a few points,” he says. “Trump’s energy is there.” Indeed, the Keystone State polls are tightening a bit. If Trump can overcome the revolt of the seniors who supported him so overwhelming four short years ago, he’ll orchestrate a Keystone State surprise even bigger than the last one, and probably get four more years at the address named for that great battleground.


fortune--2020-10-28--Democracy is trending: How big consumer brands are boosting voter turnout in 2020

Democracy is trending. Politics—and the upcoming election—is showing up in our social media feeds, in our music, on television, at work, and when we shop. We’re seeing historic numbers of public-facing activations of civic responsibility from consumer brands helping drive record voter turnout.
In the case study that the two of us published in June 2019 for the Harvard Kennedy School, Civic Responsibility: The Power of Companies to Increase Voter Turnout, we predicted that brands would need to find unique, authentic, and nonpartisan ways to engage in the conversation about the 2020 election—and to respond to calls to help drive increased civic participation in the United States. The challenges and threats COVID-19 presents to the election accelerated this need, as employees and consumers needed help navigating the changes caused by the pandemic.
In profiling the efforts of BlueCross and BlueShield of Minnesota, Endeavor, Gap Inc., Patagonia, Snap, Spotify, Target, and Twitter to drive voter turnout, particularly among young people, we provided a road map for how companies could play a unique role in advocating for a healthier democracy.
We also demonstrated that consumers and employees actually want them to. According to one survey, almost 80% of consumers believe companies should take positions on social and political issues—and are actively seeking to reward companies that do so with their business or positive social media attention. It is precisely this benefit of action—and the risk of inaction—that we reported in 2018, and many more companies are feeling now, driving record numbers of businesses to engage in 2020.
These factors have also helped companies overcome the fear of being seen as partisan or disingenuous, a fear that previously held them back from engagement, especially in the current, polarized political climate. But the early adopters proved—by leaning into sharing resources like voter registration forms, polling place information, and key deadlines—it was possible to inspire people to make their voices heard at the ballot box without getting “political.”
The road map these early adopters provided has given newcomers the leverage and safety they need to launch their own campaigns. These companies—and others—are finding authentic, nonpartisan ways to communicate with their consumers and employees about the democratic process, through efforts such as product offerings, shareable social outputs, in-app activations, and editorial mediums. But why are they doing it? And what does it mean?
Where marketing and voting align
By our count, over 2,200 companies have stepped up their civic responsibility efforts, embracing their power to drive increased voter participation. Those with longstanding civic programs like MTV, Patagonia, Snapchat, Spotify, and Uber have expanded their programs dramatically, climbing the ladder of engagement beyond encouraging voter registration through social media posts and emails to leveraging their platforms for ongoing registration, early/absentee vote promotion, and time off for voting. Popular retail brands like Glossier, Madewell, and Stuart Weitzman are finding creative, direct-to-consumer ways to promote voting. Companies like Gap’s Old Navy, Target, Levi Strauss, and Warby Parker are giving employees time off to volunteer as poll workers. And hundreds of brands—from United Airlines to McDonald’s, Milk Bar to Major League Baseball—are jumping into the conversation.
These brands—and hundreds more—feel they cannot be left out of critical activation moments in the 2020 cycle. According to a recent Morning Consult survey, staying silent risks a brand “appearing to be shirking its civic duty”: 46% of consumers view companies involved with voter registration more favorably, and 58% say the same for companies that give employees the day off to vote. Some brands are seeing real business benefit for their efforts.
More than 500 companies have joined the newly launched Civic Alliance (formerly the TurboVote Challenge), which this week released a powerful statement calling on public officials to protect election integrity. Another 1,600 companies have signed the Time to Vote pledge. More than 150 companies helped Power the Polls sign up 650,000 people to serve as poll workers. Hundreds of brands helped National Voter Registration Day register 1.6 million people this year. Hundreds of companies celebrated the inaugural Vote Early Day on Oct. 24 to raise awareness around voting options and how to request a ballot or vote early in person. And, throughout early voting and on Election Day, dozens of companies like UberEats, Shake Shack, and Milk Bar will be working with Pizza to the Polls to deliver food to polling places with long lines.
A challenge from COVID
COVID-19 has necessitated changes to election administration in 2020 and amplified the need for brands to step up their civic engagement efforts. For example, the global pandemic has caused a shortage of people to work at polling locations; required greater education about early-voting options; and increased demand for safe vote-by-mail exponentially. Companies were called upon in an urgent way by nonprofit advocates, election officials, and peer business leaders to help ensure that voters understand the voting process and have access to all of the information they need to cast a ballot safely and securely in 2020.
Moreover, the United States lags behind the majority of developed democratic nations with regard to voter turnout: Upwards of 60% of the eligible population doesn’t vote in midterm elections and around 40% sit out presidential elections. In fact, the U.S. ranks 26th out of 32 developed democracies in percentage of eligible voters who participate in elections, according to the Pew Research Center. This highlights how critical it is for every brand to recognize the role they have to play here.
Many of the eight participants in our original case study pointed to seeing this increased interest from employees as well. One company shared in 2018 that it hadn’t planned to promote the election, until one day the CEO saw that employees had set up their own voter registration table in the lobby and that the table was getting a lot of traffic. Multiple case study participants shared surprise at the number of emails from employees they received, thanking them for taking initiative and describing how proud they were to work for an organization that values these civic campaigns—whether it was the CEO sending an internal email about registering or a social media post from the brand’s handle encouraging voter participation.
We hope that this historic corporate civic engagement will result in historic voter turnout. Every company has the power to effect change in democratic participation in ways native to their brand—their ability to do so, inspiring their consumers and employees to engage, will help change the fabric of democratic participation in this country. Most importantly, because their consumers and employees want it, civic responsibility is good not only for democracy, it is also good for business.
Ashley Spillane is the former president of Rock the Vote and is a former Roy and Lila Ash Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School’s Ash Center. She is the founder and president of Impactual.
Sofia Gross is a former Technology and Democracy Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School’s Ash Center. She is a public policy manager at Snap.


fortune--2020-10-28--Coinbase launches crypto debit card in U.S. with 1% Bitcoin reward

Owning cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin has long come with a drawback: There are few practical opportunities to spend them since so few merchants accept them, and for those stores that do, transactions can take 10 minutes or more to clear.
Now cryptocurrency giant Coinbase is hoping to change that by rolling out a debit card that can be used at any business that uses the Visa network. The card will allow customers to draw funds from various cryptocurrency accounts, while letting the merchant instantly receive payment in U.S. dollars.
Coinbase, which has been testing the debit card for months in Europe and the U.K., says U.S. customers will be able to obtain one later this year or in early 2021.
Customers who make purchases with the debit card will receive rewards in the form of a 1% rebate paid in Bitcoin, or a 4% rebate paid in a more obscure cryptocurrency. At the outset, the 4% reward option will come in the form of XLM, also known as Stellar Lumens, with other reward options to be introduced in the future. The card looks like this:
This reward system could help overcome another drawback to spending cryptocurrency, which are the fees. For every transaction using the debit card, Coinbase will charge a 2.49% levy.
This fee makes using the debit card an unattractive option in terms of value—especially since some credit cards offer 2% cash back in rewards with no fees—but there is an important exception.
The exception is when Coinbase customers draw on their USDC accounts. USDCs are a type of cryptocurrency known as stablecoins, which are pegged to the U.S. dollar at a one-to-one value. In practice, this means Coinbase users can go shopping with their USDC accounts with no fees while earning 1% in Bitcoin (or 4% in a more exotic cryptocurrency).
Spending USDC or other stablecoins also offers an upside compared to other cryptocurrencies in that such purchases won’t trigger a taxable event—which is the case under current IRS rules for Bitcoin and other forms of digital money.
Max Branzburg, who leads consumer products at Coinbase, says spending USDC will be one of two prime use cases for the new debit card. The other use case, he says, is among customers who find themselves short of cash and want to dip into their cryptocurrency holdings for large or urgent one-off purchases.
Branzburg says the ability to use a debit card to draw on cryptocurrency assets is far superior to the alternative, which entails “getting stuck in the traditional financial system”—a process that can involve waiting three to five days while Bitcoin (or other cryptocurrencies) are converted to fiat currency.
Coinbase’s announcement comes several months after BitPay, a much smaller competitor, announced a U.S. debit card of its own.
More broadly, Coinbase’s debit card rollout comes as the company is transforming its app to offer a variety of traditional financial services—from lending to interest-paying accounts—and as Bitcoin enjoys an unprecedented level of mainstream adoption, including its embrace by the likes of PayPal and Square.
More must-read finance coverage from Fortune:


fortune--2020-10-28--When Congress is likely to make a deal to send more stimulus checks

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Weeks of daily negotiations between the White House and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi almost assuredly won’t result in a stimulus deal before the election, as the Senate adjourned until after the election, likely killing any near-term hope of a deal.
Though a bill won’t come in time for Nov. 3, White House spokeswoman Alyssa Farah said on “Fox & Friends” on Tuesday, “We’re confident that we can get something in the coming weeks…We’re hoping within weeks. I don’t want to get too ahead of any announcements.”
Some economists and analysts, however, expect a deal may not come until early next year. Deutsche Bank economist Brett Ryan estimates a stimulus package may arrive as late as February, in which case aid likely wouldn’t be distributed until early March. If the package includes another round of $1,200 stimulus checks, it would likely take two weeks after passage to hit American’s bank accounts.
There is a chance economic aid could be passed right after the election, however, in a so-called lame-duck session following the election, the time following a November election but before a new Congress convenes. In that case, UBS Global Wealth Management senior economist Brian Rose argues the “most straightforward” scenario to pass a bill before next year would be Trump winning reelection and passing a bill during the lame-duck session. However, Rose believes the bill might be a smaller or piecemeal package (a prospect House Speaker Pelosi has long opposed) that could be passed by Dec. 11, when Congress’s previous continuing resolution is set to end. But even if there is a “blue wave,” Rose suggests, a speedy piecemeal deal might be more in reach than it was before the election: “If Biden wins, and the Republicans in the Senate are still willing to do a piecemeal deal…assuming it’s a blue wave [and Democrats are poised to take control of the Senate as well], Pelosi may be more willing to do piecemeal too, knowing that, ‘Okay, the [new] Congress will sit, we’re going to control Congress and the presidency,’” Rose tells Fortune.
If Democrats take both the Senate and the presidency (in which case there might be a bigger deal), Rose argues, “I can’t imagine the Democrats sweep and they let the Republicans just block everything with the filibuster” early next year.
Democrats and Republicans have argued over points including how much funding should go to state and local governments, and liability protection. But they share common ground on another round of $1,200 stimulus checks, funding for education, food programs, and other areas of funding. Both groups also support more enhanced unemployment benefits, though the White House has favored $400 per week versus the $600 per week House Democrats support.
The overall size of the deal, however, also remains a formidable roadblock: Democrats want at least $2.2 trillion in aid, while Senate Republicans rallied around a much skinnier $500 billion package in a bill blocked by Democrats last week.
Beyond the politics, the larger question is whether the economy can wait until next spring. When states begun to ease lockdowns in May the economy began a robust recovery. By August, however, that rebound was losing speed as aid from the CARES Act ran dry. And if that rate of rehiring continues to fall, the recovery could be at risk.
To make matters worse, with the moratorium on evictions expiring later this year, “you can see that if we don’t get the package this year and we have to wait until next year, there’s a lot of big problems around people being unable to pay their bills and losing their housing,” Rose says. “That is the worrying part of waiting.”


fortune--2020-10-28--Florida is getting tighter as Trump cuts into Biden’s lead

If Donald Trump loses Florida, his reelection is toast.
For much of the campaign the President has trailed in the Sunshine State. This week, however, Trump topped the RealClearPolitics poll average in Florida—the first time he’s led Democratic nominee Joe Biden in the metric since April. But it’s a slim lead: Trump is ahead by 0.4 points in the RealClearPolitics poll average in Florida, on par with his 0.2 point lead in Florida four years ago—which translated into a 1.2 point win.
The five polls used to calculate the Florida RealClearPolitics poll average are October results from Florida Atlantic University (Biden +2), Susquehanna Polling & Research (Trump +4), CBS News/YouGov (Biden +2), St. Pete Polls (Biden +2), and Rasmussen Reports (Trump +4).
But even as Florida polls gets tighter, Biden is still projected to win. As of Wednesday, FiveThirtyEight forecast Biden will win Florida by 1.5 points. That’s much closer than two weeks ago when FiveThirtyEight forecast a 4.1 point Biden win, and it’s significantly tighter than Biden’s peak lead of 7.6 points on July 24—during the height of Florida’s COVID-19 outbreak.
FiveThirtyEight gives Biden a 61% chance of carrying Florida. But that alone doesn’t guarantee victory. Indeed, FiveThirtyEight gave Clinton a 55.1% chance of winning Florida four years ago.
Why the Trump uptick? As the COVID-19 caseload in Florida began to fall in August, the President started to see his poll numbers rise. He temporarily saw that climb pull back following his subpar first debate performance and his own coronavirus hospitalization in early October. But in recent weeks that climb has returned.
And Trump is aided by an improving Florida economy. The spring shutdowns hit tourism-heavy Florida particularly hard, with its unemployment rate soaring to 13.8% in April. But with eased restrictions, that jobless rate is 7.6% as of September. In total, 1.2 million Floridans have been rehired or found new jobs, according to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data. The same October 20–23 CBS News/YouGov poll that finds Biden up +2 points in Florida also finds voters in the state say Trump would do a better job handling the economy, by 50% to 42%.
But Trump would need more than Florida to secure a second term. Biden would win with 312 electoral votes if he wins every state Clinton won four years ago along with the six Trump 2016 states he’s currently leading in: Michigan (+8.7 points), Pennsylvania (+3.8 points), and Wisconsin (+7.8 points), Arizona (+2.4 points), Iowa (+1.4 points), and North Carolina (+0.7 points), according to RealClearPolitics poll averages.
That explains why the cash-strapped Trump campaign is shifting ad dollars out of Florida to help in Midwestern states like Pennsylvania. To fill the void, the Republican National Committee is making ad purchases in Florida—but it will still be greatly outspent in Florida by the Biden camp.


fortune--2020-10-28--The perils of the fintech deal flurry

The perils of the fintech deal flurry

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It was already a big deal when Visa agreed to acquire fintech startup Plaid for $5.3 billion in January—two times the company’s previous private market valuation. But the deal heralded something even larger, helping ignite a flurry of mega fintech deals: Intuit announced plans to acquire Credit Karma for $7.1 billion just a month later, while competitor Mastercard said it planned to acquire Finicity for nearly $1 billion in June.
Now the Department of Justice is scrutinizing all three deals, each involving a startup selling to an older and larger incumbent. In particular, the DoJ could soon decide whether it will sue to block Visa’s planned acquisition of Plaid, according to the Wall Street Journal—and it is also looking into the Finicity and Credit Karma deals.
Plaid and Visa aren’t direct competitors—Visa focuses on payments while Plaid builds software that helps digitally connect consumers’ various bank and fintech accounts. (Signing into Wells Fargo through Venmo, for instance? Plaid is doing that.). But customers speculated that one day, Plaid could eventually create an entirely cardless payments network that does away with fees that Visa and Mastercard charge to merchants to process the payments.
In most cases, it seems as if the ultimate dream for founders is to go it alone or take your company public rather than combine with another player. So why did Plaid, hugely promising even before the deal with Visa, decide to be acquired by a much larger, and much older business?
“It wasn’t an easy decision by anybody,” Rick Yang, General Partner at NEA and a board member at Plaid, told me in July during a broader conversation about the venture capital environment. “Visa is one of the biggest companies in the world with one of the widest reaches. And while Plaid from a venture and fintech perspective felt like it was making a huge impact, the company’s ambitions ultimately are global in nature. That was probably something the company could have achieved in five or 10 years—but by partnering with Visa, they could do it in the next couple of years.”
But if the DoJ interferes, Plaid may have to go it alone.
FORMER UBER CTO MAKES A MOVE. TO SOUTH KOREA. MID-PANDEMIC: Thuan Pham, who survived as Uber’s top engineer even as the rest of the senior C-suite cleared out following the company’s tumultuous 2017, left the company earlier this year as the pandemic upended its business. Now he has found his next gig as CTO of Coupang, the delivery company with the largest market share in South Korea, which is often compared to Amazon. “Amazon is a trillion-dollar company,” Pham says. “That is part of the aspiration.” Not sure I personally would be able to quarantine for two weeks in a hotel room as Pham did: The newly re-minted executive made it through on mostly cold meals for 14 days in Seoul as part of his onboarding experience. He plans to fly back to San Francisco next week, working from 4 a.m. to 2 p.m. PT to match the time in Asia. Read more.
Lucinda Shen
Twitter: @shenlucinda
Email: lucinda.shen@fortune.com
VENTURE DEALS
- Faire, an online wholesale marketplace, raised $170 million in Series E funding. Sequoia Capital led the round, valuing at $2.5 billion. Other investors included Y Combinator, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Forerunner Ventures, Khosla Ventures, Founders Fund, D1 Capital Partners, DST Global, Dragoneer, and Norwest Venture Partners.
- Honor, a San Francisco-based in-home care network for the elderly, raised $140 million in Series D funding. Baillie Gifford and T. Rowe Price Associates co-led the round and were joined by investors including Rock Springs, Prosus Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, Thrive Capital, and 8VC.
- Eightfold AI, a San Francisco Bay Area-based recruiting software company, raised $125 million in Series D funding. General Catalyst led the round and was joined by investors including Capital One Ventures, IVP, Lightspeed, and Foundation Capital.
- WHOOP, a Boston-based maker of a subscription-based health monitoring watch, raised $100 million in Series E funding valuing it at $1.2 billion. IVP led the round and was joined by investors including SoftBank Vision Fund, Accomplice, Two Sigma Ventures, Collaborative Fund, Thursday Ventures, Nextview Ventures, Promus Ventures, Cavu Ventures, and D20 Capital.
- Streetbees, a London-based consumer insights platform, raised $40 million in Series B funding. Lakestar led the round.
- Eagle Eye Networks, an Amsterdam- and Austin-based cloud video surveillance company, raised $40 million in Series E funding. Accel led the round.
- Apeel Sciences, Santa Barbara, Calif.-based makers of fruit and food coatings, raised another $30 million in funding from International Finance Corp, Temasek, and Astanor Ventures.
- Primmune Therapeutics, a San Diego-based developer of orally administered therapeutics for viral diseases and cancers, raised $27.4 million in Series A funding. CAM Capital and Polaris Partners led the round and were joined by investors including Samsara BioCapital and Oberland Capital as well as existing investors McDermott, BioRock Ventures, and BioBrit.
- Bluefin, an Atlanta-based provider of payment and data security technologies, raised $25 million. Macquarie Capital Principal Finance led the round.
- Odaseva, a San Francisco-based enterprise cloud privacy platform, raised $25 million. Eight Roads Ventures led the round and was joined by investors including F-Prime Capital, Partech, Salesforce Ventures, and Serena.
- Replicated, a Culver City, Calif.-based software vendor, raised $25 million in Series B funding. Two Sigma Ventures led the round.
- Kandji, an Apple enterprise management solution, raised $21 million in Series A funding. Greycroft led the round and was joined by investors including Okta Ventures, B Capital Group, and First Round Capital.
- SidekickHealth, a digital therapeutics company, raised $20 million in Series A funding led by Wellington Partners and Asabys Partners. Read more.
- The Wanderlust Group, a provider of tech for marine and outdoor lifestyle industries, raised $14.2 million in Series B funding. Investors included Avenir Growth, Allen & Company, and Grassy Creek.
- Skan, a San Jose, Calif.-based computer vision platform, raised $14 million in Series A funding. Cathay Innovation led and was joined by investors including Citi Ventures, Zetta Ventures, Bloomberg Beta, Plug and Play Ventures, and Firebolt Ventures.
- Panoply, a San Francisco- and Tel Aviv-based cloud data platform, raised $10 million in funding. Ibex Investors and C5 Capital led the round.
- Gauss, a developer of computer vision applications for healthcare and maker of an at-home COVID-19 test, raised $10 million. The 4100 Group led the round and was joined by investors including SoftBank Ventures Asia, Northwell Health, Providence Health and Services, OSF Healthcare, and Polaris Partners.
- Canvass Analytics, a Toronto-based industrial A.I. company, raised $6.5 million in Series A funding. Yamaha Motor Ventures and Laboratory Silicon Valley led the round.
- Finmark, a Raleigh, N.C.-based financial modeling software provider for startups, raised $5 million in seed funding. Investors included IDEA Fund Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners, and Draper Associates.
- KatKin, a London-based cat food company, raised £4.5 million in seed funding. Octopus Ventures led the round.
- Lightyear, a New York-based networking infrastructure startup, raised $3.7 million in seed funding. Amplo led the round and was joined by investors including Susa Ventures, Ludlow Ventures, Mark Cuban, David Adelman, and Operator Partners. Read more.
- Obsess, a New York-based virtual stores and showrooms tech provider, raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding. Investors included Venture Reality Fund, WXR Fund and Jump Capital.
- Cinnamon, a San Francisco-based video startup, raised $2.5 million in seed funding. Coil led the round.
- Seatrec, a Monrovia, Calif.-based renewable energy company that harvests energy from temperature differences in the environment, raised $2 million in seed funding. Norge Larson led the round and was joined by investors including Sunstone Management, Frontier Angels, SeaAhead’s Blue Angels, and Pasadena Angels.
- Psyomics, a U.K.-based healthtech and University of Cambridge spin-out, raised £1.5 million in funding. Parkwalk led the round and was joined by investors including Jonathan Milner, Martlet, and Cambridge Enterprise.ve.
PRIVATE EQUITY
- GTCR is acquiring a majority stake in Consumer Cellular, a Portland, Ore.-based wireless company focused on those over 50. Financial terms weren't disclosed, but Bloomberg pegs the price at around $2 billion. Read more.
- Francisco Partners agreed to acquire Forcepoint, an Austin-based cybersecurity solution, from Raytheon Technologies. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
- Cerberus Capital Management acquired National Dentex Labs, a Palm Beach, Fla.-based network of fully-owned dental labs. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
- Hg invested in CaseWare International, a Toronto-based maker of audit and assurance software. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
- TPG Growth took a majority stake in SmartSweets, a Vancouver-based candy brand seeking to be a healthier alternative. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
EXITS
- Exact Sciences acquired Base Genomics, a DNA methylation company, from Oxford Sciences Innovation for $410 million.
- REPAY Holdings Corporation (NASDAQ: RPAY) acquired CPS Payment Services, a payments provider, for up to $93 million. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
- Apple acquired Vilynx, a Barcelona-based A.I. company analyzing video content, per Bloomberg. Financial terms weren't disclosed. Read more.
OTHERS
- LVMH is in talks to slightly reduce the price of its planned acquisition of Tiffany, the luxury jeweler, per CNBC. LVMH previously sought to pay $16 billion, or $135 per share. Now deal talks are around $130 and $133 per share. Read more.
- Spin Master Corp agreed to acquire Rubik’s Brand, a fellow game maker for kids, for $50 million. Read more.
IPO
- Krafton, the South Korean company behind battle royale game PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, is weighing an IPO that could be South Korea’s largest ever debut. Read more.
- Root, a Columbus, Oh.-based car insurer, raised $663.7 million.
SPAC
- Cerevel Therapeutics, a Boston-based company developing treatments for neuroscience diseases, combined with Arya Sciences Acquisition Corp II, a SPAC formed by Perceptive Advisors.
- Gores Holdings VI, the sixth blank check company from The Gores Group, now says it plans to raise $525 million in an upsized offering.
- Ajax I, a blank check company established by Och-Ziff’s Daniel Och and investor Glenn Fuhrman, raised $750 million.
F+FS
- Aristagora VC, a seed stage fund, says it raised $60 million for its first fund.
- Camber Creek, a venture firm in the real estate tech space, raised $155 million for its third fund.
- PayPal says it will invest $50 million in eight early-stage, Black- and Latinx-led venture capital funds: Chingona Ventures; Fearless Fund; Harlem Capital; Precursor Ventures; Slauson & Co; VamosVentures; Zeal Capital Partners; and one additional fund.
- TVM Capital Life Science, a Munich, Germany- and Montreal, Canada-based life sciences venture capital firm, closed its latest fund at $478 million.
PEOPLE
- Pantheon Ventures hired Matt Cashion as a partner.
- Glasswing Ventures added Carol Meyers as a venture partner.
- Concord Health Partners promoted Timothy Leahy to partner.


fortune--2020-10-28--Voters are worried about violence and safety at the polls

Gary Kauffman says he does not scare easily. So when men waving President Donald Trump flags drive by his house in downtown Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, he stands on his front steps and waves a banner for Democrats Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
“Sometimes I yell at them. They yell back at me,” says Kauffman, 54.
Still, Kauffman is keeping a closer eye on who they are and what they’re carrying as Election Day approaches. Tension has been rising in his town, known best as hallowed ground of the Civil War’s bloodiest battle. Recently, it’s become a hot spot of angry confrontations between Trump supporters and liberal protesters. Kauffman has seen some of the Trump supporters carrying weapons.
“If there’s guns, I’m a bit more cautious,” he said on Monday.
Americans aren’t accustomed to worrying about violence or safety ahead of an election. It’s a luxury afforded by years of largely peaceful voting, a recent history of fairly orderly displays of democracy. But after months filled with disease, disruption and unrest, Americans are worried that Election Day could become a flashpoint.
With Election Day next week, voters can point to plenty of evidence behind the anxiety. More than 226,000 people have died of the coronavirus in the United States, and cases are spiking across the country. A summer of protests of racial injustice and sometimes violent confrontations has left many on edge. Gun sales have broken records. Trump has called on supporters to monitor voting and has refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power or to explicitly condemn a white supremacist group.
There was the alleged plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and another spate of violent protest this week over a police shooting of a Black man in Philadelphia.
“Human beings don’t do well with uncertainty, and there’s been a lot of uncertainty this year,” said Mara Suttmann-Lea, an assistant professor of government at Connecticut College conducting research on voting. ”Absolutely I’m seeing heightened levels of anxiety … and it’s a more general, existential anxiety — ‘What is the state of our democracy?’”
Those worries have shown up in polling. About 7 in 10 voters say they are anxious about the election, according to an AP-NORC poll this month. Biden supporters were more likely to say so than Trump supporters — 72% to 61%.
For some, the worries are a vague sense of looming trouble that could take many forms — conflict at a polling place, protest over the outcome, protest over no outcome, a conflagration that splits Americans over now-familiar divisions.
“You can feel it in the energy,” particularly on social media, says Cincinnati voter Josh Holsten Sr., 42. “There are just a lot of extra tensions that don’t necessarily need to be there.”
Holsten says he is voting for Trump but thinks neither the president nor Biden is doing enough to calm people down. The car salesman has even stocked up on food, water and bulletproof vests for his family — in case the election sparks something bad.
Law enforcement and election officials are preparing, too. FBI and local officials in several states have been conducting drills and setting up command centers to respond to election-related unrest.
Election officials are training poll workers on how to de-escalate conflict and ensuring they’re prepped on the rules about poll monitoring, voter intimidation and harassment.
“The procedures have always been there. We’ve just never had to use them,” said Ellen Sorensen, an elections judge in Naperville, Illinois, outside Chicago. “Perhaps this time we may. I don’t know.”
A group called Election Protection Arizona says it intends to train hundreds of people at the polls, including on de-escalation guidance in case of confrontations.
The Rev. Joan Van Becelaere, executive director of Unitarian Universalist Justice Ohio and part of an effort to keep the peace, said the virus has fueled fear and division between Trump supporters and others.
The groups, she said, are “extreme places of tension that we really don’t want to meet at these polls.”
Millions of Americans are voting despite the worries. More than 67 million people have already voted in the U.S., and more than 23 million of those cast their ballots in person.
A poll in August by the Pew Research Center suggests that more Americans see the stakes as higher than usual in the 2020 presidential election. Twenty years ago, just half of voters said it really mattered who won. As of August, 83% express this view.
For some, that sense of urgency, combined with fierce partisanship and anger, feels like a recipe for conflict.
“November’s going to be scary because both sides aren’t going to give,” said Bob Stanley, 66, a longtime Republican and Trump supporter from Johnstown, Pennsylvania.
Stanley expressed a hope shared by Republicans and Democrats: “I hope it’s going to be an overwhelming majority, or there will be trouble.”
Another Johnstown resident, Fran Jacobs, a 76-year-old Biden supporter, expressed similar concerns about whether the result would be clear, whether people would be calm and whether the world would look at the U.S. as a functional democracy.
“I’ve never been frightened for the country. I always figured we’re gonna make it. We always pull something up. And I’m really frightened this time,” she said, looking to the sky. “It’s all in your hands, I know.”


fortune--2020-10-28--Do cord cutters really want to recreate the cable bundle online? I don’t think so

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“Get ready to un-cable, everybody,” T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert says in a video announcing the carrier’s newest “Uncarrier” deal dubbed TVision.
America is pretty ready. The rate of cord-cutting has been accelerating throughout the pandemic and, depending on whose stats you use, one-quarter to one-third of households don’t pay for cable (or satellite) TV anymore.
The TVision service, which will be offered first to T-Mobile customers starting next month, is yet another cable replacement plan packaging a lot of the channels you know and making them available via the Internet. That’s not unlike Google’s YouTube TV, AT&T’s AT&T TV, DirecTV’s Sling TV, Disney’s Hulu Live TV, or the dearly departed Playstation Vue from Sony. But unlike the current offerings from most of those rivals, TVision is starting life with low prices and a bit more choice–three bundles ranging from $40 to $60 per month plus a $10 option with even more channels. The channels come wrapped in an appealing if simple app that can record shows DVR-style and run on mobile phones, tablets, or your TV via most online set-top boxes (though not Roku).
Some of the earlier rivals started with much the same approach. Remember way back in 2016 when AT&T debuted DirecTV Now with 100 cable channels for $35 a month? It quickly became various packages for up to $60, started losing customers in droves, and most recently morphed into AT&T TV starting at $60 and going up to $130 plus $8 a month extra for local sports. Hulu’s package once started at $40 but now costs $55 plus another $10 if you want DVR functionality. YouTube TV has also raised prices and now starts at $65.
The reason for the price hikes? Cable channel owners like Disney, ViacomCBS, and Fox are charging more for their programming. AT&T and Comcast got so sick of paying more that they spent billions to acquire Time Warner and NBCUniversal, respectively.
T-Mobile won’t have much control over programming prices; until it gains millions of subscribers it could eat some of those price hikes itself. T-Mobile execs were at pains to say TVision was more of an enticement to its current wireless customers than a new business opportunity. “Our strategy is not to make a ton of money in the TV space through TV profits,” chief marketing officer Matt Staneff told me yesterday. “Our strategy is to continue to use our scale and leverage to keep prices down for consumers.”
With the debut of TVision, there’s now a clear separation among the big three remaining wireless carriers. AT&T owns a lot of TV channels and content producers after buying Time Warner. T-Mobile made deals with producers (including AT&T) to create its package but doesn’t own any content. And Verizon stayed even further above the fray, simply offering YouTube TV to any of its customers looking for a cable replacement package at the usual $65 a month price.
Of course, if consumers keep moving away from cable—not just the cable cord but the whole concept of paying for bundles of channels—all three deals will look increasingly less appealing. Then it will be the carriers seeking to cut the cord, an easy move for T-Mobile and Verizon but a $109 billion entanglement for AT&T.
Aaron Pressman
@ampressman
aaron.pressman@fortune.com
NEWSWORTHY
Admittedly I did it subliminally. With antitrust regulators going after Google in part for its huge payments to Apple, Apple has quietly ramped up its own search activities, the Financial Times reports. Some search results in iOS 14 are provided by Apple instead of Google and sightings of the company's indexing web crawler, Applebot, have been on the upswing. Speaking of antitrust, the Justice Department is taking a hard look at Visa's $5 billion purchase of financial app plumbing provider Plaid, the Wall Street Journal reports. The probe was revealed when the DOJ went to court on Tuesday to force consultants at Bain & Co to comply with a subpoena for documents related to the deal.
Keep your hands off of my stack. Some companies are saying workers can go remote and never return to the office—but with lower pay if they move to cheaper locales. Reddit says it will grant the same flexibility but won't cut salaries. Huzzah!
Kojak with a Kodak. The strategy at Alphabet's Waymo self-driving unit has been to emphasize software and partner with others for the vehicles. On Tuesday, Waymo announced its latest deal, supplying autonomous driving capability for trucks that will be built by Daimler.
Stellar bits. New details have leaked about pricing for Elon Musk's satellite Internet service. Emails sent to potential customers for the initial Starlink service, dubbed the "Better Than Nothing" beta, promised download speeds of 50 to 150 Megabits per second for $99 per month (plus $500 for purchase of a required antenna and router).
Putting my life on my brink. In a nightmare scenario right out of Black Mirror, hackers stole personal patient records from a national chain of psychotherapy clinics in Finland and then sought to blackmail the patients. Records from about 300 patients of the Vastaamo chain have already appeared on the dark web.
Keep the champagne on ice. On Wall Street, Microsoft slightly disappointed with its forecast for the fourth quarter after reporting sales grew 12% to $37.2 billion last quarter. Its stock, up 35% this year, was down 2% in pre-market trading on Wednesday. It may have a lot further to fall, if hedge fund manager David Einhorn's view is correct. Tech stocks were in an "enormous" bubble that "has already popped" in recent weeks.
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
With social networks trying to avoid a repeat of 2016's spread of election misinformation, Twitter's general counsel, Vijaya Gadde, has been rising in influence. Politico's Nancy Scola has a long profile of the tech lawyer who's been advising CEO Jack Dorsey for almost a decade, including appearing with him on Joe Rogan's podcast last year.
In some ways, Gadde has been preparing for that kind of faceoff her whole life. Early on, says Gadde, she realized there were some ugly things about the world. Born in India and moving to Beaufort, Texas, when she was 2 years old, she recalls learning later that her out-of-work chemical-engineer father was advised by a boss to get permission from a local Ku Klux Klan leader to go door to door collecting insurance premiums. “My father literally went to the Grand Dragon’s house and had tea with him,” she has said, and learning that later, she told me, “shocked and terrified” her. Similarly formative, she says, was visiting the small village in India in which her father grew up, and seeing the treatment of women and other marginalized people: “It’s a terrible thing to feel like you don’t have choice, or a voice.”
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
The COVID vaccine timeline: Where the candidates are now—and what’s still to come By Sy Mukherjee
International air travel might not recover before 2024, Raytheon CEO warns By Maria Aspan
Pfizer’s high-tech plan to track every dose of its experimental COVID vaccine By Sy Mukherjee
No, offices aren’t going away—but they won’t be the same By Jeff John Roberts
Bitcoin can’t help the unbanked, Mastercard CEO says By Aaron Pressman
Contactless payments and e-commerce got a big boost from the pandemic, says Visa’s Europe CEO By David Meyer
Why hasn’t Lyft moved into food delivery? By Lucinda Shen
(Some of these stories require a subscription to access. Thank you for supporting our journalism.)
BEFORE YOU GO
With exactly one week left of the 2020 presidential campaign, and having already placed my vote, I must admit I'm sharply curbing my intake of political news. We'll hopefully know the outcome soon enough. Whatever happens next, we will have the benefit of a returning sage: Jon Stewart. The longtime host of Comedy Central's Daily Show has been off the air for five years. Now comes news that Stewart will start a new series focusing on current events to run on Apple TV+ next year. Can't wait.


fortune--2020-10-28--Uber’s former CTO is mapping out growth and delivery routes in his new gig

Thuan Pham, who survived Uber’s tumult in 2017 only to resign as the chief technology officer at the start of the pandemic, has found the next company he hopes to help scale up—in South Korea. In the middle of a pandemic.
Pham, who joined as Uber’s CTO when the company was valued at $3.5 billion, was named CTO of Coupang, the dominant online retailer in South Korea often compared to Amazon. Demand for the SoftBank-backed business’s services has soared amid stay-at-home orders during the pandemic.
As Coupang CEO Bom Kim sought to scale his business over the summer, Pham, previously considering an early retirement following his stint at Uber, was introduced by a mutual acquaintance, making their first meeting over video chat. They hit it off. A few months later, Pham was on a plane flying from San Francisco to Seoul and preparing to onboard as the company’s CTO in an experience he won’t forget anytime soon: The first two weeks on the job were spent at a government-mandated quarantine facility earlier this fall. And while Pham tells Fortune he was served three square meals a day—protein and all—the only hot food he received was in the form of ramen sent in by Coupang. It would be the highlight of his day, he says with a laugh.
Few perhaps are willing to make international trips in the middle of the pandemic. But the newly reminted executive says he was seduced by the thought of building what he believes could be yet another massive company.
“Amazon is a trillion-dollar company,” Pham says of Coupang. “That is part of the aspiration.”
Certainly Coupang, though much smaller than Amazon with its $9 billion last-known valuation from private market investors, has made moves to expand in Amazon’s direction. As Amazon has entered video streaming with Amazon Prime, Coupang, too, is making inroads after acquiring assets of Hooq Digital, a Southeast Asian video-streaming service, earlier this year. The company also launched same-day grocery delivery in late April.
Pham says he was impressed in particular by the convenience of Coupang’s delivery network: Coupang users can order as late as midnight and receive goods by 7 a.m. the next day.
Although Uber and Coupang operate in different businesses, Pham says he sees ways to carry over his experience to Coupang. Uber’s and Lyft’s prices, for instance, shift in real time based on demand. In Coupang’s grocery delivery business, Pham sees an opportunity to dynamically adjust prices based on demand and the freshness of the goods. And when it comes to actually delivering goods to homes, Pham plans to use lessons he’s learned from Uber’s routing software to efficiently map out a pathway for delivery drivers.
“I did the night delivery myself and took deliveries to the homes,” Pham said of his onboarding experience after being released from quarantine. “While riding and doing the deliveries to figure out where tech could apply, one major area was routing…a lot of packages are in this truck and are going to the same neighborhood. So how do you pre-route packages that might be going to the third floor and the sixth floor…and how do you use all kinds of technology to make a delivery person’s life easier?”
A self-described “builder,” Pham says he prefers to scale companies rather than run one as a CEO. But as Uber grew up and into public markets, Pham says the job felt “more like running a team than new innovation.” The ride-hailing company also made calls Pham disagreed with: Early on, the company decided to stick with its self-driving efforts rather than partner with other autonomous developers and went on an acquisition streak following the appointment of CEO Dara Khosrowshahi. By late April, as Uber reeled from the impact of the coronavirus, Pham had handed in his resignation. Uber declined to comment.
Pham has experienced corporate turmoil on a level few others can lay claim to: Hired by former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick some seven years ago, Pham had a front-row seat as Uber was accused of sexism by former software engineer Susan Fowler in 2017, an explosive case that eventually led to the ouster of Kalanick himself. And while Pham was also referenced in Fowler’s accusations, an internal investigation cleared him.
Still, Pham expects to make San Francisco his home base. Next week, Pham expects to be back and working for Coupang stateside in a schedule that diverges from the typical nine-to-five: He plans to start his day at 4 p.m. PT, and close the day at 2 a.m. PT to match the schedule in Asia. As coronavirus restrictions lift, Pham says he also expects to travel more frequently between the two nations.
While Coupang was founded a year after Uber in 2010, Pham’s move comes at a time when Coupang is rumored to be preparing for an IPO as soon as 2021.


fortune--2020-10-28--The best smartwatches of 2020

The best smartwatches of 2020

Over the past decade, smartwatches have racked up big sales, mostly for their health and fitness tracking. They log how many miles you’ve run and monitor your resting heart rate, a not-so trivial feature considering that a rise in resting heart rate may be a warning sign of COVID-19 infection.
This year’s smartwatch models add to their usefulness, although the upgrades they come with are more incremental than big breakthroughs. And for more fashion-conscious wearers, there are more colors of cases and styles of bands than ever.
Here are some of the best smartwatches available in time for the holiday season:
For Apple fans
Apple’s latest smartwatch, the Series 6, may not be the most appealing to traditional watch wearers, with its squared off screen and lack of visible lugs on the band. But to everyone else, the design is still a sharp-looking accessory that arguably offers the best lineup of features that you’ll actually use.
Unlike its predecessor, the Series 6 comes with a blood-oxygen sensor, built-in sleep tracking, and some new colors. Otherwise, it’s largely the same as last year’s model.
Still, the Series 6 has among the sharpest and brightest screens of any smartwatch, a vast array of watch bands to choose from, and the most robust app ecosystem by far. Even in some places where the Series 6 lacks features out of the box, you can add an app to fill the gap. Need a better golfing app or more detailed sleep tracking? There’s a choice of apps for that.
The Series 6 also has the full-color always-on display that Apple introduced last year on the Series 5. That’s a killer feature that makes it easier to quickly check the time, the weather, or other small bits of information.
Now for some downsides: Battery life on all Apple models is only a day or two, versus rivals that last for four or five days, so frequent charging is necessary.
Also, keep in mind that Apple limits how smartwatches from other manufacturers interact with iPhones. So some important features, like being able to respond to messages and alerts on the watch, don’t work.
And if you don’t have an iPhone, don’t even bother buying an Apple Watch. It doesn’t connect to Android phones.
For fitness fanatics
Fitbit was the original fitness-tracking sensation a decade ago when the device was just a plain plastic band. Since then, Fitbit has expanded into smartwatches, and its latest model, the $230 Versa 3, has a lot going for it.
The Versa 3 matches many of the features in Apple Watch Series 6, such as heart-rate tracking, blood-oxygen sensors, sleep tracking, menstrual-cycle tracking, and built-in GPS. It’s also waterproof and has its own wireless payments system, matching Apple Pay.
What sets the Versa 3 apart from Apple is that it includes Amazon’s dependable Alexa voice assistant instead of less-than-dependable Siri. It also offers six days of battery life and lets users select from hundreds of third-party watch faces. Many exercisers also prefer how Fitbit’s app more clearly displays workout statistics.
Still, critics note that Fitbit’s app ecosystem has far fewer watch apps than Apple’s. Meanwhile, some stats and A.I.-driven recommendations require a $10 per month Fitbit Premium subscription, and there’s no cellular version of the watch that can connect without being paired with a phone.
An alternative for Android users
While the Fitbit Versa 3 is a worthy choice for Android phone users, its square design and lack of a few key options, like cellular connectivity, may be a turn off for some consumers.
A more expensive alternative is the $400 Samsung Galaxy Watch3. The big sales pitch for this bulkier, round watch is a rotating bezel that can be used to spin through options and menus in Samsung’s Tizen software, instead of just relying on side buttons and taps on the screen for controls like rival devices.
Like the Apple Watch and the Versa 3, Samsung’s watch has a color always-on screen (though some reviewers have dinged it for reducing the watch’s claimed two-day battery life).
It also matches rivals with GPS, heart-rate tracking, sleep tracking, and wireless payments. The selection of apps is decent, and there are models with cellular connectivity. Separating itself from the Apple Watch, the Galaxy Watch3 offers thousands of third-party watch faces and includes Samsung’s Bixby voice assistant. Bixby may not be at the level of Alexa or Google’s assistant, but it’s been improving over the past few years. The Galaxy watch’s blood pressure measuring app is available in most countries, but isn’t offered in the U.S.
For big budget traditionalists
Some shoppers may have a bigger budget or want a smartwatch that’s more like a traditional watch. Garmin’s line of sporty smartwatches are mostly round, which is a good start, and the company ups the ante in looks and premium materials with its high-end MARQ collection.
Each of the seven watches in the group, which cost from $1,500 to $2,500, is made with titanium and filled with customized functions and apps to meet the needs of a specific activity.
The “driver” version, for example, includes detailed maps of 250 famous car racetracks and offers sophisticated lap timing readouts. The golfing version is programmed with 41,000 courses around the world and has a virtual caddy app that suggests which club to use based on current conditions. There are also a variety of specialized map and tracking apps to aid the user’s putting and driving. I have found the screen less bright than that of rival watches, however, which is a pretty serious failing on such an expensive smartwatch.
The MARQ collection watches also have typical features of rivals like heart-rate monitoring, wireless payments, and music apps. Having a particularly bountiful year? Garmin sells five of the watches in the collection as a limited-edition boxed set for $10,000.


fortune--2020-10-28--The pandemic is creating an ambition gap among working women

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Good morning, Broadsheet readers! AMD makes a major acquisition, the Justice Department won’t represent Trump against E. Jean Carroll, and the pandemic may be creating an ambition gap. Have a reflective Wednesday.
– Lose some, win some. We have some good news and some bad news from the world of professional women this morning.
Let’s start by ripping off the bad news band-aid. We know the fallout from the pandemic is wreaking havoc on women and their careers. Now, a steady drumbeat of research is emerging to help us take stock of the damage. The latest is a new study from Deloitte that debuted this morning. It finds that a full 70% of the women who say the pandemic has negatively impacted their lives (I would love to meet the ones who said it hasn’t!) are particularly concerned about their ability to continue to progress at work.
For the vast majority of the nearly 400 women who responded to Deloitte’s survey, it’s not that they don’t expect to have opportunities to advance. But as home responsibilities (chores, caregiving, remote school) mount, 60% said they’re questioning whether they want to progress, given what they believe they will need to accomplish in order to move up. One big factor: Almost half said they feel the pressure to constantly be available for work.
So, while we’re been focused—for good reason—on the women who feel that the pandemic is forcing them to choose between their jobs and their families, we should not lose sight of this additional threat: that many women will stay in the workforce but stagnate, sacrificing their ambition at the altar of COVID-19.
That was cheery! Okay, on to some more positive news. Tapestry, parent of Coach, Kate Spade, and Stuart Weitzman, has made it official with interim chief exec Joanne Crevoiserat, naming her CEO, effective immediately.
Tapestry is on the Fortune 500, but Crevoiserat’s appointment won’t change the total of female CEOs in that cohort—it stands at 37—since we include interim CEOs in our count. That said, it should be noted that the interim job is in no way a guarantee of scoring a permanent seat in the corner office, so while we don’t get to add a fresh hash mark to the tally, her achievement is progress nonetheless.
Kristen Bellstrom
kristen.bellstrom@fortune.com
@kayelbee
Today’s Broadsheet was curated by Emma Hinchliffe.
ALSO IN THE HEADLINES
- All about AOC. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is on the cover of Vanity Fair, accompanied by a definitive profile on her rise—and her future in politics. "I don’t see myself really staying where I’m at for the rest of my life," the congresswoman says of a long-term career in the House. Vanity Fair
- Chip off the block. Advanced Micro Devices, the chipmaker led by CEO Lisa Su (No. 32 on Fortune's Most Powerful Women list) announced a deal paying $35 billion in stock to acquire Xilinx. The deal would be the second most-valuable in chip-industry history. New York Times
- A no-go for Justice. A federal judge sided against the Justice Department in its highly unusual attempt to intervene on behalf of President Trump in the defamation lawsuit he faces from E. Jean Carroll, the writer who has accused him of sexual assault. Trump has denied Carroll's claims; the lawsuit at hand claims that, through those counterclaims and denials, Trump harmed her reputation. NPR
- Shining star. Kristal Hansley, the CEO of WeSolar, is the first Black woman to launch a solar energy company. With its community approach, WeSolar aims to lower energy costs for low- and mid-income families. Vogue
MOVERS AND SHAKERS: Ankhi Das resigned as public policy director for Facebook in India following a controversy over links between senior Facebook staff and India's ruling party; Das herself had been pressured by activists to resign after she shared an anti-Muslim post on her own Facebook page. Facebook denies that Das's departure is related to these incidents. The New York Times promoted Carolyn Ryan to deputy managing editor. Variety promoted Michelle Sobrino-Stearns to president and group publisher. Former HP exec and current Hewlett Packard Enterprise Company board member Ann Livermore joins the board of indoor farming company Plenty.
FROM FORTUNE GLOBAL FORUM
- Increasing access. At the Fortune Global Forum, we heard from Land O'Lakes CEO Beth Ford on one of her core issues: access to broadband in rural areas. Teachers in the communities where Land O'Lakes works with farmers have had to drive out to farms to deliver homework by hand during the coronavirus pandemic, Ford says. Fortune
- The future is cashless. The COVID-19 pandemic has sped up the shift to contactless payments and e-commerce, says Visa Europe CEO Charlotte Hogg. The results are especially clear in places like Europe where cash has, until recently, continued to dominate. Fortune
- Air innovation. AirAsia was one of the first airlines to pivot to make it through the pandemic. The regional airline is focusing, says AirAsia.com CEO Karen Chan, on serving domestic travelers and working with governments to create channels between select countries, like a recent Malaysia-Singapore travel agreement. Fortune
- Learn something new. Guardian Life Insurance board chair Deanna Mulligan and McKinsey's Liz Hilton Segel discuss the benefits of reskilling, from retraining older workers to addressing labor shortages. Fortune
ON MY RADAR
NXIVM sex-cult head Raniere gets 120 years in prison Washington Post
What counts as race discrimination? A suit against JPMorgan is a test New York Times
Rep. Ilhan Omar and Isra Hirsi on the future of politics and 2020 Teen Vogue
PARTING WORDS
"I knew I needed to know of this moment forever, the same way I needed to remember us kissing at the end of the aisle, the same way I needed to remember our tears of joy after Luna and Miles."
-Chrissy Teigen, writing about her experience of pregnancy loss


fortune--2020-10-28--Deutsche Bank’s unlikely comeback continues as the lender delivers an earnings beat and signals a bo

Deutsche Bank’s unlikely comeback continues as the lender delivers an earnings beat and signals a boost to bonuses

Deutsche Bank AG is planning bonus increases for top-performing investment bankers after posting a 47% rise in debt trading revenue and boosting its full-year forecast for the securities unit.
“A company like ours needs to be able to pay for competitive performance,” Chief Financial Officer James Von Moltke said in a Bloomberg Television interview on Wednesday. “It is sensible to be able to protect the franchise by being able to compensate our employees in line with our performance.”
Deutsche Bank and rivals are seeking to navigate a particularly difficult course through end-of-year pay discussions. The lender needs to ensure top staff remain motivated almost half way through a historic restructuring and during a trading boom, while avoiding the ire of regulators over bonuses after a year in which lenders benefited from unprecedented regulatory breaks.
The bank may keep the overall bonus pool little changed from last year’s €1.9 billion ($2.2 billion), according to people with knowledge of the matter. Lower headcount compared with a year earlier will allow it to compensate top performers, the people said, adding that the plans could still change materially because they haven’t yet been discussed with the European Central Bank.
The ECB has asked banks to exercise “extreme moderation” on bonuses while it’s unclear just how hard the pandemic will hit capital cushions. The watchdog also views the bumper performance by traders this year is largely being due to the generous stimulus provided by governments and central banks to fight the pandemic and therefore shouldn’t merit over-sized rewards for bankers, one person said.
Deutsche Bank and the ECB declined to comment.
The final decision on the bonus pool will also depend on performance in the fourth quarter and any estimated impact on the bank from the worsening pandemic situation, the people said. Deutsche Bank typically decides on bonuses in December and January and pays them in March.
Promising quarter ahead
The uncontrolled pandemic has injected huge volatility into global financial markets, setting the stage for a boom in fixed income trading that benefited Deutsche Bank and Wall Street competitors. The German lender signaled favorable trading conditions are continuing into the fourth quarter. Many banks are now grappling with the most appropriate way to reward their employees as the second wave of the pandemic takes hold.
The largest Wall Street firms have so far set aside $6 billion more for compensation and benefits this year than they did in the first nine months of 2019. But compensation ratios — the percentage of revenue banks set aside for compensation, a key measure of how they pay employees — dropped at some lenders.
UBS Group AG is overhauling its compensation structure to emphasize fixed pay and cut back on bonuses after losing bankers to rivals. It’s seeking to raise base compensation for some of its more senior employees as much as 20% while reducing variable pay, according to people with knowledge of the matter.
“We have been accruing to pay variable compensation in line with our performance,” Deutsche Bank’s Von Moltke said. “That performance has been ahead of our plans this year so as a consequence we have accrued for variable compensation that is beyond what we originally planned for the year.”


fortune--2020-10-29--Wednesday’s FAAMG-led sell-off was no blip, tech bears say

For weeks, warnings that elevated tech-stock valuations could cause a violent selloff bubbled beneath the surface. On Wednesday, they looked prescient.
U.S. stocks tumbled the most since June with rising virus cases threatening the economic recovery. More than $2 trillion has been wiped from the value of American equities this week and Wall Street’s fear gauge spiked to the highest in four months.
Big tech companies from Apple to Amazon led the rout, their shares having gotten so expensive relative to expected earnings that further price gains became hard to justify. Software giant SAP SE set off alarms on future profit when it warned revenue would suffer well into 2021. A day later, U.S. tech darlings exacerbated market volatility for the second time in two months after a summer of gains that outpaced the broader market’s advance by 10 times.
“There’s uncertainty around the coronavirus surrounding the impact of another wave of shutdowns,” Matt Maley, chief market strategist at Miller Tabak + Co., said by phone. “If one of these other tech companies talks about lockdowns affecting their earnings in 2021 the way SAP did, we’ll have a big problem.”
The S&P 500 fell 3.5% to close at the lowest in five weeks. Tech shares in the gauge sank 4.3%. Alphabet Inc. and Facebook Inc. lost more than 5%. The VIX jumped almost seven points to close above 40.
The worry over future earnings is spiking just as big tech lines up to report results. Investors punished Microsoft Corp. even though its third-quarter profit beat expectations and its forecast was mostly in line with estimates. The stock plunged more than 4%.
Up next are the other four of the market’s five biggest constituents that have a combined $5 trillion in market cap. Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Alphabet all report Thursday after the close. All are expected to show a strong third calendar quarter, but the focus will be on how they see the end of 2020 and the start of next year.
“Because tech has supported the market’s rally in 2020, the earnings of those big tech companies are going to really drive sentiment,” said Chris Gaffney, president of world markets at TIAA Bank. “The risk is that it could drive it in a negative way and add on like a snowball rolling downhill to this selloff.”
Buyers had piled into the tech giants for the safety provided by their strong balance sheets and products that cater to stay-at-home demand. They stayed with them as the economy rebounded because of their size advantage. But with the virus rampaging and Congress unlikely to shore up the economy with an aid package, speculation has mounted that tech earnings won’t be able to meet lofty expectations.
Enormous bubble
That’d be fodder for bears like David Einhorn, who called an “enormous” bubble in tech stocks and said his firm has added bearish wagers. The big top for tech stocks may have occurred on Sept. 2, according to the president of Greenlight Capital, who cited a surge in trading of call options and a growing industry concentration among signs of excessive euphoria. Since then, the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 has plunged almost 10%.
“Bubbles tend to topple under their own weight. Everybody is in,” Einhorn wrote in an Oct. 27 letter to investors. Greenlight has adjusted the portfolio of companies it’s wagering against by adding a fresh so-called bubble basket of mostly “second-tier companies and recent IPOs trading at remarkable valuations,” he added, without identifying specific stocks.
Usually earnings tend to calm the market during periods of stress. But not this time. Among S&P 500 companies that have disclosed results, 85% beat analyst estimates and are on pace for the best showing since Bloomberg began tracking the data in 1993. That’s doing little to excite buyers who have watched the index rallying as much as 60% from its March trough and valuations reaching levels not seen since the dot-com bubble.
On the contrary, traders are taking profits off the table. As a result, shares of companies in the S&P 500 reporting quarterly earnings have dropped 0.8%, on average, the next day. Tech shares have fared the worst, falling 2.7%, data compiled by Bloomberg showed.
“The stock reaction tomorrow from AMZN, FB, GOOG and AAPL will be telling as to whether tech can keep up this dramatic pace of outperformance,” said Peter Boockvar, chief investment officer at Bleakley Advisory Group, referring to the tickers of the tech giants. “A regime change is at hand as valuations begin to contract.”
Tech firms have yet to prove that the boost in businesses during the pandemic is not fleeting. Microsoft gave a second-quarter forecast for revenue in some divisions that fell short of the highest analysts’ projections. Earlier this month, Intel Corp. reported a surprise drop in sales of chips for data centers, potentially signaling a drop-off in demand for expansion of the server farms that underpin cloud-computing services. Netflix Inc. missed Wall Street’s estimates for subscribers, renewing doubts about its ability to maintain growth as pandemic lockdowns go away and competition intensifies.
“There is no question that these companies have great business models, have executed well and stand to benefit from how the economy is reshaping itself, but there are questions about if they have gone too fast, too far,” Peter Tchir, head of macro strategy at Academy Securities. “Parabolic valuation increases can only be justified by extremely strong guidance. A lot of great companies have seen incredible gains in their stock prices.”


fortune--2020-10-29--China’s new five year economic plan stresses ‘sustainable’ growth—and self-reliance in the tech sect

China’s new five year economic plan stresses ‘sustainable’ growth—and self-reliance in the tech sector

China unveiled the first glimpses of its economic plans for the next five years, promising to build the nation into a technological powerhouse as it emphasized quality growth over speed.
Initial details released by the Communist Party’s Central Committee Thursday stressed the need for sustainable growth and also pledged to develop a robust domestic market. The communique released by state media following a four-day closed-door meeting didn’t specify the pace of growth policy makers would target.
The statement elevated China’s self-reliance in technology into a national strategic pillar, a move signaled by officials from President Xi Jinping down in the lead up to the meeting. Central to that endeavor is self-reliance in chips, the building blocks for innovations from artificial intelligence to fifth-generation networking and autonomous vehicles.
Beijing’s efforts are gaining urgency as the U.S. seeks to contain the rise of its geopolitical rival. The U.S. has pressured allies to shun equipment from Huawei Technologies Co., barred dozens of China’s largest tech companies from buying American parts, and even slapped bans on ByteDance Ltd.’s TikTok and Tencent Holdings Ltd.’s WeChat.
Unlike the last five-year plan, which sought to achieve “medium-to-high growth” in order to build a “moderately prosperous society,” this plenum had been expected to focus on the quality rather than the pace of growth. In Thursday’s statement, officials pledged to stick to a strategy of boosting domestic demand and opening up the economy over the next five years.
Even though the plan doesn’t mention a specific rate of growth for gross domestic product, analysts said the government remains ambitious in its outlook.
“The leadership still expects the size of the economy, household income as well as GDP per capita to reach a ‘new milestone’ by 2035,” said Raymond Yeung, chief greater China economist at Australia and New Zealand Banking Group. “China did not abandon GDP targeting, it’s just expressed in a more subtle way.”
While the strategy on “dual circulation” was mentioned twice in the communique, there wasn’t any specific explanation or details of what it entails. The nation needs to “smooth the domestic circulation, facilitate dual circulation at home and abroad, comprehensively promote consumption and expand room for investment,” according to the statement.
–With assistance from Edwin Chan, Alfred Cang, Dan Murtaugh and Jing Li.


fortune--2020-10-29--Trump’s trade deal with China is coming up short. Do voters care?

This is the web version of Eastworld, Fortune’s newsletter focused on business and technology in Asia. Subscribe here to get future editions in your inbox.
“Make sure I win.”
That was U.S. President Donald Trump’s plea to Chinese President Xi Jinping at a June 2018 dinner in Osaka, Japan, according to former U.S. national security adviser John Bolton.
The dinner, held on the sidelines of a Group of 20 conference, came days after the White House announced a list targeting more than a thousand Chinese products for 25% import tariffs. Trump, according to Bolton’s tell-all memoir, The Room Where It Happened, implored Xi to ramp up Chinese purchases of American agricultural products so that Trump could claim political credit in crucial midwestern swing states—and clinch his re-election.
“I probably will win anyway, so don’t hurt my farms… Buy a lot of soybeans and wheat and make sure we win,” Trump allegedly told Xi.
Trump’s Justice Department deemed Bolton’s recollection of that exchange so damning that it filed a federal lawsuit demanding the book not be released unless Trump’s exact words were removed. (The publisher complied, but unredacted pages of Bolton’s original manuscript were leaked to Vanity Fair.)
Trump and Xi agreed in Osaka to restart trade negotiations, and in January of this year signed a ‘Phase One’ agreement committing China to increase purchases of American goods and services by $200 billion over the next two years. But now, with the election just days away, Trump’s nakedly political appeal to Xi seems almost irrelevant.
As we’ve noted previously in Eastworld, China is buying more farm products from the U.S. each month but at a pace far short of what’s necessary to reach the agreement’s year-end targets. China’s purchases of manufactured products, which account for about 70% of the deal, are even further behind.
America’s trade deficit in goods with China was $345 billion in 2019, only $2 billion less than in 2016 when Trump was elected.
Tariffs remain in place on hundreds of billions of dollars worth of goods traded between the world’s two largest economies. And, as Grady noted earlier this week, the tariffs don’t work the way Trump says they do; they’re not paid by the Chinese government or by Chinese exporters but by U.S. importers and, indirectly, by American consumers. American taxpayers, not China, are paying for federal farm subsidies aimed at offsetting the effects of the trade war, and those subsidies have mostly benefited large, wealthy farms and corporations.
Support for Trump remains high among America’s rural voters. A poll by Farm Futures found 75% of farmers surveyed in July planned to vote for Trump, compared with 73% ahead of the 2016 election. But China and trade policy aren’t hot-button issues among general voters in this year’s race, nor do they seem likely to play a decisive role in determining the outcome of next week’s vote in the battleground states Trump needs to prevail.
More Eastworld news below.
Clay Chandler
clay.chandler@fortune.com
This edition of Eastworld was curated and produced by Grady McGregor. Reach him at grady.mcgregor@fortune.com.
Eastworld news
A news epoch-alypse
The Epoch Times was long a small, low-budget New York newspaper critical of the Chinese Communist Party. It was founded John Tang, a member of the spiritual movement Falun Gong, which China has banned domestically and describes as a cult. In 2016, the publication took on a two-pronged strategy to grow its reach: back Trump and focus on Facebook. Since then, The Epoch Times has grown its following by tens of millions and has become a mainstay in the U.S.’s conservative media eco-system. The newspaper maintains an aggressive anti-China editorial line, but has also begun promoting right-wing, QAnon conspiracy theories and other disinformation. New York Times
Why so Cirrus?
In the wake of the global financial crisis, the Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC), a state-run aviation giant with ties to China’s military, went on a buying spree in the U.S. The company spent over $3 billion purchasing aviation, engineering, and automotive companies in the U.S. and Europe. Such deals, like one for the Minnesotan aircraft producer Cirrus, would likely be impossible now amid heightening U.S.-China tensions and regulators are re-examining whether AVIC may pose a national security threat to the U.S. The Wire China
No edit button
In December 2019, Arsenal soccer star Mesut Özil publicly condemned China’s alleged human rights abuses in Xinjiang. And just as Daryl Morey had jeopardized the NBA’s relationship with China months before, Özil's tweet immediately threw the relationship between the Premier League, one of the world’s largest soccer leagues, and China into a tailspin as Mainland broadcast partners dropped some of the English league’s games. Now, Özil claims that his outspokenness on China has effectively side-lined him at Arsenal, which the club denies, even as more sports leagues globally are becoming more unafraid in taking political stances. New York Times
The long haul
This week, China’s top leaders sketched out a plan for the country’s long-term future, drawing up China’s next five-year plan and a “vision” for goals to reach by 2035. The full details are not yet public, but Chinese state media have hinted that China will focus on pivoting away from the country’s breakneck focus on GDP growth, cutting carbon emissions, and increasing self-reliance in technology and science sectors. CNN
A greener Asia
South Korea and Japan have now followed in China’s footsteps and set concrete goals of achieving carbon neutrality. South Korea and Japan both announced that they would achieve net zero emissions by 2050 this week, setting a deadline is ten years earlier than Chinese President Xi Jinping's. The trend means three of Asia’s largest economies are now committed to reducing their climate footprint, raising hopes for a greener future on the continent. Financial Times
Coronavirus by country
Indonesia
In the last few months, Indonesia has made deals with Chinese vaccine makers Sinovac and Sinopharm and British pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca to supply hundreds of millions of doses to Indonesians if the vaccines prove successful. But now, Indonesian President Joko Widodo says that vaccine makers may need to clear an additional regulatory hurdle—prove that their vaccine is halal, or acceptable by Islamic standards. The risk of local Islamic authorities declaring a vaccine as haram, or forbidden, is very real. In 2018, the country’s most powerful Islamic council declared that a measles vaccine was haram since it contained traces of pork, which led to falling vaccination rates among Indonesian children. If or how vaccine makers can prove that a vaccine is halal remains an open question, but the Indonesian pharmaceutical company PT Bio Pharma is reportedly already working with Sinovac to ensure that a potential vaccine would adhere to Islamic standards. ASEAN Today
Markets and movers
Tencent – On Monday, a U.S. appeals court rejected the Trump administration’s request to enforce its ban on WeChat, the social messaging app owned by Chinese tech giant Tencent. WeChat will temporarily remain on app stores in the U.S. until a final ruling is made on the lawfulness of Trump’s WeChat ban. Bloomberg
Sinopec – On Wednesday, the Chinese oil major reported its highest quarterly profit since 2003, posting net income of nearly $7 billion. After recording losses in the first two quarters of 2020, Sinoopec has bounced back due to recovering oil demand in China and a booming new refining business. Reuters
Ant Group – The fintech giant, partly owned by China’s Alibaba, will raise at least $34.4 billion as its set to debut in a dual-IPO in Shanghai and Hong Kong on Nov. 5. Ant Group stopped collecting orders from institutional buyers a day ahead of schedule amid strong demand from investors. Wall Street Journal
PT Tokopedia – Google and Temasek Holdings, Singapore’s state investment firm, will invest roughly $350 million in Tokopedia, an Indonesian e-commerce startup backed by Softbank. Deal Street Asia
New Oriental – The Chinese tutoring and education firm is looking to raise nearly $12 billion in a secondary Hong Kong listing, following a trend of U.S.-listed Chinese companies debuting in Hong Kong amid worsening relations between Washington and Beijing. Bloomberg
Final figure
112
Residents in the city of Melbourne, Australia emerged from their homes this week after a 112-day stay-at-home order, one of the longest and most restrictive COVID-19 lockdown measures in the world. Melbourne's experience offers harsh lessons on the costs of containing COVID-19, as Victoria state, where Melbourne is located, lost an estimated $71 million in economic activities and 1,200 jobs for each day of the lockdown period. Now, even as cases remain low and restrictions loosen, businesses are not yet in the clear, as capacity restrictions and other social-distancing measures make it difficult for the city to bounce back. Fortune