The daily business briefing: September 24, 2018

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1. U.S. stock futures under pressure as new tariffs take effect
2. Porsche becomes first German automaker to drop diesel
3. OPEC, Russia resist pressure to increase oil output
4. Sky shares jump after Comcast wins auction
5. Pandora shares jump on news of purchase by SiriusXM

published 24 September 2018

1. U.S. stock futures under pressure as new tariffs take effect

U.S. stock-index futures edged down early Monday as the latest tariffs in President Trump's trade war with China took effect. Futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500 fell by just over 0.1 percent, and those for the Nasdaq-100 dropped by 0.3 percent. The Trump administration is targeting $200 billion of Chinese imports with a 10 percent levy slated to rise to 25 percent by the end of the year. China has responded with 10 percent taxes on $60 billion worth of U.S. goods, including liquefied natural gas, coffee, and edible oil, and 5 percent taxes on frozen vegetables, cocoa powder, and chemical products. China dashed hopes of a quick easing of tensions, saying it would not resume trade talks with the U.S. until Trump stopped threatening further tariffs.

German sports car maker Porsche announced Sunday that it would stop making diesel cars to focus on vehicles with gas-powered engines, along with electrics and hybrids. It is the first German automaker to make the move. Porsche CEO Oliver Blume said the company was "not demonizing diesel" in the wake of the diesel-emissions cheating scandal that has left its parent company, Volkswagen, battered since 2015. "It is and will remain an important propulsion technology," Blume said. He added that even though diesel has always "played a secondary role" for Porsche since gasoline engines are better-suited to its high-performance cars, "Porsche's image has suffered" due to the backlash from the scandal, so it made sense for Porsche to go "diesel-free."

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Members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries met Sunday in Algiers but made no decision on whether to further increase oil production. President Trump has been calling for oil producers to crank up output in order to lower prices. OPEC officials, along with counterparts from non-member oil producers including Russia, said in a statement that they were satisfied "regarding the current oil market outlook, with an overall healthy balance between supply and demand." Prices have risen recently thanks to a drop in supply from Iran due to new sanctions by the Trump administration.

Sky shares soared on Monday, rising by 9 percent to nearly match the per-share price Comcast bid to beat out 21st Century Fox in the fight to buy Europe's biggest pay-TV company. Comcast, the U.S. cable-TV giant, offered $40 billion for Sky over the weekend to win the auction against Rupert Murdoch's Fox and Walt Disney Co., which would have ultimately wound up with Sky had Fox come out on top of the bidding. Both companies wanted Sky to help them compete against streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon. Comcast already owns NBC and Universal.

Pandora shares jumped by 11 percent in premarket trading on Monday after subscription radio company SiriusXM said it would buy the music streaming service in a stock deal valued around $3.5 billion. The acquisition will give SiriusXM a way to expand into homes and handheld mobile devices instead of focusing on service in customers' cars. SiriusXM has 36 million subscribers in North America, compared to Pandora's 70 million monthly active users. Under the deal, Pandora investors will get 1.44 newly issued SiriusXM shares for each of their Pandora shares.

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Harold Maass is a contributing editor at The Week. He has been writing for The Week since the 2001 debut of the U.S. print edition and served as editor of TheWeek.com when it launched in 2008. Harold started his career as a newspaper reporter in South Florida and Haiti. He has previously worked for a variety of news outlets, including The Miami Herald, ABC News and Fox News, and for several years wrote a daily roundup of financial news for The Week and Yahoo Finance.