The daily business briefing: February 25, 2019

(Image credit: GREG BAKER/AFP/Getty Images)

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1. Trump delays higher tariffs on Chinese imports
2. China stocks rise after Trump delays higher tariffs
3. 3 killed in Amazon Prime Air cargo plane crash
4. Huawei unveils foldable smartphone 4 days after Samsung
5. GE selling biopharma business to Danaher for $21.4 billion

published 25 February 2019

1. Trump delays higher tariffs on Chinese imports

President Trump announced via Twitter on Sunday that he would delay hikes on Chinese import tariffs that were scheduled to start March 1. Trump said negotiators from the world's two biggest economies were making "substantial progress" on a host of issues, including "on important structural issues including intellectual property protection." He said delaying the higher levies would provide time to hammer out a deal that he and Chinese President Xi Jinping could finalize in a summit at Mar-a-Lago, Trump's Palm Beach, Florida, club. The new tariffs had been scheduled to hit at the end of a three-month truce Trump and Xi agreed to in December. The trade war has rattled financial markets and dragged down projections for global economic growth.

Chinese stocks soared on Monday in a sign of relief after President Trump announced via Twitter that he would delay higher tariffs on Chinese imports that had been scheduled to take effect at the beginning of March. The Shanghai composite rocketed up by 5.6 percent, officially returning to bull market territory. "In general it's perceived as very positive," said Wang Huiyao, an adviser to the Chinese government and president of the Center for China and Globalization, a Beijing-based think tank. "If people think this is good for the country, the government can rally support (and be) more conciliatory, more cooperative." U.S. stock index futures also rose, with those of the Dow Jones Industrial Average gaining 0.6 percent and the S&P 500 rising 0.4 percent.

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An Amazon Prime Air cargo plane operated by Atlas Air crashed into a swampy area about 30 miles from George Bush International Airport, killing three people, Atlas Air said Sunday. The Saturday crash occurred as the plane was nearing its destination on a flight from Miami. "It is with great sadness that Atlas Air Worldwide has confirmed that the three people on board ... did not survive the accident," the company said in a Sunday afternoon statement. Atlas CEO Bill Flynn said the company was setting up assistance programs for relatives of the people who were killed. Federal and local authorities are searching for the plane's flight recorders.

Chinese tech giant Huawei on Sunday unveiled a foldable smartphone, the Mate X, at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Huawei CEO Richard Yu showed off the device four days after rival Samsung revealed its Galaxy Fold. The Mate X has a 6.6-inch screen that expands to 8 inches when it's unfolded, making it a little bigger than Samsung's phone, which is 4.6 inches folded up and 7.3 inches unfolded. Yu also said that an innovative hinge in the Mate X makes it flat when folded, with no gap between its different screens. The Mate X will be priced about 15 percent higher than the roughly $2,000 Fold. It's due out in mid-2019, although it probably won't be available initially in the U.S.

General Electric shares surged by about 11 percent in pre-market trading on Monday after the company announced that Danaher would buy its biopharmaceutical business in a $21.4 billion deal. Danaher's stock rose by 2.2 percent. Danaher will pay $21 billion in cash and take on GE's pension liabilities, the companies said. Danaher will combine the two companies' life sciences units as a standalone business. The sale of the GE Biopharma unit was the latest in a series of GE efforts to shed pieces of itself after its setbacks during the financial crisis. "We are executing on our strategy by taking thoughtful and deliberate action to reduce leverage and strengthen our balance sheet," GE Chairman and CEO Larry Culp said.

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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.