6 Most Important Things in Business Today

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Mar 13, 3:28PM EDT · Published Aug 24, 1:21AM EDT

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Heads of large companies warned the president on his immigration stance. According to Reuters:

A group of chief executive officers at the largest U.S. companies expressed serious concern about the Trump administration’s immigration policy and said the rules increase uncertainty and undermine economic growth.

In the letter signed by 59 CEOs including Tim Cook of Apple Inc, JPMorgan Chase & Co’s Jamie Dimon and Doug Parker of American Airlines, the executives said that many of their employees were now facing uncertainty due to issues such as ‘inconsistent immigration decisions’ that would likely curtail work permits for spouses of skilled immigrants.

There was a fire at a Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ: TSLA) factory. According to The Wall Street Journal:

A fire on the grounds of Tesla Inc.’s car factory in California on Thursday burned a scrap pile and sent plumes of smoke into the sky but was extinguished before it could cause major damage.

Tesla said the fire wasn’t near the outdoor tent it erected this year to expand vehicle assembly as it raced to increase output of its Model 3 sedan, and the company said the fire won’t affect production.

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Gap Inc. (NYSE: GPS) sales dropped primarily because of trouble at its namesake brand. According to The Wall Street Journal:

Gap Inc.’s struggles to revive its flagship brand continued in the latest quarter as declining sales muted gains at the retailer’s other units.

Comparable sales at the company’s flagship brand declined 5% in the most recent quarter from a year earlier, sending shares down 6.6% in after-hours trading.

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) is hiring former Tesla workers. According to CNBC:

Apple has attracted scores of employees away from Tesla since late 2017, including manufacturing, security and software engineers, and, more recently, supply chain experts, according to several current and former Tesla employees and LinkedIn data.

This Tesla talent is not only going to Apple’s stealthy vehicle initiative, Project Titan. Apple also generally needs software, display, optics and battery-tech talent for its other products

The United States and China are still fighting over tariffs as some of them begin. According to Reuters:

U.S. and Chinese officials ended two days of talks on Thursday with no major breakthrough as their trade war escalated with activation of another round of dueling tariffs on $16 billion worth of each country’s goods.

“We concluded two days of discussions with counterparts from China and exchanged views on how to achieve fairness, balance, and reciprocity in the economic relationship,” White House spokeswoman Lindsay Walters said in a brief emailed statement.

The head of Apple is about to make over $100 million. According to CNNMoney:

Tim Cook is about to get even richer.

The Apple CEO is set to collect about $120 million in stock tied to the company’s performance

Cook was given a restricted stock award when he took over for Steve Jobs in 2011. On Friday, he will earn 560,000 shares of Apple. It’s not clear whether he plans to cash out those shares.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.