6 Most Important Things in Business Today

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Mar 13, 3:24PM EDT · Published Nov 15, 5:08AM EST

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China has responded to American trade demands. According to Reuters:

China has delivered a written response to U.S. demands for wide-ranging trade reforms, three U.S. government sources said on Wednesday, a move that could trigger more formal negotiations to resolve a withering trade war between the world’s top economies.

U.S. President Donald Trump has imposed tariffs on $250 billion of Chinese imports to force concessions from Beijing on the list of demands that would change the terms of trade between the two countries. China has responded with import tariffs on U.S. goods.

Lockheed Martin Corp. (NYSE: LMT) signed a huge contract with the U.S. military. According to The Wall Street Journal:

Lockheed Martin Corp. has been awarded a roughly $22.7 billion contract from the U.S. Department of Defense to deliver 255 F-35 jets, a move that comes after the defense contractor was tasked with lowering the price of its planes.

The contract calls for Lockheed to deliver 106 combat jets for U.S. military use and the remaining planes for nonmilitary use and foreign military customers. Lockheed, the world’s largest defense contractor, is expected to complete the contract by March of 2023, according to the Defense Department.

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Uber’s growth has slowed. According to The Wall Street Journal:

Uber Technologies Inc. is seeing slower sales growth ahead of its planned initial public offering next year.

The ride-hailing company on Wednesday announced third-quarter revenue rose 38% from a year earlier to $2.95 billion, but that was less than the second-quarter year-over-year jump of 63%. Its loss widened to $1.07 billion from $891 million in the second quarter.

Victoria’s Secret lost its leader. According to The Wall Street Journal:

Jan Singer, CEO of Victoria’s Secret lingerie division, is departing the company amid declining sales, according to people familiar with the matter.

Ms. Singer, who has been at the company for about two years, joined from Spanx, where she served as CEO for approximately two years. Prior to that, she spent more than a decade as an executive at Nike Inc.

The bitcoin market has plunged. According to CNBC:

Amid a sell-off in the cryptocurrency markets that began Wednesday, Bitcoin’s market capitalization fell below the $100 billion mark on Thursday — a level not seen since October 2017.

As of 3:26 p.m. HK/SIN (2:26 a.m. ET Thursday), the market cap of Bitcoin stood at $98,194,458,586, according to Coinmarketcap.com.

U.S. states spent $2 trillion last year. According to CNBC:

U.S. state spending topped $2 trillion for the first time in fiscal 2018, with Medicaid expenditures rising the most along with a significant increase in transportation spending, according to a report released on Thursday.

Total expenditures grew an estimated 4.8 percent compared to 3.8 percent in fiscal 2017, the National Association of State Budget Officers’ (NASBO) annual state expenditure report said.

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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.