Business News at a Glance

Trump Wants to Close Trade Gap, but Leaves Export Agency in Limbo

The Export-Import Bank, created to help U.S. companies compete overseas and bolster exports by providing cheap government-backed loans, has been effectively crippled by the Trump administration. The bank has been without a chairman since President Donald Trump took office, and the last of the bank’s five board members quit in March. Since 2015, it has not had the quorum of at least three members it needs to finance deals or projects worth more than $10 million. The effective shuttering of the bank has put U.S. manufacturers at a global disadvantage, prompting a lobbying campaign by business groups worried that the White House is undermining its own trade goals.

Wells Fargo Said to Be Target of $1 Billion U.S. Fine

Federal regulators are poised to impose a $1 billion fine on Wells Fargo for years of selling unnecessary products to customers. The penalty, part of an expected settlement Friday between the bank and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, will punish Wells Fargo for forcing customers to buy auto insurance policies they did not need and other misdeeds, according to people briefed on the action. President Donald Trump has been especially vocal about holding Wells to account, but he has been equally adamant about dismantling banking rules, part of a regulatory rollback.

Audit Approved of Facebook Policies, Even After Cambridge Analytica Leak

PricewaterhouseCoopers, the auditing firm responsible for monitoring Facebook for federal regulators, told Facebook officials last year that the company had sufficient privacy protections in place, even after the social media giant lost control of a huge trove of user data that was improperly obtained by the political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica. The assertion came in a report submitted to the Federal Trade Commission in early 2017. The report is one of several periodic reviews of Facebook’s compliance with a 2011 federal consent decree, which required Facebook to take wide-ranging steps to prevent the abuse of users’ information and to inform them how it was being shared with other companies.

AI Researchers Are Making More Than $1 Million, Even at a Nonprofit

A tax filing by a research lab called Open AI, a nonprofit required to release certain tax forms, has made public one of the poorest-kept secrets in Silicon Valley: the huge salaries and bonuses that experts in artificial intelligence can command. Now, a little-noticed tax filing by a research lab called Open AI has made some of those eye-popping figures public. OpenAI paid its top researcher more than $1.9 million in 2016 and a leading researcher more than $800,000. There is a caveat: The compensation at OpenAI may be underselling what these researchers can make, since as a nonprofit it cannot offer stock options.

In a Trade War, China Might Boycott U.S. Goods. That Could Backfire.

If China calls for a boycott of U.S. goods, Chinese workers could be in trouble, because thousands of residents cash paychecks from U.S. companies. In all, more than 40 U.S. companies have set up shop in Taicang, China, making chemicals, lighters and a broad range of other products for a Chinese market eager for U.S. goods. Some Chinese state media outlets have hinted that Beijing could weaponize its hundreds of millions of shoppers should Washington go through with its recent tariff threats and start an all-out trade war. Beijing has called for boycotts before, ably punishing products and companies over political disputes. A Boycott America plan could be much tougher to pull off.

GE Pivots on Digital

No old-line company embraced the digital wave with more gusto than General Electric. The industrial giant spent billions, hired thousands of software engineers, and created image-morphing television ads to recast itself as “a digital-industrial company.” In 2015, Jeffrey R. Immelt, then chief executive, declared GE’s goal to become a “top 10 software company” by 2020. Today, there are no such ambitions. The spending at GE Digital is being slashed, amid layoffs and sharply narrowed aims at GE under John Flannery, who became chief executive in August. While he insisted the digital initiatives at GE are “very key” to the company, he added, “we want a much more focused strategy.”

AT&T Chief Attacks Lawsuit to Block Time Warner Merger

AT&T’s chief executive, Randall Stephenson, on Thursday attacked the Justice Department’s lawsuit to block its merger with Time Warner, saying that a combined company would be no different from the Silicon Valley giants that make and distribute video content. As the last witness for the defense in the Justice Department’s legal battle against AT&T’s $85.4 billion deal to buy Time Warner, Stephenson portrayed the 140-year-old phone giant as being in an existential crisis and in need of the deal with Time Warner to compete against tech companies. The Justice Department sued to block the union of AT&T and Time Warner in November, saying it would hurt consumers.