good morning it is 11:00 a.m. at 21st century fox headquarters, 11:00 a.m. on wall street and "squawk alley" is live. ♪ ♪ welcome to "squawk alley." with jon fortt at post nine. a big day in meade m&a disney and fox striking a new deal disney increasing its offer to buy parts of 21st century fox for $38 a share. fox saying the new offer by disney is superior than the bid made by comcast. it's been big news

julia boorstin has more details as well. good morning, julia. >> good morning to you fox's board announcing an amended merger with disney, disney paying $10 more per share, deal for fox worth over $71 billion. the offer now is a 50/50 split between cash and stock and about $6 billion more than comcast all-cash offer made last week. disney ceo bob iger saying on an investor call a few hours ago that the company has become more committed to this deal, particularly because of its assets including hulu and sky. take a listen. >> distribution in terms of direct to consumer distribution has actually become an even more compelling proposition in the six months since we announced the deal there's just been not only a tremendous amount of development in that space, but clearly the consumer is voting loudly that these new platforms are very

compelling >> iger also saying on the call that disney's confident that it will obtain regulatory approval and that disney has a meaningful head start on comcast. >> we've been working with regulatory authorities, not just in the united states but in jurisdictions across the world now for six months and we've made a lot of progress toward obtaining the regulatory approvals necessary. >> now disney saying that the increase in leverage due to the higher costs of the deal does not change the company's investment plans for other parts of disney businesses such as the parks, but that they do plan to be more conservative and take a more conservative approach when it comes to share repurchases in the short term as a result of this will no longer complete the $20 billion share repurchase which they announced in december. guys, back over to you >> julia, don't go far away. thanks to you, julia boorstin. as we watch disney up its bid for the assets this morning, a rift between high-profile employees of fox entertainment

and fox news, the two halves of murdoch's company, responding to the coverage of the growing border crisis, seth mcfarland, creator of fox show "family guy" tweeted business like this that makes me embarrassed to work for this company the creator of "modern family" tweets, i'm disgusted to work at a company that has anything whatsoever to do with fox news and john epta saying he hasn't worked with fox since '02 calling for a boycott of the entire company they've kept the two halves of the company separate, the company is about to be broken up with the entertainment assets in play some bleed over into the creative community. >> apparently so for a look at what this means, for the intersection of tech and media and how companies like netflix, amazon and apple are going to react bring in elle wheeler, and eric hepo welcome to both of you how much does this matter in the content mix? who ends up with fox

we know that content is in play, the premium content is in vogue. does it matter one way or the other? >> of course it matters. content is king. i think it will be -- the way you will see it play out is, whoever gets it will take all of the assets there's been some conversation around are they going to split up different pieces but that diminishes the overall force of what they can do i think disney in control of all of this content in addition to what they already have in the multi meade reach they have could be powerful and a competitor and in direct to consumer and come after netflix. >> disney and kumcomcast, both powerful companies, why does it matter to silicon valley whether one has it versus the other? is one perhaps more savvy tech wise do you think it will make different moves? >> i don't think it matters to silicon valley i think it matters to the

consumers. as elle was saying, there's a powerful grouping of brands such as marvel, x-men, empire, "the simpsons" on the fox side, that could make a very compelling offering to compete with netflix, which is really disney's desired outcome for this having said that, disney/fox merger seems a little more troubling from a regulatory point of view than a comcast/fox merger given what happened with at&t and time warner >> each side trying to argue that the regulations are tougher on their opposing player this guidance on the buyback out of disney this morning, is that a hint that it's -- that it's dwindling as the bids go up, but it's going to be expensive just to get this engine started once it's together. i wonder what you make of that >> i think it's realistic and good to see. you would rather see them investing in staying ahead and doing something potentially big and bold and disruptive, than kind of continuously buying back shares but yeah, i think it's an

admission that this is going to be quite a big effort and hopefully it's, you know, showing that they're committed to it. >> do you think there's discipline in this auction h >> well, i think very likely comcast is going to up its bid they seem to be very intent on getting these assets it's going to be expensive this is a $70 billion deal and nothing is for sure. they -- the technology behind all this, even though hulu will be part of it, the technology is not a given. the custom acquisition part of it is not a given. if you look at the netflix shareholders right now, they're not concerned netflix is trading with an all-time high. >> we talk about this a lot. the way netflix is valued is different from the way people look at traditional legacy companies and they discount cash flow and all of that i'm assuming you think it's impossible for disney or comcast to be valued in the way netflix is valued, to get that kind of freedom all of a sudden? >> yeah. i don't think you're going to see a fundamental change in how they're valued

they're more complex businesses. they have theme parks. netflix more of a pure play, as they invest more and more in content, you start to have an argument they should look more like a studio but that's not how they're valued today and that's an advantage. >> meanwhile, big tech and politics getting more and more intwined when it comes to immigration as well as when it comes to trade elle, i find it so interesting, microsoft leadership, facing a bit of heat this morning over this contract that they have with i.c.e some employees at microsoft saying they want microsoft to stop doing business with i.c.e now, a generation ago, nobody got up in arms over who bought a windows pc, right. what government bought it. what was happening with it it seems to me in the cloud era, there's the potential at least for tech companies to own some, at least perceived responsibility, for what customers do with the technology in a way they didn't before. that is a new risk for big tech? >> i think absolutely, you're

seeing it play out across a lot of these giants and, you know, social media and everyone having a voice and being able to actually kind of ban together with that voice is, obviously, a huge difference than a generation ago i mean we would have had to organize mass protests in a more, you know, off-line guerrilla type way now you see a backlash building and how tech leaders are forced to become lobbyists and spokespeople for the entire industry it's interesting to watch and see them navigate it in real time. >> that's going to be tricky, right? whether you're a start-up or a big company, do you have to think about who your customers are and how that's going to look and how that's going to reflect on your reputation, not just domestically but globally. >> politics and business don't mix that well. this is one of the situations where whether technology has changed dramatically because of artificial intelligence, the ability to surveil people, and

that's what really these tech workers are revolting against, you know, in this particular situation, having to do with the migrants you know, what if the government was starved of all the technology how would the government function how would we do our basic functions of governing this country without access to technology that doesn't seem realistic to me. >> when it comes to trade, how much is this china trade tension, elle, impacting the way you look at investment and how much do you look to get to invest perhaps in china or in the asia-pacific region? interesting to see google making this move to invest in jd right at the time when there's this sense of tension building. a need for tech to say we're not involved in that piece of the politics, we're still interested in this market >> sure. i think you're seeing a lot of maneuvering around that right now. in terms of looking at the early stage, it's something we're all paying attention to, but it's

hard to predict and often not the first market that companies that we're looking at are going after. it's, you know, kind of a still focusing on the core and we'll see what happens but it's something we have to think about as the trade war escalates, but it will be interesting to see in terms of m&a activity, in terms of how the giants are actually treated as both sides start to retaliate. right now it's anybody's guess >> does it feel to you like this could come off of the boil quickly, these trade tensions, if the german automakers come to an agreement with the u.s. and all of a sudden tariffs on both side comes down >> there's a lot of brinkmanship going on who's going to blink first, right. i mean i'm hoping that all of this goes away and i'm not so much concerned about the tariffs, which is bad enough, i'm much more concerned about the disruption in the supply chain because if you get this kind of animosity, then you get all of the -- all of the customs issues, all of the slow down of the bureaucratic, which doesn't

do with tariffs, just disrupting the enemy's trade possibility. we've got a number of companies in commerce, for instance, robotics, of some hardware companies where the supply chain coming out of china is essential. it's not so much the cost of that if you disrupt it, and everything is moving to on demand and if you disrupt on demand you're going have a real problem in the economy. >> are you saying that that distrust lingers after an agreement, so to speak, on paper? >> no. i'm just saying if we don't come to an agreement, it's above the tariffs, you also get all the disruption. >> sure. >> if we come to an agreement, hopefully everything is rosy. >> and literally we'll all be in love again as the president said weeks ago. >> never know. these things move quickly. elle, eric, thanks. >> thank you >> for the first time in 110 years, general electric will not be a member of the dow the dow jones industrial average ousted ge after the iconic company faced a series of internal crises over the last

year bob pisani joins us for a closer look at what that means for ge and the index. >> and the markets too it makes sense to remove ge for two reasons. number one, the dow is price weighted $12, ge has a minuscule impact on the dow you don't want that. second, dow jones has said for years they want the dow to represent the overall u.s. economy, not just be an industrials index and they likely did want more consumer staples companies. walgreens is a consumer staples company, it's true consumer staples, slightly underrepresented in the dow but only slightly. it's about 5% of the weighting of the dow jones industrial average. there's three stocks, walmart, procter & gamble and coca-cola from the sector. staples are 7% of the s&p 500, but remember the dow is price weighted, the s&p is weighted by market capitalization. industrials are over represented. about 23% of the index that makes sense reducing that tech under represented, only 15%. tech makes up 25% of the s&p by market cap this is my point, while a

consumer staples choice might make some sense, the choice of another tech company in my opinion would have made better sense. possible candidates, my opinion could have been salesforce, for example, or nvidia in the chip space, adobe, even facebook. facebook is a little high priced but that would have seemed to be a better choice. they chose walgreens back to you. >> all right thank you, bob pisani. keeping an eye on oracle, that stock down 7.5% this morning after anearnings report on the surface was fine a lot of analysts calling it solid revenue and eps about in line or a beat the concern is the reporting around cloud oracle saying it's no longer going to break out simple cloud results and analysts wondering is this confirming some concerns around growth rates in the cloud. oracle in the past and here has countered that no, really, what they're doing is emphasizing the fact that people who have older

oracle licenses are able to port those over to the cloud, so it doesn't make as much sense to distinguish between the license business and the cloud business. but some who are skeptical of oracle's growth rate in the d e concerned that this is an attempt to cover up a lack of momentum in the cloud space. we always say time will tell, carl, on these things. >> jury still out? >> all the cliches but really, time will tell because after a while, over time, you're able to see the growth in apps and able to see the growth in the overall platform business. oracle's strength, i believe, really is in apps and data base when it comes to the cloud story. very few people think they're really going to challenge amazon and microsoft when it comes to the platform business purely will that end up the apps business and database business strong enough for oracle they get powered to new heights, pick your cliche. >> the guidance on currency and

whether or not that's a harbinger of what other companies are going to say in a q2 earnings. >> oracle and adobe are those canaries in the coal mine cycle wise they report a little earlier often enterprise wise they tend to tip the hand a little bit and give at least a clue for the questions we're going to see analysts ask of other companies. coming up, president trump's latest tariff proposals against china causing global markets and investors some concerns. we'll take a closer look at what impact an all-out trade war could have on markets. ceo and defense contractor raytheon weighs in on china's role in the continuing trade disputes and chinese theft of patents. "squawk alley" is back after this you always pay

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commerce secretary wilbur ross taking a stand on capitol hill defending the president's trade policies kayla tausche joins us now from washington with the latest kayla? >> jon, the hearing was called by republican lawmakers who are angry about the administration's use of national security as a reason to pursue tariffs but even though that was the topic of today's hearings, the questioning spanned from zte, talks with china, this investigation into auto tariffs, and a whole host of other issues i want to run through some of the highlights right now first on the steel and aluminum tariffs that have now been in place in some cases for several months he said the supply issues that many companies are experiencing should go away by the end of the year as new production comes on-line he said price spikes in testeel

and aluminum in the commodity space were exaggerated by market speculators, storing, stockpiling and warehousing the metals and congress will be investigating what he called illegal proof tearing in light of the tariffs on trade with china he said the price of soybeans declining is not justified. he said farmers told him that the price has been dropping because of anxiety about what comes next he doesn't feel like that's right. he said there is more pressure needed on china. that's why the president unveiled that new set of tariffs earlier this week that they have to amp up the pressure in order to get china to the negotiating table and negotiations at the administration had been leading, were not making enough progress. he had been pursuing a trade deficit cut deal that fell apart and here's what he said about the prospect for a trade deal from here. >> i was the one who negotiated that, so that does show you that

the administration is trying, it's just we were not able to accomplish enough to justify in the president's mind not going ahead with the tariffs so i think there are already some signs we may get some ultimate resolution. i don't think the chinese want a trade war any more than we do. >> even so, he said the u.s. needed to exact pain on china to get them to change their practices regarding intellectual property one final note, guys, there was an expectation that he would get asked about some peculiar trading moves he made in his financial portfolio last year while he was serving as commerce secretary. he did not get asked questions about that as of just a couple minutes ago but there's still a little time left in the hearing. back to you. >> our kayla we'll watch out for that with your help, on the hill today. for a closer look at trade and impact on markets let's bring in phil, asset allocation

strategist at morgan, jeff, from charles schwab good morning, good to see you. >> good morning. >> we have ross, navarro saying the phone lines are open, german automakers may be trying to bring some peace to this what's in the market if all of this -- if some of this comes off? >> the markets get noisy like this, carl, it's important for us to always examine a base case what's base case, begins and ends with the u.s. economic resiliency what do we know about economic resiliency consumer strong in the second half, retail sales from last week, u.s. gdp this quarter maybe 4%, the strongest in five years. we've been measuring small business confidence for 45 years. second highest reading in consumer confidence. the trade worries are not yet factoring into confidence. but the tales have increased the trade, not really the $50 billion that has been announced, it's 0.3% of gdp, it's the ess

kalation and uncertainty that would cause companies to then pull back in their spending, right. that's not there yet jerome powell continues to validate this economic expansion and job openings, highest since 2000 folks looking for a job can find a job. the other risk would be inflation and jerome powell again is saying inflation is not really a concern but they have increased from the beginning of the year which has caused this to take down our equity allocation a little bit. >> jeff, one way of looking at this is to say hey, the people who got negative too soon have lost out on the markets continuing to perform really strongly, but then another way to look at it is, boy, a lot of these trade concerns maybe aren't priced in and that could be a concern which way do you lean on this, jeff >> well, i think you to break it down between the economic impact that phil talked about and the stock market impact. clearly stocks are not yet pricing in the escalation into a trade war.

from an economic perspective right now we're looking at the dollar amount collected of tariffs as a percent of imports, 1.4%, the lowest in 200 years. if everything trump has talked about or threatened put in place, that would jump to 5%, still well below the 20% during the smoot/hawley era that viewers of "ferris bulers day off" would be familiar with, but it could be economically damaging the difference from the stock market, it's devastating more sales tied to international trade than we've ever had before, particularly in areas of leadership for the markets like the tech sector. that is not yet been priced into the markets. having said that, though, that's hopefully not where we're headed signs this morning between the offer by some of the german automakers is a sign ahead of the july 6th implementation of the new tariffs with china we will come to some sort of resolution that is the hope >> you mentioned bringing down your equity allocation, to what, and what is -- is cash growing

in the portfolio i saw some charts today looking at the spread between s&p dividend yield and t bills you have to go back a few years to see a spread this narrow. >> you're getting there. cash is not yet for us an asset class we're investing. we've brought down our equity allocation from 70% to 60% that has not gone on to cash we're looking for ways in fixed income to find carry in the portfolio. cash is getting interesting. that's what prevent the market from the v-shape recoveries when we have pullbacks because cash is getting interesting but at the inflationary even if the fed gets a checking account to 2%, inflation is at 2, that's still 0, not negative, but zero real return and we're finding other ways to play defense. >> still overweight u.s. >> >> we have the most confidence in the u.s. and a lot has to do with the resilience i spoke about. every time the federal reserve goes, that's validation for us, especially in a low inflation environment. >> it is getting interesting lots of things

thanks, jeff and phil. meanwhile, jeff bezos, warren buffet and jamie diamond name a new ceo bertha coombs joins us for more. >> amazon, berkshire, and jpmorgan are winning praise for appointing him as the ceo of that new venture the brigham women's hospital surgeon is a well-regarded thought leader and writer and innovator, founded the labs incubator in boston which focuses on improving health system processes he talked to becky quick how we need to improving health outcomes and lives >> even in the united states we have a 20 plus year difference in life expectancy between whether you live to your early 60s or 80s depending on what city you live in and income bracket you're in. >> so while bezos and company talked a lot about lowering

costs for employees and using technology, what's striking is that gawande is not a health tech advocate per se he's one of the brightest minds in health care but he needs to come up to speed when it comes to things like commercial insurance and plans in order to succeed in this. guys >> definitely going to be a transition of sorts for him. that's for sure. bertha, thank you. china's getting slammed for theft of u.s. patents amid the escalating trade dispute ceo of raytheon is going to join us on what he sees as some of the solutions with the dow down 38 at fidelity, our online u.s. equity trades are just $4.95. so no matter what you trade, or where you trade, you'll only pay $4.95. fidelity. open an account today.

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so i'm more than confident. how's your family? kayak. search one and done. i'm consider here's your news update at this hour taliban militants are believed to be behind an attack on a local police checkpoint in a western province killing one and wounding four others the second incident in the province following an assault on two checkpoints where at least

30 afghan soldiers were kirlds. ayatollah khomeini, he claims the action reveals the true identity of the u.s. administration back home, united airlines new pet travel policy in place, only cats and dogs will be accepted and 21 dog breeds and four cat breeds will no longer be allowed to fly. pet wills be banned from flying when the ground temperature is above 85 degrees or below 45 degrees. and amc is rolling out its movie ticket program as it looks to take on the success of movie pass offering moviegoers three movies a week for $19.95 a month that will start on june 26th that's your news update for this hour back over to "squawk alley." >> thank you, courtney to seema moody at hq with the european close seema? >> jon, european stocks on track to snap a three-day losing streak as worries about the u.s./china trade wars seem to be

easing for now, but the eu announcing plans to launch a 25% tariff on $3.2 billion worth of u.s. exports on friday the move is in response to u.s. imposed tariffs on eu steel and aluminum that's how stocks are fairing. "the wall street journal" reports german automakers back the white house's idea of scrapping tariffs for cars between the eu and the united states. right now looking at volkswagen up nearly 2% moving to m&a and media, shares of sky moving higher in reaction to disney raising its offer for fox assets to $38 per share. fox owns 39% of sky and that stock is higher by more than 3%. earlier at a central bank summit in portugal, mario draghi said forces holding back wages in the eurozone are gradually waning adding that he sees inflation rising back towards the ecb's target of just under 2%.

now tomorrow the bank of england is expected to not raise rates at its policy meeting due to recent patchy economic data. keep in mind the pound is down about 6% against the dollar, just in the past two months. carl, back to you. >> all right thank you, seema speaking of all this, defense stocks are mixed this morning after falling yesterday amid those global trade tensions the ceo of raytheon, thomas kennedy, told our morgan brennan this morning that while his company remains isolated against the current trade and tariff threats they are concerned about one threat coming from kleichin. take a listen. >> a big concern for the united states and many countries throughout today, in fact, that china is actively trying to steal and take i.p. and it ties into the fabric of you are nation and innovation the patents that we create and taking those patents and those technologies and then creating products and solutions that create jobs in our country. it's a very important issue and it's an issue that must be

addressed. >> is this the right way to address it >> i think the right way to address it is we've already -- the president has put out a memorandum on this relative to china and i think we need to, you know, stick to our guns relative to that and ensure that china comes in with the rest of the world in terms of protecting i.p. >> you mentioned patents you were in the oval office yesterday to sign the 10 millionth patent in terms of defense companies and specifically raytheon, you're essentially the other technology companies. >> we are a technology company we've been a technology company for over 96 years. in fact, we invented the microwave and invented the laser along with many other products out there, and it was a privilege for us to receive the 10 millionth patent of the united states, and we are proud of that, but it also emphasizes the fact that i.p. is important to our nation. the fabric of our nation, the security of our nation, the economic security of our nation, that's why protecting i.p. is so important.

>> it will be interesting to see whether i.p. really is one of those subject that gets some movement amid these tensions usually we're talking about the trade deficit and not i.p. as an issue, but particularly to tech it is important. >> yeah. and goes to the degree to which the administration has clarified what is the priority, right, because it's going to take a lot longer to clear up some of the industry policies than it is to fix the trade deficit. >> it will also media merger mania in full swing. a bidding war between disney and comcast only escalating. details next "squawk alley" is back after is the digital divide is splitting this country. we have parents who are trying to get their kids off of too much social media and computers, and then we have parents who would only hope their children have access. middle school is a really key transition point, right.

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welcome back to "squawk alley. after railing against the easy access that some foreign car makers have to the u.s. market president trump calling for an increase in auto production in the u.s. volvo, just the latest car company to open a u.s. plant phil lebeau joins us with details. phil >> and jon, they have just finished the official ceremony for opening this plant here just outside of charleston, south carolina let's put into perspective how important this is not only for volvo, but also for manufacturing in the deep south. this is volvo's first u.s. final assembly plant they've been here selling cars for decades but now they are going to be making them here, building sedans and suvs and most importantly, these are vehicles that will not only be sold primarily here in the united states but many of them will be exported that's important because we had

a chance earlier today to talk with volvo's ceo about the trade tensions that are going on not only between china and the united states, and remember volvo is owned by a chinese corporation, but also between europe and the united states and volvo, which is based in sweden, is certainly following that closely. the ceo believes these trade tensions could be alleviated if tariffs were brought down. here's what he had to say. >> we believe in free trade. that's good for the consumer i think the harmonization should, of course, be on the low level. i don't understand why we need any duties so yes, i think it was very good, china lowered their tariffs a week ago, now they're back up, and the european union also i think should follow america on the low levels. >> echoing the sentiment that we're hearing from german automakers who want to see the eu scrap tariffs altogether. if you take a look at shares of

geely, the parent company of volvo, weighing the possibility of an ipo for volvo. potential valuation, up to $30 billion. that will be a story we follow in the months to come. guys, back to you. >> that's a big story today. thank you very much, our phil lebeau back to the big story at m&a this morning, disney raising its bid for fox assets topping our parent company comcast but the bidding war may be far from over we're joined by "new york times" columnist jim stewart who knows a thing about disney himself good morning. >> good to see you what did you make of the move today some have called it a statement bid out of disney? >> well, i'm not surprised i think, you know, disney had been relying on regulatory hurdles to give themselves the edge here. that was the stated reason why murdoch accepted the disney offer. basically the rug was pulled out from under that with the time warner/at&t decision so they had to come up with a plan b, and i think the only

plan b is money. who is going to pay more i felt this is going to turn into an old-fashioned bidding war. now i think the question then is, who can afford to pay more comcast or disney? disney has a long track record of paying up for intellectual property everybody thought they overpayed for pixar, overpayed for marvel, but those things have paid off for them and they have been very skillful at leveraging fresh intellectual property. >> although those deals were, what, $4 billion, $6 billion i mean this is $71 billion >> right. >> those are also deals that fit right into an existing business. this is trying to incorporate some things they don't do necessarily well now >> well, yeah. you're absolutely right. this is, a, a much bigger deal and those were almost pure intellectual property deals. the goal was to get the creative talent, the brands, the trademarks, the stories that people already knew. this is way more complicated and involves a lot of production

assets which have nothing to do with intellectual property now again, going for the comcast side, comcast has already a history of integrating a very complex, media business into the fold when they acquired nbc l and by all measures they've done quite a good job of it look at how well nbc is doing. they have a lot of skill there, which is probably going to embolden them. they both have very deep pockets. this could be quite a war. >> how long can comcast afford stock price wise to stay at the table here disney has been trading in this range of, you know, 90s to around 110, $115 for a long time comcast's stock has been down in the low 30s. a lot of people are saying on the speculation that they're going to pay a lot for these assets comcast shareholders getting or giving i guess some pressure to management that disney shareholders don't seem to be. can comcast afford to stay in a

long-term bidding war? >> well, i think they can, partly because their stock is already down quite a bit i mean there are two basic differences here that i think is important to understand. comcast was a distribution company that had moved into the content creation business. disney is the opposite it was a content creation company that is now moving into distribution they both feel they've got to get the critical mass of creative assets and intellectual property in order to go direct to consumers they both end up in the same place, but the investors have already punished the distributors, in this case comcast, and they have not really punished the content creators in that sense it may be that disney's stock has more to lose as the bidding war goes up >> jim, how do you -- i mean who has any edge about murdoch's frame of mind in terms of whether or not he is truly in love with the idea of being in business long term with disney

or simply getting the best price? >> well, murdoch has got to be happy that he's got a bidding war going on for his properties. who wouldn't like that i do feel disney has a big advantage in that it has offered an all-stock deal here that is going to appeal to murdoch for tax reasons. but the problem is, murdoch has to consider all shareholders and the board has to consider all fox shareholders and most of them are not going to be concerned about the tax consequences many of them are institutions that don't pay any taxes anyway and many fox shareholders are big funds where the tax hit is going to be so small for the average shareholder that it isn't going to amount to much. he has a different interest here, but very much would cut in favor of the disney deal for murdoch personally >> jim, no matter who wins is there a reckoning coming here? if one or the other of these companies ends up spending big bucks on an acquisition, are they going to come back looking

for cost cuts and maybe some traditional businesses to firm things up afterwards >> well, probably. i mean, they are starting to get into some pretty big numbers here, and bear in mind, you know, that they're competing against companies that have built these new media companies, entertainment companies, virtually from scratch you know, the big rivals are so worried about amazon, netflix, they didn't go out and pay billions of dollars for a legacy studio, so you can question what are they really getting for all this money i think there are also people, and i've heard a few voices from this in the last week or two, sort of questioning whether these companies really know how to run the other side of their business in the case of disney, it's can they run a distribution company. can they run a company that delivers over-the-top content. comcast has a little bit of an edge there because they've proven they can do that and have done a good job with nbc

universal which was not in their comfort zone when they acquired it before. >> we're watching that or watching the price action intraday as disney goes flat and comcast slightly red, jim. hope to talk to you in the coming days about what comes next huge story. >> it is a fascinating, it's going to be one of the greatest m&a wars we've seen in a long time. >> yeah. i think a lot of people agree with you see you soon, jim. thanks jim stewart of the "new york times. dow down 49, getting breaking news on tesla and we're going to turn to courtney regan. >> tesla we know has been in the cross hairs a lot of this week the company is suing former employee martin trip, the allegations include that the former tesla employee unlawfully hacked tesla's confidential top secret information and then distributed this information to third parties. tesla's also accusing this former employee of making false claims to the media in several circumstances. now this does, of course, come on the heels of an earlier

report this week about an elon musk that ceo and founder elon musk sent out to the company about a sab ba tore in its midst. we know a lawsuit has officially been filed by tesla against former employee martin tripp back over to you >> courtney, thank you for that. we'll bring in phil lebeau, help us make sense of this headline, which is really all we have at the moment false claims to media, it sure sounds like the employee that musk was referring to earlier in the week. >> right >> and, carl, i am looking through the lawsuit that was obtained by one of my colleagues in the newsroom. it was forwarded on to me and as i'm looking through this, they indicate tesla indicates that it is interviewed the person it is suing, martin tripp, on june 14th and 15th. what was that, last thursday and friday elon musk sends out the e-mail

sunday night about somebody hacking some of their data and sharing it with third parties. put one and one together, it's easy to see that this may, in fact, be what elon musk sent that e-mail about. remember, in that e-mail, which we obtained earlier this week, he indicated that tesla is worried that there might be somebody else that mr. tripp could have been working with other employees or people on the outside, and as the company moves towards manufacturing 5,000 model 3s per squeaweek, t huge goal out there that the market is focused on, elon musk was warning employees, look, we need to be as vigilant as possible making sure that everybody is doing the job they're supposed to be doing and not, as he is alleging in the lawsuit, sharing information with outsiders >> all right and the stock, phil, is up, almost 1.5% on the day not necessarily on this news, but -- >> right. >> investors certainly not taking it badly. phil lebeau, thank you. when we come back, how big tech is tackling the skills gap

linkedin's global head of product joins us next.

welcome to holiday inn! thank you! ♪ ♪ wait, i have something for you! every stay is a special stay at holiday inn. save up to 15% when you book early at hollidayinn.com here's what's coming up. we are debating the current state of stocks and the recent struggles for your money the trades on ge, starbucks and disney as each one makes head lines today and commerce and

controversy. we'll have the latest on claims that wilbur ross engaged in questionable stock trading that and more when we see you at noon john >> see you then, scott thanks. >> turning to the future of work, the at work conference kicks off today in new york city focusing on technology, human resources and the workforce of the future joining us is ryan who's speaking today and then live stream at 1:00 p.m. eastern today. ryan, thank you for being with us. >> thank you for having me. >> you're -- your team building a major team that employers use to gather a workforce. that's key in the time when job openingso openings outnumber the people looking for job and the gap of skills needed and available. what advice do you have for the people who are trying to find,

hire quality work, education is expensive. how can they take advantage of the gap in. >> yeah. by virtue of the linkedin platform, professionals and 15 million i don't knows open at any time and a common skill taxonomy underneath that, we understand where various skills gaps exist across the world. for example, right now in san francisco, there are more job openings for teachers with skills like curriculum education an development, compared to number of teachers existing in the bay area and salt lake city, game development skills, flip side, miami, there's a huge amount of people that have marketing skills and not a lot of job openings that require marketing skills for those i don't knows so market by market we understand where those gaps exist and then really try to help people understand if you have a skill not demand in the market, here's where you can or stay in the market and you

aren't employed, here's the skills to attain to get the jobs that are open right now. >> when i think of linkedin, i think of professionals and employment story is shortage of workers unskilled. so to what degree do they link into sha that? >> through an acquisition, we started to see the trends and we found it to be very important for our ability to help against did vision of creating economic opportunity for every professional in the global workforce to help people understand the skills they need and train up on them we have millions of people that run through the training processes to then find the skills that they need and get the jobs open for them. >> is engagement sufficient at that lower income level? >> we are seeing a growth in linkedin from both globally and across all skill levels. and it's an ecosystem where the more people use it in various skill levels the more value to get out of the ecosystem and seeing growth across all

sectors. >> it is now a part of microsoft. a lot of people wondering on the technical end, how it's going to be tied in even further to microsoft products get hub is one i assume you guys probably use as your working on the code based or linkedin, what are the ways to think of linkedin perhaps adding to the profitability of microsoft long term and integrating software? >> i think that when the ceo of microsoft and jeff wiener first started to talk about the acquisition, they aligned on a common objective of growing and accelerating the growth of linkedin leaving it standalone. >> hold on we have breaking news that we have got to get. ayman jafrs has it. >> the president called the pool of reporters in to the white house speaking to them now we'll see this comment coming out on tape here in a moment but

we are told that the president said that he's going to be signing something on family unification. he said that republicans want security and also want to keep families together amid this crisis at the southern border. the president says he's signing something later today that is going to keep families together. he also says that he'll do something preemptive and hopes it will be matched by legislation, he says later from congress he also said he's canceling the congressional picnic and didn't feel right to him at this point in time. the president still talking so we'll hear from him shortly. but he is signaling that he's going to be signing something that's going to keep families together at the southern border. now, this seems to be an indication that the president's going to be signing an executive order, direct presidential action coming after several days in which white house officials have insisted that only congress could solve the problem of keeping detanlined families together this caused such heartbreaking

pictures on national television over the past four or five days or so. the president here, though, clearly signaling to ready to solve this problem himself after white house officials suggested that congress needed to solve it guys, back over to you. >> we'll be looking for tape on that president also says he's ncina congressional picnic thank you. dow holding a 40-point loss. we're back after a short break !

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it is a week of intense political pressure on the white house regarding border separation of families just in the past few days, white house has come under criticism of the ceos of microsoft, uber, jpmorgan, apple, the u.s. chamber of commerce, the business roundtable calling it cruel, contrary to american values, inhumane and so now moments ago the president in front of the press pool said he'll be signing something in his words on immigration, wants to keep migrant families together and hopes to be backed up by legislation. of course, dhs said recent days a problem up to congress to fix. but maybe there is something that can be done with a stroke of a pen. >> the politics on this, carl, were getting increasingly complicated. senate minority leader schumer said he was not in favor of congress doing something about it the president should it appears that president trump

is stepping in and indeed doing that but the devil's in the details we'll see exactly what this does to the zero tolerance policy that the president had so ar dantly stuck to until now. >> keep an eye on m and a. talking about all morning, tonight with the dow down about 32 get over to the half all right. welcome to "the halftime report." we'll take you to the white house hearing from the president. we expect a play back from those remarks that are being made in the briefing room momentarily. you will hear from president trump on this immigration story as well as our ammon javers following it what is going on with the rally? simply taking a rest at the big may run-up