talks continue as u.s. president donald trump tweeted yet again today alex behala bitch and i will bring us up to date and discuss what it may all mean now let's get to the stories topping today's headlines. new u.s. sanctions against russian individuals and companies announced last week by the trumpet ministration are roiling markets in russia mo x. index familiar to russian market watchers their focus on equities sell nearly nine percent monday morning meanwhile on the currency front the ruble fell over three percent against the dollar today adding to a total four point five percent drop over three days and the russian sanctions story is now bumping up against the metals tariff saga russian aluminum manufacturer bruce all was among the twelve sanctioned russian companies we saw accounts for six percent of all global alumium production and the sanctions news push prices up by nearly four percent early today on ellen the london metals

exchange. india is seeking requests for proposals for defense contractors for one hundred ten fighter jets in what would be a massive military purchase of roughly fifteen billion dollars india's air force is currently still using some russian mig twenty one fighter jets perk purchased back in the one nine hundred sixty s. through the one nine hundred eighty s. two years ago indian prime minister modi was personally involved in finalizing a deal for thirty six french rothwell aircraft worth eight billion dollars india is seeking to have fifteen percent of the planes delivered ready for deployment and the rest to actually be built in india. and jug drug giant in the bar is a g. of switzerland says they will buy the gene therapy developer a the axis for eight point seven billion dollars the deal is a bit of a sequel to an accord we told you about lace let late last month in which the lax zero smith kline bought out novartis a stake in

a joint consumer health product venture novartis says that they will use cash from the g.s. k. buyout to finance acquisition of excess of excess researchers are focusing on. treatments for spinal muscular atrophy or s.m. a a condition caused by a defective gene novartis c.e.o. is said s m a treatment in development could be worth billions of dollars in revenue of excess will reportedly get in the application for regulatory approval on the innovation later this year and another merger mania news earlier today the u.s. department of justice approved biotech and chemical maker bear a g.'s acquisition of agro chemical and biotech firm monsanto monsanto is valued at over sixty billion dollars the deal was initially announced in september of two thousand and sixteen and was cleared by european regulators last month after bear agreed to sell soil cotton and chemical assets including the main competitor to months santos round up b.s.f.

berry has agreed to additional sales of assets in seed and agriculture technology to meet a specific concerns of u.s. regulators. and the tariff talk between washington and beijing continues in earnest as u.s. president donald trump tweeted today and other administration officials have been out in public discussing the matter to bring us up to speed alex mchale that joins us from toronto alex first of all tell us about where we've come and just the last month for those of us not paying attention to the individual tech talks of the moment and we are going to get back to january when those first tariffs were kicked in by the united states against china for solar panels and washing machines and from there it just started steam rolling or snowballing actually snowballing not steam rolling and we got bigger and bigger tariffs as we went along three billion

dollars worth of tariffs after that for aluminum and steel and bam china fought back with three billion dollars worth of tariffs and then trumpet out to fifty to sixty billion dollars worth of tariffs against china and then china did the exact same. he went out saying fifty billion worth of tariffs against the states about once we got to the fifty million fifty billion dollar level different game this is all talk those tariffs of not being kicked into place trump got light take a couple weeks and pick and choose what he wants to put tariffs on from china they were haven't seen anything come out yet and we're probably not going to see any type of push with this for at least another couple of weeks because then trump said hey let's kick it up to one hundred billion dollars worth in terror of so this sounds really bad but at the same time you know these tariffs aren't in place but industries and people are getting hurt this type of language does have a trick trickle down and what happens is that some people in interest in the states as well listen try to buy you could be sure in the states are ready feeling this

now trump is kind of pulling back he tweeted very recently here you got a look at this tweet it's pretty interesting what he's saying here president g. and i will always be friends no matter what happens with our dispute on trade china will take down its trade barriers because it is the right thing to do taxes will become reciprocal and a deal will be made on intellectual property a great future for both countries now this has been trumps type of tactics from day one a lot of people view it that way that this is a tactic but even with these tactics people are getting her part absolutely i want to see sign that tweet with little hearts maybe will always be friends i mean to and the reason i'm a little bit juvenile about that is the whole thing it seems juvenile to me i mean this back and forth that fifty billion one hundred billion as you say alex this is impacting markets in a massive way already soybean prices are down pork prices are down a lot of other commodity prices are down and then in the ancillary stock market so

these stocks that are agriculture related john deere tractors for example see if industries which makes fertilizer con agra cargill a.d.m. archer daniels midland the supermarket. the world kellog general mills all these stocks are crashing and secretary minutia on friday said that that didn't bother him that there was a big sell off in markets because markets were up thirty percent year over year since the election rather nasdaq n.y.s.e. and while he's correct if you got into the markets in the last couple of weeks during this tariff tantrum boy are you probably regretting it if you were on the wrong side of the equation and with regard to soybeans those really impact us and as alex knows but for our viewers i used to be the deputy chief of staff at the agriculture department the president has told sonny perdue the sector agriculture hey you can try to use all the tools in your tool box at u.s.d.a. to help soybean farmers that's our number one ag export the problem is there's not much they can do other than buy soybeans but that would have other problems would

it alex that's called subsidies and subsidies or something that you like when it comes to international trade so the world trade organization the e.u. other organizations can complain about this this could be something that is outside the bounds of the norm or even legal in that in that sense i know being a canadian we've had subsidies here with wheat nick cetera and it's something i talked about in high school or we talked about in high school back in the day this is something that when it comes down to it it's not really a solution it's a band-aid and how long can that band-aid fix something it specially if you're start getting into trade battles with other countries or the world trade organization comes in to search you know waving its finger at you this is not something that's going to work out in the long run alex real quick we've only got about sixty seconds but even there's other commodities out there too we talked about pork but particularly those in california tell us about some of those where the chinese are also going to place tariffs on those commodities where you got stuff like fruits you got stuff like nuts but wind is also

a big what i mean california makes a lot of wind here going to bring up a chart for you just to give you an idea of what it looks like which with wind sales to china china is the number five buyer of california wines and hong kong on that list. but china as well that's a lot of wind there the thing is that is actually has been growing china's been buying more and more california one when you do something like this even the talk of tariffs you might get china to move into different directions before tariffs even kick in so places like new zealand and chile can really benefit from this and what happens a bit chilly is that consumers get a taste for different ones and that can knock california wines down even without tariffs being imposed alex we always appreciate your time and expertise r.t. correspondent alex behala bitch thank you sir thank you. and are we seeing the death of local auto dealers as consolidation is becoming

a seemingly wave of the future r t correspondent actually banks fills us in nationally clouds very bart so electric chair views and autonomy vehicles are threatening to reshape the car business we're now seeing a trend where small to mid-size dealer groups are selling their businesses to auto retail giants and investment firms according to aaron caring again the managing director of carrick an advisor says between two thousand and fourteen and twenty eight thousand about one thousand dealerships were sold to a publicly traded company it's kerrigan at some are saying if i can receive the kind of pricing that's out there for my business perhaps the most prudent thing to do is to sell today rather than pass along to my sons and daughters a business that may experience a great deal of disruption in the future. reports say dealers must triple their revenue and order to offset shrinking margins and increasing competition that wasn't in place a decade ago experts say the internet has made car buying

a lot easier for customers car prices are now more transparent and allow everyday people to shop for the best prices for new or used vehicle now tousle up as also making things harder for dealerships by using online ordering to avoid dealerships altogether and we're living in a time where right hailing apps like her are becoming popular some people would prefer to ride with stead of owning or driving a car that's fueling the consolidation of close to seven thousand five hundred u.s. dealerships that are now in the hands of fewer owners although auto sales have hovered around seventeen million dollars angrily for several years dealer margins are shrinking due to the competition now according to the national automobile dealers association and twenty seventeen dealers were able to take home two point five percent of the selling price of the average new car that's down from four point seven percent in two thousand and nine as it pertains to used cars and twenty

seventeen dealers took home six point nine percent down from ten point seven percent almost a decade ago looking into the future experts expect electric cars a will represent a growing chunk of u.s. sales in the coming years that's only because electric cars need less maintenance and don't have engines or transmissions like gasoline powered vehicles now this coupled with people not buying vehicles due to ride sharing companies like hooper and lift will certainly cut into revenue dealers typically can make they typically make from their service base you know it's interesting actually just there are there are more car sales but they're making less money at the local dealership already correspondent ashley banks thank you so much ok. time now. quick pause but hang here because when we return the data wrangler campaign is back in the house and we'll talk facebook news about some recent horrible acts as we go to break here

the numbers at the closing bell the dow the nasdaq and s. and p. all make it across the line into positive territory today but not by much we'll be right back. up same down string you know we're all the feel of the upstream yet and better off because all the all the garbage and everything flows downstream and in the financial world if you live in proximity to where the money's being printed the could chilling effect is meaning that you get first use of that money and then

compound on a rate you need to you get a compound rate of return based on for a few times on your side your downstream times working against you because you end up with a savings account paying zero percent or you have no wages or you're behind the inflation current.

welcome back on a wednesday the european union is expected to propose allowing consumer groups to sue companies and receive compensation a legal route not currently allowed in many e.u. nations the measure if it's put in place would allow consumer groups impacted by circumstances like the volkswagen emissions scandal and the two thousand and seventeen ryan air flight delays and mass cancellations to seek group compensation similar to class action lawsuits in the united states the plan would need to be approved by the european parliament and each national government. the european far right has scored another political victory the. immigrant fit as party of the current prime minister viktor orban says they have secured over two thirds of the popular vote in parliamentary elections with that level of support fit as will be

able to easily elect or by an end to a third term and party leaders have plans to change the hung garion constitution election observers from the organization for security and cooperation in europe said the campaign was marked by quote intimidating and xenophobic rhetoric media bias and opaque campaign financing a fit as spokesman said a so-called stop soros bill would be a priority for the new parliament the ruling party has made attacks on financier george soros and his open society foundation a staple of their rhetoric in a campaign that hungary and jewish leaders and the european commission have called anti-semitic. and adidas the sports clothing and shoemaker is shifting gears by closing retail outlets. all across the globe to focus more in line with online sales doubling its retail sales as their hope in two years to four billion dollars casper or steadied as c.e.o.

said our web site is our most important store we have in the world it has priority when we hire when we allocate our resources and when we build our infrastructure the company will hire an additional two hundred digitally focused staffers while it focuses on infrastructure including warehouse and fulfillment centers for online customers. a new block chain development fund in china is looking for startups to support the creation of the one point six billion dollars she'll go on on global block chain innovation fund was announced in an inventor earlier today at the opening of hangs our blog chain industrial park the fund is a joint venture between the city government of hangs out which is investing four hundred million dollars worth of capital and private sector partners including two and one investment other big names in the deal are the founder of block chain of investors then fun and bitcoin tycoon. as regulars begin to catch up with cryptocurrency is that or not they are now tackling the staple of

marketing the celebrity endorsement champion boxer floyd mayweather and musician dk co-lead were involved in promoting what the u.s. securities and exchange commission called a fraudulent initial coin offering the two celebrities promoted the venture using a firm called central tech and were not charged in the case but and s.e.c. statement did allude to the role though not by name experts say the reference sent sent a signal to celebrities who lend their name to a crypto venture should expect to assume responsibility and risk if they endorse an ill fated or outright fraud crypto venture and they should. consulting is the most important revenue metric for the big four accounting firms pricewaterhouse coopers ernst and young k p m g n deloitte and touche consulting revenues increased forty four percent since two thousand and twelve as only and only a poll only three percent for the auditing services that translate to more revenues

based upon consulting than the traditional auditing services last year the big four made fifty six billion dollars from consulting and forty seven billion dollars from auditing. and there are more developments in the ongoing saga over the politics of privacy at facebook as mark zuckerberg prepares to testify to congress this week facebook says they have suspended the analytic spurn cube you for using a data gathering technique that is very similar to that of cambridge analytic cube you is accused of deploying personality quizzes on the social media site that claim the data gathered will be used for nonprofit academic research when according to facebook it was actually used for marketing facebook took action after reporters at c n b c asked for a reaction to cube use use of tactics similar to cambridge analytic goes meanwhile apple co-founder steve was the act told usa today that he has quit facebook over

privacy concerns with a bit of knife twisting mr was the act added apple makes its money off of good products not off of you as they say with facebook you are the product apple c.e.o. tim cook knocked facebook last month when asked what he would do if he were found in this current crisis and cook said i wouldn't be in this situation zuckerberg replied by dismissing cook's comments as extremely glib and as our viewers know facebook c.e.o. mark zuckerberg will face questions from members of congress this week in a prepared opening statement made available today mr zuckerberg tells congress we didn't do enough to present on. authorized uses of facebook data and here to discuss facebook and more about data is the data wrangler who search well. thank you for being with us we haven't spoken since all the space book news broke what's your take on it well nice to see you and you know that my take is that you know

there was a recent stat one hundred twenty two data records are being breached every second right now so i think that we have a big opportunity or some problems in front of us on this because it's much more widespread as you know there's quite a few since you know in the last couple weeks side from this facebook debacle everywhere from you know you've got under armor you've got sears even an era their data was taken i don't know if you saw that part no i didn't see the pinera do you know anything more than we have read already you may not about cube you would and what they've done with these quizzes. well what i know about q have you is there a pretty small company that's taken over eight point two million dollars of venture capital money quite a bit in the last year since two thousand and seventeen all based out of italy as is the company and i think if anybody would have went to their website they talk about timely deep and wide access to data they talk about personalities they talk

about demographics they talk about different generations and so forth so if anybody takes a look at their website they talk quite a bit about the intelligence that they're gathering on and many of us from all different angles almost a three hundred sixty degree view of what you'd want from a consumer so now and so the data wrangler would look at that and be questioning whether or not they would be using the data for anything else but average consumer is a should also be aware when they if they could figure this sort of stuff out i'm curious . when mr zuckerberg testifies before congress this week what would what would you say if you were him i mean he's apologized but maybe it's a little too late it eat any idea i mean you know they make money off of data you work with with companies that make money off of data or actually trying to help themselves be more efficient effective with data but what would you suggest to him

. i think what i would suggest you know i mean certainly he's been humble and he's been a bit of humility but you know what what transpired there from you know a concept in a college to being able to get that distribution and distribution i think they were so focused truly on my client experience and what we were all doing and connecting people and when it got into fund raising and the good things so i think it's going to talk about the bad actors and how do we control them and you know i don't think any of us really have the answer to that but i think my my point on facebook is i don't think they were in front of it in the us you know saw danger coming and i mean i think they just thought it would slightly just you know make it sort of self out and didn't get in front of it and as a result of that you know a lot of information has been compromised where we were sharing you know pictures of children and dogs and weddings and things like that it's become a true b. to b.

as well as b. to c. to all with really no rules and regulations around it you know. if maybe he had come out right away and apologized and then testified before congress it still would have been really bad but now it's just going to be a monumental mess so i mean as you know i worked up there for years on the hill and these members of congress are just going to dig in and it is not going to be pretty there's no way right well in the question i think that they'll probably ask for i'm interested to hear their feedback i mean what do you think cambridge analytics paid for their app to be on the facebook app store right i mean that app store that they've created was for purposes of playing games right you have developers putting games at the open a.p.i. zynga facebook i think that's the issue not the platform but the access that they've given to people the qualification process by giving access to those people right and what was the terms by which they bound to get people in able to take

access into the platform itself we want. that we've got open a.p.i. to people what are people going to do with them how are they going to use them and i think that that whole channel side it was fairly you know just like you can sign up for facebook you could sign up and put an app on there and i don't think there was a lot of regulation around that internal self-regulation i mean right. before we go you mentioned pinera and i'm thinking about it i did hear about that it's like it's the information that you ordered that bear is sending out i don't know who wants you know what people order there but what are we just to expect that whether or not it's lord and taylor or under armor or pinera that our data is going to be compromised and stall and is that just the wave of the future no i don't think so i think you know i've had about this offline but i truly believe and i think the you know the regulations for the p.r. of the global protection regulation in europe this kicking off

a may twenty fifth is the beginning of what we'll see you know in my vision is that we have to allow people you me anybody out there to be the owners of their data we don't have to is to do it but you know there's an opportunity there for the block and perhaps that might be the mechanism for all the things we've tried on it's to be able to get people to be the custodians of their own data or perhaps you know the next generation of a company becomes the vault in the custodian where our data is protected but we own it and we're in charge of it and you know we have a long way to go for that but i don't think that it's an impossible task to be able to get some control over critical data it may not be all data. i admired your optimism i hope you're right we want to have you back again to talk about it as we go forward the data wrangler. thank you as always for your time pam thanks mark. and before we go right hailing company over is moving from four wheeled vehicles to

two wheels as it expands the company's portfolio to bike sharing with the purchase of bike sharing company jump which currently operates in san francisco and right here in washington d.c. the reported value of the purchase is roughly two hundred million dollars jump it already planned to expand to other cities including sacramento and davis california and providence rhode island but persia's expected to expedite that and other expansions and on a programming note this area of bike sharing is incredibly interesting and is scurrying all over the world and on tomorrow's broadcast r.t. correspondent peter oliver gets on a bike and tells us about global bike sharing that's coming up next time that's it for now and thanks for watching should get boom bust on you tube you tube dot com slash boom bust r.t. get on your bikes and ride will see you next time.

and see the blue of them some. good news was before. much of those who heard something to the most moving soon we were the bush who would go. but it. sure didn't look beautiful there but needed some good good. move just like most of those those so good you are good good. good go to school some apply to assume you want to show your story should go. to so let's just say. to to you. it was the night of the most they'd say look it is

a. contest not a chance to sneak a mash tow truck to stop the digital control is going to. be of interest because listening to snoop to come up with new logos that is the cause of it for his supporters to go shoot station shouldn't feel you should cut door for one who's doing. a play for many clubs over the years so i know the game inside guides. football isn't only about what happens on the pitch for the final school it's about the passion from the fans it's the age of the super manager killian erroneous and spending two hundred twenty million album fly a. book it's an experience like

nothing else i want to do because i want to share what i think of what i know about the beautiful guy a great so what more chance for. a nice minute. franking gave americans a lot of new job opportunities i needed to come up here to make some money i could make twenty five thousand dollars as a teacher or i could make fifty thousand dollars a year truck so i chose to drive truck people rush to a small town in north dakota was an unemployment rate of zero percent like the gold rush is very very similar to a gold rush but this beautiful story ended with pollution and the bus station a lot of people have left here i don't know too many people here anymore slow down too much they lost their jobs got laid off the american dream is changing that's

not what it used to be. and that's a tough reality to deal with. a violent standoff between police and environmentalists enters its second day and for all its barricades abutting while police fired tear gas to got live reports coming up from the sea. also in headlines of alleged chemical attack in syria was staged no trace of banned substances were found at the scene that's according at least to russia's representative to the united nations says. in interviews not a single local resident confirms the chemical attack everything taken place with the bodies of people killed by chemical agents have not been found. lessons to learn the u.k. faces criticism for donating millions to palestinian schools only to see the reportedly the money spent on books promoting martyrdom and the summit as

a. huge tragedy.