Business Briefs – November 29, 2016

First Data: Thanksgiving, Black Friday Sales Up 9 Percent

NEW YORK (AP) — Shoppers put in a strong showing on Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday.

Holiday spending rose 9 percent Thursday and Friday combined, compared with the same two-day period last year, according to First Data. The bump was fueled by shoppers turning to online deals.

E-commerce sales rose 10.8 percent for the two-day period, while sales at physical stores grew 8.6 percent, according to First Data, which analyzed online and in-store payments across different forms of payment cards from nearly one million merchants Thanksgiving and Friday. The data captures about 40 percent of all card transactions in the U.S. but excludes cash.

For-Profit Colleges Expect Fortunes To Improve Under Trump

BOSTON (AP) — After nearing collapse under the Obama administration, the for-profit college industry is celebrating Donald Trump’s election as a chance for a rebound.

As stock prices for some of the nation’s largest college chains have surged, industry lobbyists say they have received a warm welcome from Trump’s transition team and already have launched a campaign to rebrand the embattled industry as a key to the new president’s plan for economic growth. While Trump has yet to detail his education plan, some in the sector see the president-elect as an ally who has championed the private sector and promised to roll back many regulations.

Trump Rollback of Obama Climate Agenda May Prove Challenging

WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump plans to dismantle President Barack Obama’s efforts to reduce planet-warming carbon emissions. But delivering on his campaign pledges to abolish the Environmental Protection Agency and bring back tens of thousands of coal mining jobs could prove far more difficult.

Internal documents from the president-elect’s transition team reviewed by The Associated Press show the new administration plans to stop defending the Clean Power Plan and other Obama-era environmental regulations that have been the subject of long-running legal challenges filed by Republican-led states and the fossil fuel industry.

Against that potential opposition, environmental groups are gearing up to defend Obama’s environmental legacy in court.

U.S. Consumer Confidence Jumps To Highest Level in 9 Years

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. consumer confidence rebounded this month to the highest level in more than nine years. The Conference Board said Tuesday that its consumer confidence index registered 107.1 in November, the highest since July 2007.

The survey was mostly taken before the Nov. 8 election. Conference Board economist Lynn Franco says that “it appears from the small sample of postelection responses that consumers’ optimism was not impacted by the outcome.”