Business Briefs – November 29, 2018

Fed Officials Express Caution About Pace of Future Hikes

WASHINGTON (AP) – Federal Reserve officials earlier this month appeared on track to raise its key interest rate again in December, but they signaled that the pace of future rate hikes might need to slow given emerging risks to the economy. Minutes of the Fed’s Nov. 7-8 meeting show that Fed officials expressed concerns about a variety of threats, including the impact of tariffs, a slowing global economy and tightening financial conditions amid falling stock prices.

Cruise Control: GM’s No. 2 Exec To Run Self-Driving Car Unit

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) – General Motors is transferring its president from Motor City to Silicon Valley to run its self-driving car operations and pursue an attempt to cash on the automaker’s bet that robotic vehicles will transform transportation. Dan Ammann, currently GM’s second highest ranking executive, will become CEO of the company’s Cruise Automation subsidiary at the beginning of next year. He will replace Cruise co-founder Kyle Vogt, who will become chief technology officer.

Trump’s New NAFTA Faces Skeptics In Now-Democrat-Led House

WASHINGTON (AP) – President Donald Trump spent more than a year browbeating the leaders of Canada and Mexico into agreeing to a rewrite of North American trade rules. And on Friday, those two nations are set to sign the pact at the Group of 20 summit in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Now, Trump faces what could prove a more formidable foe: His own Congress.

In China, Your Car Could Be Talking to the Government

SHANGHAI (AP) – Automakers selling electric vehicles in China send a constant feed of information about the location of cars to the government — potentially adding to the rich kit of surveillance tools available to the regime as President Xi Jinping steps up the use of technology to track Chinese citizens. More than 200 manufacturers, including major global brands, transmit position information and dozens of other data points to monitoring centers, often without car owners’ knowledge, The AP has found.

Puerto Rico Completes Its First Debt Restructuring Deal

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) – The U.S. territory of Puerto Rico has completed its first debt-restructuring deal since the government announced it was bankrupt more than three years ago, giving creditors overall $550 in new bonds for each $1,000 they had held. The agreement announced Thursday was finalized with creditors holding more than $4 billion in debt issued by the now-defunct Government Development Bank.

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