The Shortlist, August 7, 2019: Tariffs with a Side of Fries

It has been a tumultuous week in the stock markets with the announcement of a new 10% tariff on $300 million of Chinese goods slated to go into effect on September 1st.
This is the first round of tariffs to target consumer goods, and retailers reeled accordingly.

China responded to the tariffs by devaluing its currency to its lowest level since 2008. This sent American markets into their worst day of 2019.

Better Burgers Faster?
While America and China continue to take bites out each other’s economies, fast food chain Shake Shack announced a move to get more mouths on its burgers.

In the company’s Q2 earnings call on Monday, it announced a new partnership with delivery service GrubHub. Shake Shack CEO & Director Randy Garutti had this to say about the deal:

"With continued growth and importance of our digital evolution, I'm pleased to share that we've chosen to formalize and launch a partnership today with Grubhub, to deliver Shake Sack to hungry fans nationwide. During the deep learning of the pilot phase, we've benefited from taking our time to understand the needs of our guests, the important and necessary operational aspects of executing delivery well and the relative strengths of potential partners. We've learned a lot with each of the delivery providers with whom we've piloted, and we're excited to move forward on this important part of our overall digital ecosystem and guest offering."

The companies are currently piloting the service in four Shake Shack locations across the Northeast and Chicago.

What July Meant for Jobs
On Friday the Bureau of Labor Statistics released the July jobs report, which revealed an addition of 164-thousand non-farm jobs. Overall, the report was in line with analyst expectations. Here’s what Merrill Lynch/Bank of America CIO Marci McGregor took away from the report in an interview with Yahoo Finance.

Unemployment stayed steady at 3.7 percent as well.

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