Crain’s Headlines: US-China Trade War Signals Trouble for Boeing


Boeing 787 Dreamliners once praised as “beautiful” by President Donald Trump could become a casualty of his escalating trade war with China.

The sparring between the two economic superpowers has injected new uncertainty into Boeing’s wide-body production and deliveries, particularly for jets like the 787 Dreamliner and the larger 777 that are popular with Chinese airlines. So says Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg, who warns analysts that the lack of a trade deal with China adds risk to the Chicago plane maker’s long-term plans to market its wide-body jets overseas.

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In other local business news:

Are Groupon and Yelp looking at a deal?

The Wall Street Journal hints at the possibility in a new report. However, the idea of a Groupon-Yelp marriage has turned up before.

Here’s the backstory: Shares of Chicago-based Groupon climbed 21% since an activist investor, Robert Chapman, disclosed in late August that he’d bought a 1.5% stake in the company and wanted to see a significant stock buyback or an outright sale of Groupon, whose stock has sagged in recent years. Now Chapman is signaling he’s exiting his position in the company, and the Journal says people familiar with the situation say a link-up with Yelp could be in play.

And finally, student enrollment across the three-campus University of Illinois system set a seventh consecutive record this fall.

New data out Thursday shows the university with almost 89,000 students, an increase of 3.8%, at its campuses in Urbana-Champaign, Chicago and Springfield.

For the first time in its 152-year history, the Urbana-Champaign campus started the 2019 academic year with more than 50,000 students.

And based on the most recent figure, the system as a whole expects to stay on pace to meet its five-year goal of 93,600 students by the fall of 2021.


Crain’s Headlines is a joint production between WTTW and Crain’s Chicago Business. It airs every Monday through Thursday on the WTTW News program “Chicago Tonight.” 


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