Elon Musk threatens to suspend X in Brazil

The Street

TheStreet’s Conway Gittens brings you the biggest news of the day, including what investors are watching and why X users in Brazil may lose the platform.

Transcript

00:00I'm Conway Gittins reporting from the New York Stock Exchange. Here's what we're watching on the street today.

00:05A tame inflation report gives Wall Street the green light to move higher. The personal consumption expenditures index for July rose just

00:130.2% as expected. Over the past 12 months, the Federal Reserve's preferred inflation gauge is up two and a half percent.

00:21Couple that modest rise in inflation with data showing a resilient consumer and an orderly slowdown in the labor market and

00:28investors believe the stage is set for the Fed to start cutting rates in September.

00:33In other business headlines, new worries are emerging about Elon Musk's ability to handle all the battles

00:40he's facing. The latest threat comes from Brazil, where X is facing a government-ordered shutdown.

00:46Musk has been locked in a war of words with South America's most populous nation.

00:51The billionaire has refused to employ a coordinator to handle required removal of posts deemed political

00:59misinformation by the government ahead of municipal elections. A shutdown in Brazil would compound revenue trouble for X with

01:07171 million active social media users knocked off the social network according to local estimates.

01:13Musk can hardly afford that with global revenues in freefall since he took over in 2022.

01:20Meanwhile, the spat has spread to Starlink, the satellite internet service powered by Musk's other company,

01:27SpaceX. The Brazilian Supreme Court has frozen Starlink's domestic bank accounts,

01:31putting service in one of Starlink's major markets in jeopardy. And if that's not enough, in another part of the world,

01:39Musk is fighting the European Union.

01:42Regulators there say X

01:44violated its Digital Services Act aimed at putting guardrails on misinformation and harmful speech. In that case,

01:50Musk could be hit with a fine of up to 6% of X's global sales.

01:56That'll do it for your daily briefing from the New York Stock Exchange. I'm Conway Gittens with The Street.

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