A win is a win, even when it’s little.

The European Commission on Tuesday solidified new tariffs for electric vehicles imported from China. The EU has been making noise about imposing tariffs for a while, arguing that they’re necessary to stop cheap Chinese EVs from flooding the market. The actual numbers the EU has settled on aren’t too harsh, and Tesla, which is not a Chinese company but exports from China, got a better deal than most.

Tariff Off 

The EU launched an antitrust investigation into China-made EVs in September last year. Chinese state subsidies mean that large domestic firms like BYD can offer vehicles at a much lower price point than foreign rivals like Tesla.

While Tesla has managed to come out of this tariff situation somewhat victorious, the raw numbers still skew in favor of domestic Chinese companies:

• Tesla will have to pay a tariff of 9% under the new directive, while BYD will have to pay 17%, Geely 19.3%, and SAIC 36.3%. Tesla already hiked the price of its Model 3 cars in multiple European countries last month by €1,500 ($1,622) when it was reported that the EU was going to slap it with a 20% tariff (which it looks like Tesla successfully appealed).
• Emma Orr, director of bids for the EV sector at startup consultancy Winning Business, told The Daily Upside that even when weighed down with tariffs, Chinese firms are hard to beat on price. “People are still likely to buy BYD cars […] because even with the tariff, it is still a very economical economy/budget car,” said Orr.

Cory Hewett, director at FIXD automotive, told The Daily Upside that the EU’s new tariffs are “likely too muted to fully achieve the desired result,” adding: “Even with the tariffs, BYDs may still be cheaper than the competition in the European [market] while generating higher profits per vehicle than in their home markets in China.”

Home Turf: Tesla might have won a battle in Europe, but there’s a war raging back in China. Elon Musk managed to convince the Chinese government back in April to let Tesla sell its driver-assistance software in the country — but that still hasn’t happened yet. Musk said he expects the company’s famous Full Self-Driving software to be cleared by regulators by the end of the year, but according to a Wall Street Journal report, local companies are bulking out the driver-assistance market before Tesla’s even had a chance to get its foot in the car door. 

Disney’s push for global sports broadcasting dominance just got hit with another flag on the play.

On Tuesday, Reuters reported that antitrust regulators in India flagged Disney’s $8.5 billion merger with local media giant Reliance for potential competition concerns in the all-important arena of cricket broadcast rights. The tough beat comes just days after Disney faced similar antitrust scrutiny over the imminent launch of Venu Sports, Disney’s streaming joint venture with Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery. 

Jiminy Cricket

Via its Disney Star family of TV stations, the House of Mouse already controls the TV broadcast rights to Indian Premier League cricket. But in the last round of rights bidding, Disney’s Hotstar streaming service lost the IPL streaming rights to Reliance’s JioCinema streamer. Then, in February, the two companies decided to join forces anyhow, agreeing to a merger to create a joint venture that would stand as a cricket powerhouse, with control of roughly half of the country’s linear TV audience and 85% of its streaming audience, per analyst projections. (Disney is set to own about 36% of the merged entity.) In other words, it’s a market effectively cornered.

Speaking of cornered markets, streaming service Fubo, which offers over-the-top access to live linear TV stations including ESPN and Fox Sports, has accused Disney, Fox, and WBD of doing just that via Venu Sports. Last Friday, a US district judge agreed — and now Disney is in double-trouble warding off antitrust concerns:

• As part of the decision, a preliminary injunction has been placed on the launch of Venu Sports, which was initially planned to launch this fall in conjunction with the start of the latest NFL season. The judge essentially argued that together, Disney, Fox, and WBD would control 60% of nationally broadcasted sports rights in the US — potentially kneecapping competitors like Fubo.
• Meanwhile, the Competition Commission of India has privately warned Disney and Reliance about their imminent control of sports rights in the subcontinent, sources told Reuters. The regulatory process is ongoing, and a deal is still likely if the two companies offer sufficient concessions, per Reuters.

Touchdown: Elsewhere in Hollywood, Netflix continues to prove that life as an international media powerhouse isn’t always so bad. On Tuesday, shares of the preeminent streamer hit an all-time high of $711.33; Netflix’s stock is up nearly 50% year-to-date. It’s easy to see why. The company also shared on Tuesday that its upfront ad negotiations for the year have concluded, with sales increasing 150% year-over-year thanks in part to live events like Christmas Day NFL games and WWE Raw. Who needs mergers when your one app already has it all?

The commercial real estate game in 2024 is a real fixer-upper, but America’s third-largest bank has found a partner looking for a new lease on life.

Wells Fargo said Tuesday that it will sell most of its commercial mortgage servicing business to Trimont, a global loan services provider, in a deal that will make the buyer the biggest servicer in the US commercial real estate industry.

Office Suite Deal

Wells Fargo and Trimont did not disclose the terms of the deal, but Trimont CEO Bill Sexton said his firm would take over servicing for roughly $475 billion worth of loans. That will triple Trimont’s loans under management to over $715 billion, and take it from the 10th-largest servicer in the US commercial real estate industry to the largest.

Loan servicing — the administrative aspects of loans like billing, collections, and remitting funds to the lender — has been handled by nonbanks. In the case of Wells Fargo, which said last year that it was refocusing its mortgage business on its customers instead of acquiring new ones, weaning off of commercial loans aligns with in-house strategy. More broadly, the steep decline in US commercial real estate since the pandemic has cut into the sector’s appeal:

• A survey by CoStar analyst Nigel Hughes, released earlier this month, found appraised values have fallen between 20% and 80% for properties in San Francisco with commercial mortgage-backed securities in default.
• Last month, The Wall Street Journal reported figures from data firm MSCI that said $20.5 billion worth of office buildings, apartments, and other commercial property were foreclosed or seized in the second quarter, up 13% from the first quarter and the most of any quarter since 2015.

End Result: Wells Fargo will maintain service for third-party agency and government-sponsored loans along with the commercial property loans on its balance sheet. Trimont, meanwhile, is betting that the “strategically important transaction” will catapult it to new prestige among real estate capital providers.