Welcome to access pro rata, where we take just 10 minutes to get you smarter on the collision of tech, business, and politics.

Sponsored by Silicon Valley Bank, Ideas Bank here. I'm Dan for Mack. On today's show, a digital media mega merger and the big piece of legislation that could actually be helped

by impeachment.

But first, a new threat to U.S. manufacturing.

So earlier this week, a major index of U.S. manufacturing showed the lowest reading in over a decade.

It also was the second straight month of contraction and came amid declining U.S. exports.

And just to show how seriously the stock

markets took this, the Dow lost more than 200 points right after the report came out. Because any

sustained declined U.S. manufacturing is believed by many to be a precursor to recession. Now,

there was some subsequent manufacturing data that softened this story a bit, but it is tough

to argue that the

trade war isn't taking a major bite out of U.S. manufacturing, despite President Trump routinely

and mostly baselessly talking about how jobs are coming home from China.

But what Trump's rhetoric really overlooks is the idea of U.S. jobs going overseas was never a

one-way flow. Chinese jobs and jobs from other countries also came here, including manufacturing ones.

And all of this bellicose uncertainty can have an immediate impact in terms of paused plans by manufacturers,

and in the long term, a lasting decrease in the number of opportunities for U.S. workers,

particularly as other countries

significantly grow their own manufacturing bases. In 15 seconds, we'll go deeper with Axios reporter

Erica Pandy. But first, this. This episode is brought to you by Silicon Valley Bank. Know everything

about coding, but not so much about banking. For more than 35 years, Silicon Valley Bank has been

helping high-growth

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