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

Brought to you by Silicon Valley Bank, Ideas Bank here.

I'm Dan Pramak.

On today's show, Lyft's new challenge, and an NFL team jumps head first into online gambling. But first,

sitting in the middle of the trade war. So the stock markets are having a downright awful August

so far and the arrows are deeply red again in early trading this morning. At issue isn't the

economy or the labor market. It's the trade war, the escalating trade war between the

U.S. and China, which is not proving to be, as President Trump once claimed, good and easy to win.

The latest developments, they include Trump imposing new tariffs on Chinese goods, reportedly

over the objections of most of his economic team, and then the U.S. Treasury declaring

China to be a currency

manipulator, even though China's recent activity doesn't meet the generally agreed upon definition

of currency manipulation. China, for its part, isn't backing down. And all of the Larry Kudlow

happy talk in the world can't disguise a growing consensus that this impasse looks increasingly likely to go until the next

U.S. presidential election and could potentially expand into an even less predictable currency war.

In the middle of all this is Huawei, a Chinese tech giant that mostly sells components for

telecom systems and consumer electronics. It has been specifically targeted over the past year by the

U.S. for allegations that it's essentially an arm of the Chinese government and as such presents

national security concerns when its parts are integrated into our telecom infrastructure. But U.S.

interest in Huawei seems to be as much about using it as a trade chip as it is about national security,

thus putting the Chinese company in an almost impossible pickle.

The bottom line, Huawei is the embodiment of this mess.

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