My colleague Jonathan Swartzhas more details on the deal.

Trump Goes After China’s Future

As expected, the Trump administration has proposed new tariffs on Chinese exports this morning, $50 billion of goods, with President Trump issuing a statement that referenced “my great friendship with President Xi of China,” but also pointing to trade between the U.S. and China that has been “very unfair for a very long time.”

As expected, China’s nascent high-tech industry is in focus here. Without specifying the items under export, the President stated “the United States will implement a 25 percent tariff on $50 billion of goods from China that contain industrially significant technologies.

“This includes goods related to China’s Made in China 2025 strategic plan to dominate the emerging high-technology industries that will drive future economic growth for China, but hurt economic growth for the United States and many other countries.”

Added Trump, “The United States can no longer tolerate losing our technology and intellectual property through unfair economic practices.”

Also, Reuters’s Michael Martina and David Lawderreported that a “second wave” of tariffs on goods totaling $100 billion is being prepared, citing multiple unnamed sources.

Remember that the other shoe to drop are what are expected to berestrictions on U.S. exports to China of technology goods.

That action, which is expected June 30, could be much more significant for the tech industry as it could involve fairly broad restrictions on what U.S. chip makers, for example, can sell.

Qualcomm and NXP Seem Finally on Their Way

Speaking of China, shares of chip giant Qualcomm (QCOM) are up 39 cents, or 0.7%, at $59.85, following multiple reports overnight that said Chinese regulators have finally approved the company’s proposed acquisition of NXP Semiconductors (NXPI), which has been working its way through the regulatory approvals process for over a year and a half since Oct. 27, 2016, when Qualcomm offered $110 per share in cash for the company.

Qualcomm was forced in mid-April to re-file its application for approval to China’s regulatory authority, MOFCOM.

However, no official announcement has come from MOFCOM yet.

The South China Morning Post’s Jodi Xu Klein and Robert Delaneyproduced one of the news reports, noting that “while the antitrust issue has been resolved, the sources say timing is not clear on when Mofcom/SAMR will make the announcement, which may depend on other factors including progress in ongoing negotiations with Washington over outstanding trade issues.”

Shares of NXP are up 63 cents, or 0.6%, at $113.64.

Bulls Urge Patience With Adobe

From last night’s earnings reports, the big loser, Adobe Systems (ADBE), continues its decline, its shares falling $5.98, or 2.3%, to $252.12 despite better-than-expected results and outlook, and despite multiple price target increases today.

Canaccord Genuity’s Richard Davis, for example, reiterates a Buy rating, and raises his price target to $280 from $245, calling the company “quite a juggernaut.”

As Davis explains, “When you have a stock that has risen 47% year to date, you shouldn’t be surprised if the stock takes a post print breather—despite an exemplary quarter.”

Davis accuses “model maniacs” among his peers on Wall Street of “stressing out” regarding a forecast from the company that he considers a “conservative” outlook.

Likewise, Rob Oliver with Baird reiterates an Outperform rating and raises his price target to $280 from $260, writing that the stock drop is a “sell the news” matter, perhaps prompted by “less upside in a hot metric,” by which he means the “annualized recurring revenue,” or ARR, a closely watched metric indicating the extent to which customers buy multi-year subscriptions.

For Adobe’s “Document Cloud” ARR, the $694 million reported was below the average estimate for $700 million going into the report.

But, “we’re not worried,” he concludes.

Universal Display Hit by iPhone Concerns

Shares of organic light-emitting diode technology supplier Universal Display (OLED) are down $5.40, or 5.5%, at $93.20, apparently prompted by a report this morning in The Wall Street Journal by Takashi Mochizuki and Yoko Kubota, saying that Apple (AAPL) is “sticking with its old display technology” for “the majority of” this year’s iPhones, and for some units next year, citing multiple unnamed sources.

Analysts had already said for months that Apple will have a mix of OLED and LCD iPhones in this year’s models, expected as usual this fall. The news today, claim the authors, is that the proportion of units made with LCD displays instead of OLED displays is higher than the estimates have been. Universal stock was already badly lagging this year and is down 46% with today’s decline.

I explored the issues with OLED back in an April 6 column for Barron’s. Among the larger issues facing OLED production are that Samsung Electronics (005930KS) remains the only manufacturer making the panels.

While Universal offered a disappointing forecast for this year on May 3, the company told investors to expect 2019 will be “a meaningful year of growth” for the company’s revenue.

Gauging iPhone Estimates

In other iPhone news, Chris Caso with Raymond James, who has a Market Perform rating on Apple shares, offers his own thoughts today on Apple’s plans for the new models.

After talking with various parties supplying Apple, Caso thinks the company plans to make as many units of iPhone this year as last. But, suppliers, he writes, are already expecting Apple will end up cutting production later: “With respect to Apple’s suppliers however, we think most have taken a more conservative view, and have factored y/y production cuts into their 2H expectations.”

Katy Huberty of Morgan Stanley, a bull on Apple shares, offers a more positive spin on essentially the same data. She’s hearing that Apple has order production of about 90 million of its newer iPhone models for the fall. That would be just 1% growth from what it did last year with the iPhone X and iPhone 8 and 8 Plus. That, she writes, is “relatively positive” news, if true, because “despite representing only 1% Y/Y unit growth, it would imply the strongest new iPhone model build forecast since the iPhone 6 cycle in C2H14.”

She notes these fall “builds” of the iPhone “have represented, on average, 71% of total iPhone builds,” which means the total iPhone production could end up being about 127 million units of the iPhone, for the second half of 2018, which is more than the 121 million she was modeling.

Hence, “iPhone shipment estimates in the back half of the year are de-risked moreso than in recent iPhone cycles.”

Apple stock today is down $1.56, or 0.8%, at $189.24.

AMD Expanding Opportunity Against Intel

Shares of Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) are up 23 cents, or 1.5%, at $16.49, after Cowen & Co.analyst Matthew Ramsay this morning reiterated his Outperform rating on the shares, and raised his price target to $21 from $18, after becoming more confident there’s upside for the stock.

The event to prompt Ramsay’s note is the company hosting a webcast the other day with its head ofserver chips, Forrest Norrod, to mark the one-year anniversary of the company’s unveiling of its “EPYC” server chip technology.

“Mr. Norrod largely echoed our thesis that AMD’s shift to 7nm will place the company on process node parity with Intel (INTC) at 10nm silicon, a dynamic not seen in over a decade,” writes Ramsay.

“Given industry checks and management commentary have confirmed technological equivalency, we believe this positions AMD to more effectively compete against Intel across PC and server CPUs.”

“Mgmt noted 7nm products will be manufactured at both TSMC and GlobalFoundries, though we suspect initial products will be at the former.”

AMD also got a nod this morning from David Wong of Wells Fargo, who reports on having sat in on meetings in London between investors and AMD CEO Lisa Su and head of marketing Ruth Cotter, and coming away encouraged by the breadth of product the company now has.

Like Ramsay, he came away encouraged by the manufacturing edge the company can have over Intel and how it can help server-chip sales: “If AMD brings out 7nm Zen 2 EPYC server family in a timely manner, we believe that AMD’s server processor market share could reach as much as 10% in unit share and 6% in revenue share by the end of 2019.”