Officer gary cohn. The white house says hes not leaving his post well have all the details. Steve bannon says were at economic war with china. The former ceo of lvmh will tell us why he actually doesnt think the u. S. Can afford a trade war right now. Lets start with the two big things investors are watching carefully. Retail earnings again and more potential drama in washington. Courtney reagan is covering the walmart story for us and eamon javers has the latest political intrigue out of the white house. Courtney, lets start with you. Shares of walmart are down today. You mentioned dragging the dow lower. Pessimism, of course, hanging or the entire retail sector, and while there was a solid quarter for walmart expectations were high going in and walmarts quarter earnings only meet expectations on the high end some of the pressure down 2 walmarts profit and revenue beat expectations and raised the lower end of its previous fullyear Guidance Range now, profit is still held down in part due to some of the investments walmart is making to improve ecommerce, prices, wages, stores and a lot more, but the investments do seem to be working walmarts u. S. Comp sales grew 1. 8 that marks 12 straight quarters of comp sales growth in this country. Traffic also higher for the 11th straight quarter its pretty hard to find or beat a trend like that in retail right now. Sams club saw its comp sales grow for six straight quarters and 9 of 11 countries where walmart operates also grew the comp sales the big box retailer says sales strengths, pretty broadbased over categories noting the best performance in five years. Some inflation helped it there, and the discounters, u. S. Online net sales grew 60 last quarter with 63 both of those year over year Online Grocery ordering for store pickup, thats a pretty important growth driver in that result, so its part of ecommerce its already in 900 stores and 1,100 by year end. Back over to you guys. You know, i know, i dont think walmart would ever admit to it, but this reinvestment strategy, if just takes a page out of amazons playbook for a long time and it does seem to be paying off this is what the Second Quarter that weve seen where youve seen such a huge increase in their online sales, right . Yeah. So, i mean, i understand what youre saying. Amazon certainly has been in investment phase for a long time i dont know if they were ever reinvestment walmart is reinvesting they started the big investment with the stores and they have to reinvest in the online and using the two together youre right the online sales are up 60 for net sales is really strong last quarter was 63 i will say though that walmart did change that metric a little bit so its a little bit hard to compare over time beyond just the last two quarters, and they are pulling out u. S. Ecommerce as opposed to international. Its not a comp number anymore still strong, but harder to see the trend over time. That is why you do what you do, courtney shes reading the fine print. Thanks. Thanks. See you later. And the shares of walmart coming back a little bit even as the dow is down 200 points new questions about the fate of gary cohn and white house chief strategist steve bannon. Eamon javers from bridgewater, new jersey with the president. Eamon . Reporter just in the mast 15 minutes or so weve gotten a new tweet from President Trump who as you said is in bedminster, new jersey, study what general pershing of the United States did to terrorists when caught. Thereto was no more radical islamic terror for 35 years. This tweet coming, of course, after the apparent terrorist attack in barcelona today. The president appears to be referring to a story that circulated on the internet about general pershing in the philippines in 1899, allegedly dipping soldier bullets in pig bloods before executing muslim insurgents historians have looked at that story and say its not at all clear that this happened as alleged and the story that circulates on the internet nonetheless, it gives you a sense of the president s mood here today in terms of what hes focusing his attention on today. Senator bob corker, republican of tennessee, issuing some of the toughest commentary yet weve seen about President Trump this week from an ally in the United States senate heres corkers statement that he gave earlier today saying that the president recently has not demonstrate that had he understands the character of this nation. He has not common stwrated that he understands what has made this nation great. He also says the president hasnt demonstrated stability and competence and calls for radical changes inside the white house and so much here on the fate of gary cohn, the National Economic director. Would he resign or not after the president s Fiery Press Conference in relations between the various protest groups in charlottesville, virginia last weekend. Cohn though not issuing any formal statement himself heres the most recent guidance weve gotten from the white house. They are saying nothing has changed. Gary is focused on his responsibilities as nec director, and any reports to the contrary are 100 false. So thats the state of play here in new jersey, guys, where were monitoring the president s working vacation back over to you all right eamon. Thank you very much. Well be checking back with you. Lets get to sue herera for the late on the terror attack in barcelona. Sue . Thank you very much heres what we know this hour had. The death toll, as we told you briefly before, has gone up. We now have 13 dead and 50 injured. When that terrorist attack took place earlier today in barcelona, right now thats a little bit after 9 00 p. M. They have made one arrest in that attack. We do not know what he has been arrested for, whether it was renting the van or driving the van through that group of people this occurred on the city center basically that is closed to cars but they can drive on either side, and apparently he jumped the curb and raced through what was a very crowded city center keep in mind thats dinnertime, and also its the height of tourist season thats one of the most popular places in barcelona, and as a result of that have there were many, many injuries, and as we know now 13 casualties barcelonas hospitals are asking for blood donations. The police have shut down transportation too that particular part of the city at the request of Emergency Services all Public Events have been cancelled, and we are waiting for more comments, and we were hoping to get a press briefing, but that is what we know so far. We have 13 dead and 50 injured, and earlier on the interior ministry expect that had death toll to go up and, unfortunately, it has. Bill, kell de, ill send it back to you. Sue, what do we know the suspects at this point we dont know anything about them we dont know who they are, what their motivation was other than obviously to cause mass chaos and now ultimately death, but we do not know anything about the background of the suspect. We do not know if there is more than one there are conflicting reports about that as well all right sue, well check back in with you. You got it. Please keep us posted sue herera. To the markets now a down day pretty clear for equities, yields in the treasuries are lower as well they are selling stocks, buying bonds. Gold is also higher for a second day running here lets get to our Closing Bell Exchange art cashin with us here at post 9 and Rick Santelli checks in from the cme art, last week the concerns about north korea sent us down briefly and today the concerns that if Something Like gary cohn leaves the white house it could very much put in peril the president s economic agenda. Yeah. Well, no disrespect to mr. Cohn, but its real reaffecting the market not the fear that only he would leave. Yes. They are afraid that it would lead to a kind of mass exodus, and the one thing thats been said, even by people who dont favor the president , is that well at least hes surrounded himself with some very capable people the generals that he has, wilbur ross, mnuchin, and if people began to fear as they did this morning that if cohn would leave and he was no longer surrounded by competent people and that took a hit in the market the other thing we have to remember is some of of this is technical. Weve had a couple of hindenberg owe men meaning the new highs and lows and breadth of the market has been sitting. And the s p is below its 50day moving average. 2450 was a beachhead for you this morning, but now were well below that. Yes thats where they held twice this morning and now have plunged through, so its going to be a little bit tough here. Tony, what do you think is behind all of the weakness that were seeing today well, on a daybyday basis our cio likes to call this the worlds greatest Reality Tv Show in terms of what were seeing in weese, and when you have that it, you have episodes that are sometimes very fun and encouraging in terms of what it means to business and you have other times that are kind of disconcerting. Thats what weve got going on today. Our job as Equity Investors is to kind of hit the mute button on the tv and go back to our knitting and look for what matters in terms of being longterm investors. We have criteria for looking at that and selecting stocks that we think will do well. Are you encouraged in what you see in that . Earnings certainly being as we like to say the lifeblood of the stock market, are you enkeernlged by what youve seen here we are. We are the companies we own are doing well youre seeing it in some of the beaten down sectors, for example, just talking about walmart and what happened there. Target has been doing better lately, for example, and anything positive in retail is kind of amazing to anybody right now, right although the overall retail macro numbers pretty good. What about some of the data this morning . Mixed back. Yeah, again yeah, it was a mixed bagging. Go ahead, rick. You want rick yes, sir. It was a mixed bag. Everybody noticed down 12,000 in jobless, never a bad thing up. 2 in Industrial Production and when you separate it out, the auto sectors, im sure everybody has been talking about that all day it was on weak side what i found the most fascinating is how the Euro Currency came in and got hit hard and did a bit of a reversal to me theres a lot of whats in that story with the ecb minutes that could actually not only lend to whats moving in Foreign Exchange hand in the fixed income sovereign market but maybe partially in stocks. Listen, multinationals have had a weak dollar for a while now, and the ecb is now at that point where they are not liking the strong euro. Maybe it there affect policy and maybe it wont, but thats put extra volatility in it remember, when youre in the low 220s or under 220, you see a lot of things happen you see the vix shoot up as did and equities down. Its like the trifecta of the wrong type of cycle and were now in that. If theres a yellow light flashing to me that comes from the fixed income market. Right now youre at those yield levels so you want to monitor if you get above 15 and 16 in the vix and the down trade in the equities figures right in. Remember, 213 is a low yield close for the year were not too far away from t. Arthur, what do you expect here weve got 48 minutes left in the trading session. What will are you looking at well, interestingly enough the first look at the market on closes heavily to the buy side and yet the market has not moved, so that tells me that theres a high risk that they could actually pair off. I think pressure will remain on it its the day before an option expiration its going to be a tough look. The Vice President i think is supposed to make a statement shortly, but hes coming back a day early, and that will a lot of chatter going on yesterday as to whether that may mean some changes in washington within this administration. Yeah. We will see. Gentlemen, thank you appreciate your thoughts on todays Market Action. Tony scherer, art cashin and Rick Santelli. And were 47 minutes away from the close right now with the dow just hovering above the lows of the session. Down about 200 points. Well take you live to the nasdaq for more on the technology weakness. This is one of the worst days for tech in quite a while. But, first, with all the uncertainty in washington, two top former ceos discuss what it will take for the president to regain support from the nations Business Leaders when closing bell comes back markets Holding Steady at the lows of the session. Dow down 204 points. Interestingly the decline on august 14th, which weve been looking back on was also. 93 for the dow. Weve had a couple of sharper down days even as it tries to climb back. Were back below 22,000 let get a check on some of the days market movers. L brands, the worst performing stock in the s p after a 14 samestore sales decline prompted the retailer to lower its fullyear Earnings Guidance. The sales decline largely due to its decision to stop selling swim wear and other apparel at victorias secret, and were told that they dont make the catalog anymore which doesnt make sense Molina Healthcare after Morgan Stanley raised its raise target to 68 to 65. The analyst says that molinas turnaround effort appear to be on the cusp of suck seweding. Big move. Backlash in washington over the president s response to the violence in charlottesville, prompting the fate over some white house staffers in the spotlight is white house economic adviser gary cohn and what his departure could mean for business lets bring in our guests to talk about the relationship between business and washington, mark you know the questions of whether the ceo should have resigned from those councils or not. Youre of the opinion that for a ceo, your Company Comes first, right . Of course first and foremost, what youre there for, make the company work so if this is going to reflect badly on your company its going to walk away . Unfortunately, these people came to washington to help the government and whats going on now they cant because they have to walk away because their number one priority is to protect the brand they represent. As that happens, ben, has the president risked losing the broader support of the Business Community . I think there is some risk of that, and i agree with mark. A ceo has to do whats right for the company and two things that businesses dont like are uncertainty and distraction and washington is sure supplying plenty of both of those things right now. But it comes, ben, at the cost of the economic agenda so dear to the Business Community, the tax cut and infrastructure spending, the reduction in regulations. Does all of that work stop necessarily with the denies of these ceo councils, do you think . Well, lets hope it doesnt in fact, its disappointing that these have dissolve the but i understand why the ceos have made this decision, but the president and his advisers clearly need to stay close to the Business Community because he got elected at least in part because of a vision of lower taxes, less regulation and sort of an improved economic environment, and if the distractions going on are unable to allow him to get the support that he needs to make those, thats going to make for a very difficult time and the American Business in the economy. Meanwhile, mark, do you read as everyone else does into the staffing issues with the president s inner circle, what it would mean if gary cohn left and if steve bannon did and so forth. I think everybody is replaceable and if he needs to deal with it, hell deal with it the president still has the telephone and has the right to call anyone who he wants to give advice publicly these folks may not want to put their name out there and privately how can you turn your back on country it just wont happen. Do you think the president having had this reputational hit from all of these executive departures will turn around and malign their industries and companies as a result . I would hope not and would think not. The president is a smart man hard to explain what he thinks but the Business Community is wonderful. For once and all weve had people involved in our government some of the greatest smartest people youve ever met came out of business. With all due respect to politicians, i was thrilled when i saw Business People get involved at the government have a different perspective ceos know one thing, charged with performing. Executions dont work. They have to work. Thats a good thing in washington. Steve bannon says were already at an economic war with china. Are we can we afford that where do you think that goes with all due respect to steve bannon, first and foremost the word war doesnt work in life or in business. The chinese are our Business Partners were very, very tight with them, and what do they have to gain were a 50 billion deficit. They are benefiting by our relationship, but you have to look at it this way, if you will no one likes to be in an indefensible position. He called them on intellectual properties and said you need to toe the line here. What is the chinese premier going to say how dare you challenge me stealing your intellectual property you cant do it. This is about negotiation. We need the chinese. They need us we buy a tremendous amount from each other were partners and theres bluster back and forth and the president is negotiating. The president has been tough on china and they are heading into the Peoples Congress this fall domestically they have been cracking down on incertainly dissent and how do you expect them to respond to whats coming out of the white house they will have to get their act together, right . If you remember former obama aide and now mayor of chicago rahm emanuel made the statement that never let a good crisis go to waste he got criticized