Consider the stress of middle-market companies like retailer Warby Parker, which sources a lot of its eyewear from China, one of America’s largest trading partners and a major focus of the United States’ global trade war. U.S. tariffs on nearly all foreign countries are making the...
Consumer spending — the engine that drives the U.S. economy — is flagging, helping to reverse what seemed like relentless growth in gross domestic product (GDP) in previous quarters. On Thursday (June 26), the Bureau of Economic Analysis reported that the economy shrank by 0.5%...
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell told Congress on Tuesday (June 24) that higher tariffs will likely lead to higher prices down the line – though when, and how much of, those costs might be passed along to consumers is uncertain. The central banker’s testimony before...
The Federal Reserve wants more time to study the impact of tariffs before cutting rates. That’s according to Jerome Powell, the central bank’s chair, testifying Tuesday (June 24) that the Fed needs to see if tariffs push inflation higher before deciding on the interest rate...
The most recent inflation data indicate that the impact of tariffs overall has been thus far not been as drastic as some might have feared. But consumers are still mulling what’s to come, and the spending picture is at best mixed. On Tuesday (June 24), The...
Private equity (PE) groups are sitting on roughly $1 trillion in unsold assets. That’s capital that, in a normal market climate, would have been given back to investors, Reuters reported Wednesday (June 18), citing findings from PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). As Reuters notes, high interest rates in the U.S., the White...
U.S. retail and food services sales saw a month-over-month decline of 0.9% in May after slipping 0.1% in April, the Census Bureau reported Tuesday (June 17). The greatest declines were in the automotive and building materials sectors, the Bureau said in a Tuesday press release....
American companies are reportedly resorting to job cuts amid tariff-related uncertainty. More than 170 companies are expected to announce layoffs this month, Seeking Alpha reported Saturday (June 14), citing WARNTracker.com, a website that tracks cuts based on Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act notices...
Household net worth in the United States declined by 0.9% during the first quarter, according to the Federal Reserve. The figure decreased by $1.6 trillion, from $170.9 trillion in the fourth quarter of 2024 to $169.3 trillion, the Federal Reserve said in its “Financial Accounts...