đ Priced out
Plus: Auto industry heading off course?
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Tariffs are taking their toll. A recent study says tariffs are souring the mood for global exporters, and most U.S. companies say theyâre raising prices to deal with the levies.
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The cost of complacency. JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said Wall Street is showing âan extraordinary amount of complacencyâ amid President Donald Trumpâs âextremeâ tariffs.
Duties cutting into Appleâs core. The company has been a big casualty of the trade war â iPhone exports from China to the U.S. plunged last month to their lowest levels since 2011.
Nailing down its margins. Home Depotâs CFO just said the company doesnât expect to pass tariff costs onto its customers because itâs betting on its scale and diversified supply chain.
Painting over problems? First-quarter earnings from Home Depot may look fine, but the deeper numbers show that the housing market chill is hitting the company â hard.
Battery-powered billions. The worldâs largest EV battery-maker, CATL, just shook the financial world with its Hong Kong IPO, raising $4.6 billion in the worldâs largest public offering this year.
Pumped for the weekend. Gas prices over Memorial Day weekend could be the lowest in decades: a projected national average of $3.08 per gallon.
Small doses, big business. Noom will offer microdoses of its compounded weight-loss drug as it looks to adapt to demand for budget-friendly solutions with fewer side effects.
Home sick
For many Americans, the white picket fence is starting to look like a velvet rope.
Mortgage rates briefly crossed 7% this week following Moodyâs U.S. debt downgrade, pushing the average 30-year fixed loan to 6.99%. Combine that with Marchâs $403,700 median home price, and youâre looking at monthly payments of around $2,661 â and thatâs before taxes, insurance, or any maintenance.
That adds up to $32,000 a year in mortgage costs alone â or 43% of the median U.S. household income of $75,000. And that assumes, of course, that you have an $80,000 down payment lying around.
As a result, first-time buyers are getting iced out, existing homeowners arenât selling, and inventory is tight. The result: high prices, few homes, and rising rates â a three-hit combo locking more and more people out of the market.
One economist called the timing ânot ideal,â and social media is filled with âCondolences to your real estate agentâ posts. The bottom line? Until wages rise or borrowing costs fall, homeownership will stay less âAmerican dreamâ and more âunrealistic fantasyâ â with utilities not included. Quartzâs Catherine Baab has more on how the American Dream got appraised out.
Out of juice
The auto industryâs foot is off the gas.
Honda just hit the brakes on its EV dreams, slashing its investment into the technology by $21 billion. Blame that on sluggish U.S. demand, shifting emissions rules, and what the company calls an âuncertainâ auto environment that has changed âday by day.â
GM is also swerving. Itâs scrapping Chevy Tahoe exports to China and hitting pause on other luxe exports. The move guts its high-end Durant Guild export program, which never really got out of first gear â the effort accounted for less than 0.1% of G.M.âs China volume.
If you zoom out, youâll see that the whole U.S. auto marketâs stalling. High-speed charger installations are down 21% year over year; BloombergNEF slashed its charging forecast by 20%. Teslaâs reputation has tanked from âExcellentâ to âPoorâ in a poll, and its stock has followed suit, shedding over 50% before a recent bounce.
Add in tariffs (25% on auto imports, 30% on Chinese goods, and 10% on U.S. cars entering China) and the GOPâs full-court press against Bidenâs EV incentives and you get a market thatâs increasingly hostile to auto industry growth. Quartzâs Niamh Rowe has more on why the road ahead is looking rocky.