Less selection, higher prices: How tariffs are shaping the holiday shopping season
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Globe and Mail
an hour ago
- Globe and Mail
US stocks edge higher as a busy week for markets picks up momentum
NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stock indexes are ticking higher as a busy week for Wall Street picks up momentum. The S&P 500 was up 0.2% in early trading Tuesday after setting all-time highs for six straight days. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was flat, and the Nasdaq composite was up 0.5%, coming off its own record. JetBlue Airways and SoFi Technologies rose but Merck fell following a jumbled set of profit reports from big U.S. companies. Treasury yields were easing a bit as the Federal Reserve gets set to begin a two-day meeting where it will decide what to do with short-term interest rates. THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP's earlier story follows below. Wall Street chugged mostly higher in premarket trading Tuesday as Chinese and U.S. officials begin a second day of trade talks and the Federal Reserve kicks off its two-day meeting to make a decision on interest rate policy. The meetings come amid one of the busiest weeks of corporate earnings season and a flurry of economic data. Futures for the S&P 500 were up 0.2%, while futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average edged 0.1% higher. Nasdaq futures rose 0.4% before the bell. Analysts said investors were watching for the latest from President Donald Trump and U.S. trade talks with China in Stockholm. U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng were meeting in the Swedish capital. 'Aside from addressing economic imbalances, tariffs are also now well entrenched in the geopolitical arena,' Tan Boon Heng of the Asia & Oceania Treasury Department at Mizuho Bank said in a commentary. With regard to the Fed meeting, the widespread expectation on Wall Street is that officials at the U.S. central bank will wait until September to resume cutting interest rates, though a couple of Trump's appointees could dissent in the vote. The Fed has been on hold with interest rates this year since cutting them several times at the end of 2024. Trump has publicly chastised Fed Chair Jerome Powell for not cutting the benchmark lending rate, which Powell says is due to the uncertain ramifications of Trump's trade war, most notably whether those policies will trigger higher inflation. In corporate news, UnitedHealth Group shares slid 4% after the company badly missed Wall Street's second-quarter earnings expectations and disappointed investors with its updated profit forecast. The health care giant said Tuesday that it expects rising medical costs to continue to pressure its performance and forecast adjusted earnings of at least $16 per share in 2025. The company had started 2025 with an initial forecast for adjusted earnings of up to $30 per share. Union Pacific rose 1.2% in premarket after it offered up details on its bid to merge with Norfolk Southern that would create the U.S.'s first transcontinental railroad. Union Pacific is offering $20 billion cash and one share of its stock to buy Norfolk Southern, the companies said Tuesday, adding that the merger would streamline deliveries of all kinds of raw materials and goods. Norfolk Southern shares fell 3%. Novo Nordisk, which makes the weight loss drug Wegovy, plunged 24% in premarket trading after the company cut its sales and operating profit for the year. Also reporting earnings Tuesday are Boeing and Starbucks. Hundreds of U.S. companies are lined up to report how much profit they made during the spring, with nearly a third of the businesses in the S&P 500 index scheduled to deliver updates this week. The government will also be busy this week, releasing three separate sets of data on the labor market, punctuated with the July jobs report on Friday. The first second-quarter GDP estimate come on Wednesday, followed by the Fed's preferred measure of inflation on Thursday. Elsewhere, in Europe at midday, France's CAC 40 jumped 1.3% in early trading, while the German DAX rose 1.1%. Britain's FTSE 100 added 0.5%. Japan's benchmark Nikkei 225 fell 0.8% to 40,674.55 on broad selling of major companies including automakers and big banks. Toyota Motor Corp. dipped 2.3% and Honda Motor Co. fell 2.1%. Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group finished 1.8% lower, while Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group stock dipped 1.6%. Hong Kong's Hang Seng dropped 0.2% to 25,524.45, while the Shanghai Composite gained 0.3% to 3,609.71. Australia's S&P/ASX 200 edged 0.1% higher to 8,704.60. South Korea's Kospi gained 0.7% to 3,230.57. Samsung Electronics edged 0.3% higher after jumping nearly 7% on Monday on news that it signed a deal with Tesla to provide computer chips for its electric vehicles. In energy trading, benchmark U.S. crude was unchanged at $66.71 a barrel. Brent crude, the international standard, gained 5 cents to $69.37 a barrel.
Toronto Star
2 hours ago
- Toronto Star
Netherlands bans far-right Israeli ministers as EU considers sanctions over Gaza
THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — The Netherlands has banned two far-right Israeli ministers from entering the country and the European Union has proposed suspending Israel from a lucrative tech investment program as frustration mounts over worsening conditions in Gaza. The ban targets hard-line National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, key partners in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's coalition.
Winnipeg Free Press
3 hours ago
- Winnipeg Free Press
Higher US tariffs part of the price Europe was willing to pay for its security and arms for Ukraine
BRUSSELS (AP) — France's prime minister described it as a 'dark day' for the European Union, a 'submission' to U.S. tariff demands. Commentators said EU Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen's handshake with President Donald Trump amounted to capitulation. The trouble is, Europe depends mightily on the United States, and not just for trade. Mirroring Trump, Von der Leyen gushed that the arrangement she endorsed over the weekend to set U.S. tariff levels on most European exports to 15%, which is 10% higher than currently, was 'huge.' Her staff texted reporters insisting that the pact, which starts to enter force on Friday, is the 'biggest trade deal ever.' A month after NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte ingratiated himself with Trump by referring to him as 'daddy,' the Europeans had again conceded that swallowing the costs and praising an unpredictable president is more palatable than losing America. 'It's not only about the trade. It's about security. It's about Ukraine. It's about current geopolitical volatility. I cannot go into all the details,' EU Trade Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič told reporters Monday. 'I can assure you it was not only about the trade,' he insisted, a day after 'the deal' was sealed in an hour-long meeting once Trump finished playing a round of golf with his son at the course he owns in Scotland. The state of Europe's security dependency Indeed, Europe depends on the U.S. for its security and that security is anything but a game, especially since Russia invaded Ukraine. U.S. allies are convinced that, should he win, President Vladimir Putin is likely to take aim at one of them next. So high are these fears that European countries are buying U.S. weapons to help Ukraine to defend itself. Some are prepared to send their own air defense systems and replace them with U.S. equipment, once it can be delivered. 'We're going to be sending now military equipment and other equipment to NATO, and they'll be doing what they want, but I guess it's for the most part working with Ukraine,' Trump said Sunday, sounding ambivalent about America's role in the alliance. The Europeans also are wary about a U.S. troop drawdown, which the Pentagon is expected to announce by October. Around 84,000 U.S. personnel are based in Europe, and they guarantee NATO's deterrent effect against an adversary like Russia. At the same time, Trump is slapping duties on America's own NATO partners, ostensibly due to concerns about U.S. security interests, using Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act, a logic that seems absurd from across the Atlantic. Weaning Europe off foreign suppliers 'The EU is in a difficult situation because we're very dependent on the U.S. for security,' said Niclas Poitiers at the Bruegel research institution in Brussels. 'Ukraine is a very big part of that, but also generally our defense is underwritten by NATO.' 'I think there was not a big willingness to pick a major fight, which is the one (the EU) might have needed with the U.S.' to better position itself on trade, Poitiers told The Associated Press about key reasons for von der Leyen to accept the tariff demands. Part of the agreement involves a commitment to buy American oil and gas. Over the course of the Russia-Ukraine war, now in its fourth year, most of the EU has slashed its dependence on unreliable energy supplies from Russia, but Hungary and Slovakia still have not. 'Purchases of U.S. energy products will diversify our sources of supply and contribute to Europe's energy security. We will replace Russian gas and oil with significant purchases of U.S. LNG, oil and nuclear fuels,' von der Leyen said in Scotland on Sunday. In essence, as Europe slowly weans itself off Russian energy it is also struggling to end its reliance on the United States for its security. The Trump administration has warned its priorities now lie elsewhere, in Asia, the Middle East and on its own borders. That was why European allies agreed at NATO's summit last month to spend hundreds of billions of dollars more on defense over the next decade. Primarily for their own security, but also to keep America among their ranks. The diplomacy involved was not always elegant. 'Europe is going to pay in a BIG way, as they should, and it will be your win,' Rutte wrote in a private text message to Trump, which the U.S. leader promptly posted on social media. Rutte brushed off questions about potential embarrassment or concern that Trump had aired it, saying: 'I have absolutely no trouble or problem with that because there's nothing in it which had to stay secret.' A price Europe feels it must pay Von der Leyen did not appear obsequious in her meeting with Trump. She often stared at the floor or smiled politely. She did not rebut Trump when he said that only America is sending aid to Gaza. The EU is world's biggest supplier of aid to the Palestinians. With Trump's threat of 30% tariffs hanging over European exports — whether real or brinksmanship is hard to say — and facing the prospect of a full-blown trade dispute while Europe's biggest war in decades rages, 15% may have been a cheap price to pay. Monday Mornings The latest local business news and a lookahead to the coming week. 'In terms of the economic impact on the EU economy itself, it will be negative,' Poitiers said. 'But it's not something that is on a comparable magnitude like the energy crisis after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, or even COVID.' 'This is a negative shock for our economy, but it is something that's very manageable,' he said. It remains an open question as to how long this entente will last. ___ Mark Carlson in Brussels contributed to this report.
