Warning as thousands of grocery stores suddenly at risk of closure. Use our interactive map to check if your area is on list
A sweeping report has revealed that a staggering 27,000 retailers across the country are likely to experience financial hardship due to cuts to food assistance.
Your browser does not support iframes. Your browser does not support iframes.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Reuters
4 minutes ago
- Reuters
From ingredient costs to sagging demand, tariffs further pinch company earnings
Aug 5 (Reuters) - Companies across the corporate spectrum revealed more pain from the cost of U.S. President Donald Trump's tariff war, with bellwethers Caterpillar, Marriott and others on Tuesday noting weaker demand and higher prices. All told, global companies that have reported earnings this quarter are looking at a hit of around $15 billion to profits in 2025, Reuters' global tariff tracker shows. A majority of these come from industrial, manufacturing and automotive sectors, while financial and tech sectors are less affected. Trump has said the tariffs are necessary to resolve U.S. trade imbalances and declining manufacturing power; he has said the levies on imports will bring jobs and investment to the United States. "I think we're just getting started," said Steve Sosnick, chief market analyst at Interactive Brokers in Greenwich, Connecticut. "The tariffs are still in their infancy, especially with major trading partners like Canada, China and India still in flux." Tuesday's round of earnings illustrates the different ways trade policy is affecting companies, from the rising costs of imported materials like metals to the slippage in consumer confidence that has sapped demand. Caterpillar (CAT.N), opens new tab, for instance, saw a 0.7% hit to revenue, while its cost of goods rose by 6.5%, and CEO Joe Creed told investors that tariffs are "likely to be a more significant headwind to profitability in the second half of 2025." Beer maker Molson Coors (TAP.N), opens new tab said it was expecting costs of between $20 million and $35 million in the second half of the year due to a tariff-driven rise in the price of aluminum delivered to the U.S. Midwest . Tariffs on aluminum shipped into the United States were doubled to 50% in June from the previous 25% duty imposed in March. The markets, however, have remained resilient even as Trump's policies continue to change. He said on Tuesday that he would raise tariffs on goods imported from India from the current 25% as part of an ongoing spat with the country over its purchases of oil from Russia. U.S. equities rebounded sharply from their April lows following what Trump deemed "Liberation Day," when he unleashed a wave of global tariffs. The S&P 500 (.SPX), opens new tab hit all-time highs last month on the back of strong earnings, led by the so-called Magnificent Seven, a group of tech companies that have benefited from surging investment in artificial intelligence. Of the 370 companies in the S&P 500 that have reported earnings so far, 80.3% have reported quarterly earnings above analyst estimates, with their earnings growth rate at 11.9%, according to LSEG data. "We are figuring out that some industries may be affected, but they also might gain because (new) markets are open to them that may have been closed in the past. We're going to have to have a couple more quarters to see how this actually plays out," said Kim Forrest, chief investment officer at Bokeh Capital Partners. Several market strategists of late have warned that a correction could be in the offing, but are broadly optimistic about the market. Evercore ISI analysts believe the market could dip between 7% and 15% in the September-October period as growth slows and inflation increases, though the AI-driven bull rally should continue. Higher ingredient costs ate into profits of Taco Bell parent Yum Brands (YUM.N), opens new tab, which, like McDonald's (MCD.N), opens new tab and other fast-food chains, leaned on budget-friendly meal deals to boost demand as U.S. consumers pull back on eating out due to worries about rising costs. Hotel operator Marriott International (MAR.O), opens new tab cut its 2025 forecast on softening travel demand, while agribusiness giant Archer-Daniels Midland (ADM.N), opens new tab posted its lowest profit in five years. While some market participants noted that tariff-led uncertainty was likely to persist this year, with over 100 global companies withdrawing or cutting financial guidance, others said in the longer run, companies and investors would be able to see some green shoots. "It seems that companies themselves are a little more optimistic about the outlook now that the Liberation Day tariffs are in the rearview mirror," said Ross Mayfield, investment strategy analyst at Baird. "Companies are going to have to be really deft in how they navigate this (tariffs), but obviously there's no choice but to pass some of this on to the consumer. We see S&P margins hovering around record highs, and it wouldn't surprise me if that ticked down a little bit in the coming quarters."
Reuters
6 minutes ago
- Reuters
Trust in US economic data on the line: Easy to lose, hard to restore
WASHINGTON/NEW YORK, Aug 5 (Reuters) - Donald Trump's move to fire the head of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics has put trust in U.S. data reporting mechanisms on the line just as demand for reliable diagnoses of the health of the world's largest economy is bigger than ever. Examples from elsewhere show credibility is easily lost and hard to restore. A first test will be the choice to replace Erika McEntarfer, accused without evidence by Trump of manipulating U.S. job numbers after weaker-than-expected growth and large downward revisions were reported last week. "Imagine if one of your concerns is that there's a lackey in charge of the agency and the numbers are fake," said Michael Strain, director of economic policy studies at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, of an appointment Trump has said to expect within days. "That's a whole other level of problems." Policymakers, businesses and investors are scrambling to understand how Trump's attempt to up-end the global trade system will affect prices, employment and household wealth. Central banks, which once tried to guide market bets on rate moves months down the line, now say decisions are "data-dependent." The rub is that data collection is proving to be harder. Debt-laden governments have, as McEntarfer experienced, cut resources in their data departments; phone surveys, the go-to method for much macro research, are struggling to produce adequate samples as many households do without fixed lines. Trump's implicit accusation of partisanship by "this Biden Political Appointee" adds the troubling factor of a political dimension usually indicative of countries dogged by wider doubts over their democratic checks and balances. The key lesson from past examples of loss of data confidence is that it can take years for trust to be restored. When Argentina last year reported its first single-digit inflation in months, sceptics questioned the data and recalled the massive underreporting of inflation in the 2000s and 2010s for which it was censured by the International Monetary Fund. "They manipulated the data for a long time," said Aldo Abram of libertarian think tank Liberty and Progress Foundation in Buenos Aires. "It's logical people remember this and continue having doubts." Turkey has changed the head of its TUIK statistics institute four times since 2019, with opposition parties arguing the changes were political. Roger Marks, fixed income analyst at asset manager Ninety One, said the result for investors has been a "gradual erosion of our trust in the numbers." For Greece, whose efforts during the 2000s to conceal mounting public deficits fed that decade's sovereign debt crisis, it has been an equally long haul back to credibility. It required the overhaul of its ELSTAT statistics agency in 2016 and the creation of an international panel of experts to appoint its chief statistician - steps that have meant its hard-fought efforts to improve its budget are now unquestioned. It also prompted European governments to grant the Eurostat statistics arm of the European Union powers to check suspect national statistics reported to it. Longstanding doubts over the accuracy of Chinese statistics - with even former Premier Li Keqiang acknowledging in 2007 the country's output figures were man-made - have obscured genuine efforts to improve data quality, such as a new measure of youth unemployment excluding students that was released early in 2024. "There were genuine methodological reasons for the change, but because of the history around Chinese data a lot of people, particularly foreign investors, just didn't really trust that," Julian Evans-Pritchard, an analyst with Capital Economics. "That underscores to me that once you undermine confidence in the data, it is quite hard to restore that confidence." Faced over the years with patchy official data, watchers of emerging economies have long sought to corroborate those numbers with other datasets. Capital Economics' China Activity Proxy is based on 18 indicators from freight traffic to electricity consumption. Another metric is found in the data and sentiment surveys provided by independent researchers in all the big economies. But they can only sketch in one perspective on the picture. "An awful lot of it is soft data: 'How do you feel? What do you think's going on?'" said Erik Weisman, chief economist and portfolio manager at MFS Investment Management in Boston. "They're not asking for specifics. They're not asking, how many widgets did you produce? How many insurance policies did you produce? How many hours worked?," he said, adding that the concerns raised by the sacking of McEntarfer could nonetheless force analysts to turn increasingly to those other sources. The most urgent question now is whether the breach in credibility which the Trump intervention has opened is now widened further or mended. Enrico Giovannini, former chief statistician for the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), said there was more scope in the U.S. for political appointments of key statistics roles than in other advanced economies which tended to make long, fixed-term appointments. "So the incoming government has to wait (to replace them), said Giovannini, who has also served in two Italian governments. "In the U.S., the spoils system works," he said of the practice of party supporters getting rewarded with government jobs. The International Statistical Institute, a professional organization for data collectors, issued a statement late on Monday that said Trump's move violated U.N. principles aimed at protecting fact-based statistics and called on his government to take steps to restore public confidence in U.S. federal data. William Wiatrowski, the BLS' deputy commissioner, will serve as acting commissioner until a successor to McEntarfer is named. Beyond that choice, some fear that further dangers may emerge from a Trump executive order on federal hiring intended to reserve posts for candidates who can prove they are "dedicated to the furtherance of American ideals, values, and interests." Aaron Sojourner, a senior researcher at the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, said such a move would, if passed by Congress, apply to many jobs in federal economic statistical agencies. "This proposal would convert many of those jobs into political jobs where people can be fired for any reason if they displease a political leader," Sojourner said.
Reuters
6 minutes ago
- Reuters
Tesla, Elon Musk sued by shareholders over Robotaxi claims
Aug 5 (Reuters) - Elon Musk and Tesla (TSLA.O), opens new tab were sued by shareholders who accused them of securities fraud for concealing the significant risk that the company's self-driving vehicles, including the Robotaxi, were dangerous. The proposed class action was filed on Monday night, following Tesla's first public test of its robotaxis in late June in the company's Austin, Texas, hometown. That test showed the vehicles speeding, braking suddenly, driving over a curb, entering the wrong lane, and dropping off passengers in the middle of multilane roads. Tesla's share price fell 6.1% over two trading days after the test began, wiping out about $68 billion of market value. Musk and his electric vehicle maker were accused of repeatedly overstating the effectiveness of and prospects for their autonomous driving technology, inflating Tesla's financial prospects and stock price. Shareholders said this included Musk's assurance on an April 22 conference call that Tesla was "laser-focused on bringing robotaxi to Austin in June," and Tesla's claim the same day that its approach to autonomous driving would deliver "scalable and safe deployment across diverse geographies and use cases." Tesla did not immediately respond on Tuesday to requests for comment. Chief Financial Officer Viabhav Taneja and his predecessor Zachary Kirkhorn are also defendants. Expanding robotaxis is crucial for Tesla as the company faces falling demand for its aging electric vehicles and a backlash over Musk's politics. Musk, the world's richest person, wants to offer the service to half the U.S. population by year end, but must convince regulators and assure the public his technology is safe. Monday's lawsuit in Austin federal court is led by Tesla shareholder Denise Morand, and seeks damages for shareholders between April 19, 2023 and June 22, 2025. A Florida jury on August 1 found Tesla 33% responsible for a 2019 crash involving its self-driving software, which killed a 22-year-old woman and injured her boyfriend, and ordered it to pay about $243 million in damages to victims. Tesla blamed the driver and plans to appeal. The case is Morand v Tesla Inc et al, U.S. District Court, Western District of Texas, No. 25-01213.
