Business
Consumers Show Signs of Strain Amid Trump's Tariff Rollout
The U.S. consumer has seemed unstoppable in recent years, spending throughout soaring inflation and the highest borrowing costs in decades. That resilience helped to keep at bay a recession that many thought inevitable after the pandemic.
Year-over-year percentage change in retail and food service sales
Consumer spending has fueled the economy
President Trump’s tariffs and their scattershot rollout have once again raised concerns that the United States may soon face an economic downturn. While the odds of an outright recession have fallen as the highest levies have been paused, there are reasons to be worried about the ability of consumers to continue to prop up growth.
Consumer spending accounts for more than two-thirds of U.S. economic activity, meaning a sharp enough pullback could cause significant damage.
For now, consumers are still spending, although more slowly than in the past. Their attitudes about the economic outlook have soured in recent months in anticipation of elevated prices, slower growth and higher unemployment. Americans have also become choosier about how they spend their money. Leisure and business travel has declined. People are buying fewer snacks and eating out less as they look to cut costs. They are even doing fewer loads of laundry to save money.
“The economy is really vulnerable to anything that could go wrong, and clearly there’s a lot that could go wrong,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Analytics.
It is not yet clear if the slowdown simply reflects distortions related to stockpiling before Mr. Trump’s trade war starts to really bite, or if it is an early sign of a full-blown retreat.
Part of what has enabled consumers to spend so freely up until this point is a stockpile of savings that they accrued as a result of government stimulus during the pandemic and a booming stock market. Those savings have now largely been tapped out.
“The cushion that was there during the pandemic to weather the storm of higher prices is not there now,” Diane Swonk, the chief economist at KPMG, said. The highest-earning 10 percent of Americans, who drive the bulk of consumer spending, are still in good shape, but it’s the bottom 90 percent that worry her most.
Those households are under increased financial stress.
The share of outstanding credit card debt that is 90 days or more past due started increasing in 2023 and has continued to rise across geographies and income levels, according to data through the first quarter of this year released Tuesday by the New York Fed and research by the St. Louis Fed. The trend has become particularly pronounced for poorer households.
Percentage of credit card debt that is 90 days or more past due
Credit card delinquency is high
And real-time credit reports from Experian, one of the three major U.S. credit rating firms, suggest the pace accelerated in April.
Americans are struggling with other kinds of payments, too. The overall delinquency rate, which includes all loan types, reached its highest level since 2020 in the first quarter of this year, according to the Fed data. This was driven by student loan delinquencies, as past-due student loans once again were included in credit reports after a pandemic-era pause on federal student loan repayments.
Because they now have to pay down those balances after a five-year reprieve, consumers may increasingly have trouble servicing other kinds of loans, another strain.
What matters most, however, is the labor market. “If American consumers have money, they’re going to spend it, and the primary place they get money is through their jobs,” said Eric Winograd, an economist at the investment firm AllianceBernstein.
Businesses are still hiring, layoffs are low and the unemployment rate has stabilized at a historically low level of around 4 percent. But the labor market is noticeably less robust than it was in the aftermath of the pandemic, a period that was marked by booming hiring, soaring wages and acute worker shortages.
“Nothing emboldens consumers quite like a strong labor market, and we don’t have that anymore,” said Tom Porcelli, chief U.S. economist at PGIM Fixed Income.
Companies are posting far fewer job openings and positions are no longer much more plentiful than the number of people looking for work as businesses reassess their staffing needs in an environment of slowing growth.
Job openings vs. unemployment
Jobs are no longer much more plentiful than available workers
Spending is now consistently increasing faster than income, once adjusted for inflation. This imbalance cannot last, said Neil Dutta, head of economic research at Renaissance Macro. Either incomes will need to accelerate or consumption must slow over time. “Given what we know about the job market and wage growth, it’s more likely that consumer spending slows than incomes rise,” he said.
Year-over-year percentage change in real consumption vs. real income
Spending is growing faster than income
Pay is no longer soaring for workers in the lowest-paid industries, such as leisure and hospitality, who saw their earnings increase the fastest in the initial recovery period when the job market was strong and demand for their services was high. Now, pay is rising faster in high-wage industries — as pay for lower- and mid-wage jobs stagnate.
Median year-over-year percentage change in industry-level earnings for nonmanagers
Wage growth has slowed, particularly for workers in low-wage industries
It is too early to say if the lessons of the post-pandemic period will prove applicable this time around. Consumers are clearly under heightened pressure, but it will take time to know whether they are buckling under that weight or once again muscling through.
So far, policymakers at the Federal Reserve do not appear too worried just yet and are taking their time to assess the economic impact of Mr. Trump’s policies before restarting interest rate cuts.
“The U.S. consumer never lets us down,” John Williams, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, said in a recent interview.
China’s exports and imports each set monthly records in April, further cementing the country as the world’s leading trading nation as Beijing prepares to welcome President Trump for a summit next week with Xi Jinping, China’s leader.
China also ran a trade surplus — the excess of exports over imports — of $84.8 billion last month, according to data released on Saturday by the General Administration of Customs. However, that surplus did not set a record. The war in Iran and closure of the Strait of Hormuz pushed up the cost of imported oil and natural gas, causing China’s overall imports to increase slightly faster than exports.
The surplus in April keeps China on track for a third year of roughly trillion-dollar trade surpluses. China posted a $1.19 trillion trade surplus last year, easily breaking the world record of $992 billion that it had set the year before.
Mr. Trump is expected to press Mr. Xi to buy more American goods during their scheduled summit, part of his long-running effort to narrow China’s longtime trade surplus with the United States. But two recent court decisions overturning Mr. Trump’s tariffs on imports have eroded some of his leverage.
China’s exports to the United States jumped 11.3 percent last month compared to its shipments in April of last year, when President Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs produced a slump in imports from China.
The country’s imports from the United States rose only 9 percent in April this year. As a result, its trade surplus with the United States widened by 13 percent.
China has long used state-run purchasing collectives in big categories like farm goods and commercial aircraft to manage its trade with the United States, ensuring it sells three to five times as much as it buys. Mr. Trump and his advisers have criticized that imbalance.
Semiconductor exports doubled last month compared with April of last year. Chinese manufacturers cashed in on the artificial intelligence data center boom even though they cannot yet produce some of the fastest kinds of chips.
Overall exports of electronics and machinery were up 20 percent in April from a year earlier.
China acts in many ways as a shock absorber in global oil markets. Beijing buys more oil for its vast reserves when the price is low, then cuts back purchases when prices are high, as they were last month.
With oil prices spiking upward this spring, the tonnage of China’s oil imports dropped last month to its lowest level since July 2022, when Shanghai’s two-month Covid lockdown reduced demand. The lockdown hurt many of China’s oil-dependent industries.
Because prices rose faster last month than the tonnage declined, China’s overall bill for crude oil imports rose 13 percent from a year earlier. Rising oil prices helped drive China’s overall imports up 25.3 percent in April from a year ago, to a record $274.6 billion. Its exports surged 14.1 percent last month from a year earlier, to a record $359.4 billion.
China has been particularly successful this year in exporting electric cars as well as renewable energy products like wind turbines and solar panels. Exports of electric vehicles were up 52.8 percent last month from a year earlier.
China has been running large, and widening, trade surpluses over the past several years with most of the rest of the world. It has trade deficits with only a handful of countries, including those like Brazil and Australia which have very large commodity exports.
The European Union and many developing countries now find themselves with rapidly growing trade deficits with China. Practically all of them have run their own trade surpluses with the United States to fund their deficits with China, sometimes repackaging goods from China and shipping them on to the United States to do so.
China’s huge trade surpluses are not necessarily a sign of economic strength. They partly reflect very weak spending by Chinese households on imports and domestic goods alike after five years of sliding housing prices wiped out much of the savings of the middle class. This has prompted many families to scrimp on purchases like new cars, leaving Chinese automakers with more cars to export.
“The Chinese economy still demonstrates resilience in trade and industrial supply chains,” said Zhu Tian, an economics professor at the China Europe International Business School in Shanghai, after the release of the trade data.
But weak domestic spending and a leveling off in the trade surplus, he said, “suggest that economic growth will continue to face significant challenges for the rest of the year.”
Walt Disney Co.’s ABC is forcefully resisting Federal Communications Commission efforts to soften the network’s programming, accusing the federal agency of an overreach that violates 1st Amendment freedoms.
Last week, the FCC took the unusual step of calling in the licenses of eight Disney-owned television stations for early review. The move — widely interpreted as an effort to chill the network’s speech — came a day after President Trump demanded that ABC fire late-night host Jimmy Kimmel over a joke about First Lady Melania Trump.
The FCC separately has taken aim at ABC’s daytime discussion show, “The View,” which delves deeply into politics.
The FCC has questioned whether the show, which prominently features Trump critics Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar, could continue toclaim an exemption to rules that require broadcasters to provide equal time for opponents of political candidates.
In its response this week to the FCC, Disney’s Houston television station raised the stakes in “The View” dispute, calling the commission’s actions “unprecedented” and “beyond the Commission’s authority.” The ABC station’s petition for a declaratory ruling said “The View,” has long qualified as a “bona fide” news interview program with freedom to conduct interviews of legally qualified political candidates.
“The Commission’s actions threaten to upend decades of settled law and practice and chill critical protected speech, both with respect to The View and more broadly,” the Houston station KTRK-TV said in the filing.
The network’s firm stance sets up a clash with the Trump administration, including the president’s hand-picked FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, who has made no secret of his disdain for Kimmel and other ABC programming. Earlier this year, Carr announced that decades-old exemptions from the so-called “equal time rule,” for some programs, including “The View,” were no longer valid.
In a statement, the FCC said it would “review Disney’s assertion that ‘The View’ is a ‘bona fide news program’ and thus exempt from the political equal time rules,” according to a spokesperson.
“Decades ago, Congress passed a law that generally prohibits broadcast television programs from putting a thumb on the scale in favor of one political candidate over another,” the spokesperson said. “The equal time law encourages more speech and empowers voters to decide the outcome of elections.”
ABC’s strenuous arguments mark a turning point for the Disney-owned outlet.
In December 2024, a month after Trump was elected to a second term, the network quickly settled a lawsuit over statements made by news anchor George Stephanopoulos that Trump found offensive. ABC agreed to pay Trump $15 million to end his legal fight — sparking an outcry among free speech advocates, who accused the network of caving on a case it may have won.
But, over the past year, the network has weathered several storms, including a threat by Carr in September to punish ABC if it didn’t muzzle Kimmel for comments he made in the wake of conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s death. ABC briefly benched Kimmel to allow tensions to cool but, during the week his show was off the air, protesters loudly bashed Disney, demanding the legendary company stand up for free speech.
Thousands of consumers canceled their Disney+ and Hulu subscriptions in protest.
Protesters swarmed Hollywood Boulevard, protesting ABC’s move to bench Jimmy Kimmel in September over comments he made about the shooting of right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk.
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
Some conservatives, including Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and commentator Ben Shapiro also criticized Carr’s handling of 1st Amendment issues.
“The days of the FCC as a paper tiger are numbered,” the FCC’s lone Democrat, Anna M. Gomez, said Friday in a statement. “What the public will remember is who complied in advance and who fought back. I’m glad Disney is choosing courage over capitulation.”
The high-profile dispute presents an early challenge for Disney Chief Executive Josh D’Amaro, who succeeded longtime chief Bob Iger in March.
ABC has asked for the full commission — a three member panel of Carr, Gomez and Commissioner Olivia Trusty, a Republican — to rule on the equal time exemption for “The View.” ABC said that, in 2002, it received a ruling from the FCC that granted the exemption, and the show’s format has not changed. “The View” is produced by ABC News.
“Some may dislike certain — or even most — of the viewpoints expressed on The View or similar shows,” the station said in its filing. “Such dislike, however, cannot justify using regulatory processes to restrict those views.”
ABC described a logistical nightmare of providing equal time for political opponents by pointing to California’s crowded primary field of gubernatorial candidates. “Affording equal time would mean accommodating over 60 legally qualified candidates, regardless of their perceived newsworthiness,” the station wrote.
The network said it makes show bookings based on newsworthiness, not partisan politics. It also noted it has invited politicians from both sides of the aisle to appear on “The View,” but some, including Vice President J.D. Vance, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Secretary of State Marco Rubio and entrepreneur Elon Musk, have declined the invitation.
The station also noted that, while the FCC has questioned the exemption for “The View,” the agency hasn’t shown interest in regulating programs on other networks, “including the many voices — conservative and liberal — on broadcast radio.” The FCC also oversees radio station licenses.
“The danger is that the government will simply decide which perspectives to regulate and which to leave undisturbed,” ABC said.
On April 28, Carr called for a review of Disney’s broadcast licenses, including for the Houston station and KABC-TV in Los Angeles, two years before any of them were set to expire. The FCC said the review was part of the agency’s year-old inquiry into Disney’s diversity, equity and inclusion policies and whether they violated federal anti-discrimination rules.
In its Thursday petition, ABC said it had fully complied with the FCC’s request for documents related to its diversity and hiring.
The company has produced more than 11,000 pages of documents to comply with the request, Disney said.
The same week that Disney sent documents to the FCC, Kimmel made a joke on his show about Melania Trump, comparing her glow to that of “an expectant widow.” On April 25, a gunman tried to breach security at the Washington Hilton, where the first couple were on stage for the White House Correspondents’ Assn. Dinner. Shots were fired outside the ballroom.
Three days later, the FCC announced it was requiring early license renewal applications for the Disney-owned stations.
The United States on Friday announced a flurry of new sanctions intended to increase pressure on Iran’s economy, targeting people and companies in China and Hong Kong that have been helping the Iranian military gain access to supplies and war equipment.
The sanctions came ahead of a major summit between President Trump and China’s leader, Xi Jinping, in Beijing next week. China’s support for Iran has become a flashpoint with the Trump administration, which has been trying to compel independent Chinese refineries to stop purchasing Iranian oil.
China is Iran’s biggest buyer of oil, and the Trump administration has said that it is sponsoring terrorism by propping up the Iranian economy.
The new sanctions are aimed at Iran’s military industrial supply chain, and are intended to make it harder for Iran to secure access to the material it needs to build drones and missiles. In addition to China, the sanctions also target people and companies based in Belarus and the United Arab Emirates.
“Under President Trump’s decisive leadership, we will continue to act to keep America safe and target foreign individuals and companies providing Iran’s military with weapons for use against U.S. forces,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a statement.
The Trump administration has been looking for ways to squeeze Iran’s economy and pressure the Iranian government to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, a conduit for the flow of global oil. Oil tankers have had sporadic access to the critical waterway since the war started earlier this year, and the United States and Iran have been fighting over who should control it.
U.S. warships that have been trying to transit the strait have been attacked by Iranian forces. The United States on Friday fired on and disabled two Iranian-flagged oil tankers as they tried to reach an Iranian port.
The Treasury Department has also imposed sanctions on the Chinese “teapot” refineries this month. The independent refineries are major purchasers of Iranian oil. But China invoked a domestic policy ordering its companies to disregard the sanctions.
Mr. Bessent said earlier this week that he expected Mr. Trump to urge Mr. Xi to use the country’s leverage over Iran to pressure it to allow oil cargo to travel.
“Let’s see if China — let’s see them step up with some diplomacy and get the Iranians to open the strait,” Mr. Bessent told Fox News on Monday.
-
Rhode Island2 minutes agoProposed tax hike would hurt small businesses and our communities | Opinion
-
South-Carolina8 minutes ago11 Unforgettable Small Towns to Visit in South Carolina
-
South Dakota14 minutes agoHuman trafficking survivor advocate to speak at Rapid City church event
-
Tennessee20 minutes agoEthan Mendoza injured as No. 4 Texas loses to Tennessee, 5-1
-
Texas26 minutes agoWarm Saturday in North Texas ahead of severe weather chances later for Mother’s Day
-
Utah32 minutes agoDiscover the deliciousness of New York-style pizza at Fini Pizza in Utah City
-
Vermont38 minutes agoVermont teen dies in crash with tree
-
Virginia44 minutes agoPHOTOS: Virginia Beach Police investigate firearm-related incident at Carriage House Apartments