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.
Business
Devin Nunes Departs Trump Media After 4 Years as C.E.O.
President Trump’s social media company, which has consistently lost money and struggled with a flagging share price, announced Tuesday that it was replacing Devin Nunes as its chief executive officer.
The announcement offered no reason for the sudden departure of Mr. Nunes, a former Republican congressman from California. Mr. Trump had tapped him to run the company, Trump Media & Technology, in late 2021.
The announcement was made in a news release by the president’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., who is a company board member and oversees a trust that controls his father’s 115-million-share stake in Trump Media. President Trump is not an officer or director of the company.
Mr. Nunes said in a statement on Truth Social, which is Trump Media’s flagship product, that it was an “appropriate time” for a new leader with experience in media and mergers to “steer Trump Media through its current transition phase.”
Trump Media has incurred hundreds of millions in losses, and its shares have performed poorly since the company went public by completing a merger with a cash-rich special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, in March 2024. The stock, which ended its first day of trading around $58 a share, closed Tuesday at $9.82.
Shares of Trump Media trade under the symbol DJT, which are President Trump’s initials. Truth Social has emerged as the main social media platform for Mr. Trump to communicate his policy decisions and opinions to the world.
Last year, Trump Media took in $3.7 million in revenue and recorded a $712 million net loss.
In December, Trump Media announced a plan to merge with TAE Technologies, a fusion power company. The all-stock deal, which was valued at $6 billion at the time, would create one of the first publicly traded nuclear fusion companies.
Trump Media said in February that it was considering spinning off its Truth Social platform in a merger with another cash-rich SPAC, Texas Ventures Acquisition III Corp.
Mr. Nunes is being replaced on an interim basis by Kevin McGurn, who has been an adviser to Trump Media since the end of 2024. Mr. McGurn, a former executive at Hulu, the streaming service, was listed in a recent regulatory filing as the chief executive of Texas Ventures.
The Trump Media release announcing the management change provided no update on the merger with TAE Technologies or the proposed SPAC deal for Truth Social.
Business
Netflix plans to buy historic Radford Studio Center
Streaming entertainment giant Netflix is in negotiations to buy the historic Radford Studio Center lot in Studio City.
Netflix plans to purchase the Los Angeles studio that has been home to generations of landmark television shows, including “Gunsmoke” and “Seinfeld,” according to two people with knowledge of the pending deal who were not authorized to speak about it publicly.
The studio’s previous operator, Hackman Capital Partners, defaulted on a $1.1-billion mortgage in January. Investment bank Goldman Sachs took over the property and is in talks with Netflix to sell it for between $330 million and $400 million.
Representatives for Hackman and Netflix declined to comment on the planned sale.
Culver City-based Hackman Capital Partners and Square Mile Capital Management teamed up to buy the Radford Avenue property from ViacomCBS in 2021 with a winning bid of $1.85 billion, after a competitive battle for the 55-acre studio beloved by the television industry.
At the time, the staggering price tag underscored the value — and scarcity — of TV soundstages in Los Angeles as content producers scrambled for space to shoot TV shows and movies to stock their streaming services. It was one of the largest-ever real estate transactions for a TV studio complex in Los Angeles.
Since then, production has substantially declined in Southern California. L.A. continues to battle the loss of production to other states and countries, as well as the lingering effects on the industry of the pandemic and the 2023 dual writers’ and actors’ strikes. Cutbacks in spending at the major studios after a surge in streaming-fueled TV production have further damped film activity in the region.
Founded by silent film comedy legend Mack Sennett in 1928, the lot became known as “Hit City” in the decades after World War II as popular TV shows such as “Leave It to Beaver,” “Gilligan’s Island,” “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” “The Bob Newhart Show” and “Will & Grace” were made there. The storied lot gave the Studio City neighborhood its name,
Netflix, which has a market cap of about $455 billion — more than double that of Walt Disney Co. — has maintained its dominance in the global streaming business with more than 325 million subscribers.
The Los Gatos-based company has production offices worldwide, including facilities in Albuquerque, Brooklyn, London, Madrid and Toronto.
Netflix had secured an $82.7-billion deal to buy Warner Bros. studios and streaming services in December, but withdrew from the bidding war in late February after Paramount Skydance offered $31 a share. As part of the switch, Netflix was paid a $2.8-billion termination fee.
Business
Kevin Warsh, Trump’s Pick to Lead Fed, Faces Senate at Tricky Moment
Kevin M. Warsh, President Trump’s pick to lead the Federal Reserve, has spent years refining his pitch for why he should get one of the most powerful economic jobs in the world.
At his confirmation hearing on Tuesday, he will have to convince Senate lawmakers that he is ready to step into the role, which has become politically explosive amid Mr. Trump’s relentless attacks on the institution and its current chair, Jerome H. Powell.
Mr. Warsh, who is scheduled to testify before the Banking Committee at 10 a.m., plans to commit to being “strictly independent” on decisions related to interest rates, according to his prepared remarks. He also plans to tell lawmakers that he is unbothered by Mr. Trump’s incessant calls for substantially lower borrowing costs. And he will use his opening statement to underscore his focus on disrupting the “status quo” at an institution he said just last year was in need of “regime change.”
“In a time that will rank among the most consequential in our nation’s history, I believe a reform-oriented Federal Reserve can make a real difference to the American people,” he plans to tell lawmakers, adding: “The stakes could scarcely be higher.”
Mr. Warsh, 56, faces significant hurdles to winning confirmation. He has broad support among Republicans, who control the Senate and can confirm him along party lines. Yet his candidacy has stalled because of an ongoing investigation by the Justice Department into Mr. Powell and his handling of the Fed’s headquarters renovations.
Mr. Powell’s term as chair ends May 15, but Mr. Warsh looks increasingly unlikely to be in place by then. That’s because Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina — a Republican on the Banking Committee who has expressed support for Mr. Warsh — has vowed to block any attempt to confirm a new Fed chair until the legal threats into Mr. Powell are resolved. For Mr. Tillis, the investigation is a blatant attempt to coerce Mr. Powell into lowering rates, undermining the Fed’s independence and confirming the politicization of the Justice Department.
“I’m not going to condone bad decision-making and bad behavior,” Mr. Tillis told reporters on Monday in reference to the Justice Department’s lack of evidence of any wrongdoing.
The department has vowed to continue its investigation, despite numerous legal setbacks.
“I think ultimately, he will be confirmed,” Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana, another Republican on the committee, told reporters on Monday. “I just don’t know what decade.”
Mr. Warsh’s ascent would mark a homecoming for the Wall Street financier, who served as a Fed governor from 2006-11.
Since leaving the Fed, he has amassed assets worth well in excess of $100 million, according to financial disclosures submitted before his hearing. Those have drawn scrutiny because Mr. Warsh repeatedly invoked “pre-existing confidentiality agreements” to avoid disclosing the details behind several of his investments. He has said he would divest a substantial amount of his assets before taking the job.
The global financial crisis dominated Mr. Warsh’s first tenure at the Fed, thrusting him into the middle of discussions about how the central bank should respond to the threat of bank failures, turmoil in financial markets and a painful recession that followed. Mr. Warsh, then the youngest-ever member of the Board of Governors, was initially supportive of the Fed’s efforts to shore up financial markets by buying enormous quantities of government bonds and expanding its balance sheet to ease strains in financial markets and support growth by keeping market-based rates low.
But he soon soured on subsequent efforts to buy more bonds and resigned in protest. That experience has stuck with Mr. Warsh, who has made a smaller balance sheet a pillar of his plans if he takes over as chair.
Mr. Warsh would also be likely to usher in changes to how the Fed communicates its policy views, having expressed misgivings about its strategy of providing so-called forward guidance, or hints about how interest rates may change in the future to guide expectations. He has also suggested that policymakers across the Fed system should speak far less. Mr. Powell held a news conference after each rate decision, or eight a year, and delivered speeches with regularity. Mr. Trump’s pick to join the Fed last year, Stephen I. Miran, often speaks multiple times a week.
“Once policymakers reveal their economic forecast, they can become prisoners of their own words,” Mr. Warsh said in a speech last year. “Fed leaders would be well served to skip opportunities to share their latest musings. The swivel-chair problem, rhetorically waxing and waning with the latest data release, is common and counterproductive.”
What is far less clear is how much Mr. Warsh would heed the president’s demands for lower interest rates. Mr. Trump said he would not pick someone for chair who did not support lower borrowing costs.
Mr. Warsh sought in his opening statement to downplay the costs of a president’s voicing his opinions about rates, saying central bankers must be “strong enough to listen to a diversity of views from all corners, humble enough to be open-minded to new ideas and new economic developments, wise enough to translate imperfect data into meaningful insight and dedicated enough to make judgments faithfully and wisely.”
Earlier this year, many officials at the Fed saw a path to gradually lower rates as the impact of Mr. Trump’s tariffs faded and inflation restarted its slide back toward 2 percent after almost of year of stalling out. The war in Iran — and the energy shock it has unleashed — has upended those forecasts, however, prompting officials to turn wary about lowering rates.
Mr. Warsh will face questions on Tuesday about the economic impact of the war and how it has changed his thinking around the Fed’s ability to lower rates. While at the Fed, he was known as an inflation hawk who often argued against providing policy relief for fear that it could stoke price pressures. He also said the Fed should aspire to engage in rule-based policymaking that stems from formulas that prescribe how officials should set rates based on levels of inflation and employment.
While campaigning to be chair, Mr. Warsh embraced the need for rate cuts, arguing that there was a path for lower borrowing costs because of his plans to shrink the balance sheet, which would lift longer-term rates that then could be offset by lowering short-term ones. He also argued that higher productivity from the boom in artificial intelligence could unleash higher growth without stoking inflation, which could give the Fed more space to lower rates than otherwise would be the case.
In his opening statement, Mr. Warsh made clear, however, that a failure to bring down inflation, which has been stuck above the Fed’s 2 percent target for roughly five years, would strictly be the Fed’s fault, suggesting that he would shoulder the blame if he did not bring it back down during his tenure.
“Inflation is a choice, and the Fed must take responsibility for it,” he will tell lawmakers.
Megan Mineiro contributed reporting.
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