Evelyn Reynolds

The pandemic shopping boom led many stores and brands to widen profit margins by charging more. Now value is the watchword as shoppers grow choosier.U.S. consumers, fatigued by a three-year bout of inflation, want lower prices. And large retailers that have increased prices, partly to contend with their own rising costs, appear to be responding to customer concerns — to an extent.Walgreens said last week that it was lowering prices on over 1,000 items. Target recently announced modest price cuts on 5,000 food products and household goods. Craft and furniture stores like Michael’s and Ikea have also said they will drop prices on popular items.A broader range of companies have indicated on quarterly earnings calls that they plan to slow price increases and seek other ways to expand profitability.Signaling empathy with customers facing higher living costs is an increasingly important marketing strategy, retail analysts say. But regardless of motivation, a shift is in motion that may help ease inflation in the coming months.“Retailers have recognized they have to make some movement on pricing because the customer now is getting to the point where they’re shopping around more, they’re cutting down on the amount that they buy,” said Neil Saunders, managing director at GlobalData Retail, a research and consulting firm.In some ways, the industry seems to be entering a new phase.After a slog for retailers during much of the 2010s, when they often resorted to heavy discounts to gain or maintain market share, the pandemic upended consumer habits. Suddenly, bank accounts were buoyed by emergency federal aid, and millions of consumers unable or unwilling to spend on in-person services shifted to buying goods.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

Automakers and dealers are starting to offer discounts, low-interest loans and other incentives to lure buyers as the supply of cars grows.For much of the last four years, automakers and their dealers had so few cars to sell — and demand was so strong — that they could command high prices. Those days are over, and hefty discounts are starting a comeback.During the coronavirus pandemic, auto production was slowed first by factory closings and then by a global shortage of computer chips and other parts that lasted for years.With few vehicles in showrooms, automakers and dealers were able to scrap most sales incentives, leaving consumers to pay full price. Some dealers added thousands of dollars to the manufacturer’s suggested retail price, and people started buying and flipping in-demand cars for a profit.But with chip supplies back to healthy levels, auto production has rebounded and dealer inventories are growing. At the same time, higher interest rates have dampened demand for vehicles. As a result, many automakers are scrambling to keep sales rolling.Wes Lutz, owner of Extreme Dodge in Jackson, Mich., said he had several Dodge Challengers and Chargers that were eligible for $11,000 discounts from Stellantis, the manufacturer of Dodge, Chrysler, Jeep and Ram models. The automaker is also offering discounts of up to $3,600 on certain versions of the Dodge Durango sport utility vehicle.“It seems like we may be headed back toward incentives and overproduction,” Mr. Lutz said. “It’s not there yet, but it’s getting close.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

Consumer prices rose 75.45% in May on an annual basis and 3.37% on a monthly basis, according to the Turkish Statistical Institute, a government agency.
The sectors seeing the steepest annual consumer price rises were education at 104.8%, housing at 93.2%, and hotels, cafes and restaurants at 92.9%.
Economists had previously forecast that inflation in the country of 85 million would peak around 75% before beginning to ease.

City scene Yeni Camii great mosque by Golden Horn of Bosphorus River, Topkapi Palace, Hagia Sophia Istanbul, Republic of Turkey 
Tim Graham | Getty Images

Inflation in Turkey topped 75% in May in what economists expect to be the peak before prices start to ease.
Consumer prices rose 75.45% in May on an annual basis and 3.37% on a monthly basis, according to the Turkish Statistical Institute, a government agency.

The sectors seeing the steepest annual price rises were education at 104.8%, housing at 93.2%, and hotels, cafes and restaurants at 92.9%.
Economists had previously forecast that inflation in the country of 85 million would peak around 75%. Turkey has been on a year-long journey of steadily hiking interest rates in an effort to cool prices, resulting in significant financial difficulties for the average Turkish consumer.
Turkey’s central bank has kept its interest rate at 50% since March, citing the continuing need to counter climbing inflation in the country. The bank said at the time that “tight monetary stance will be maintained until a significant and sustained decline in the underlying trend of monthly inflation is observed.” More

The prominent OPEC+ oil producers’ alliance is awaiting concrete central bank action on interest rates before factoring in the potential impact on the energy demand landscape, according to Saudi Arabia’s energy minister.
Expectations have mounted over the timeframe and number of rate cuts likely to be carried out by global central banks

Saudi energy minister Abdulaziz bin Salman on Oct. 5, 2022.
Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images

The prominent OPEC+ oil producers’ alliance is awaiting concrete central bank action on interest rates before factoring in the potential impact on the energy demand landscape, according to Saudi Arabia’s energy minister.
“Central banks, with all respect, they’re flip-flopping [on their messaging],” Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman said during a Sunday press briefing, in response to a question on whether OPEC+ supply cuts could reinject inflationary pressures worldwide, at a time when central banks are reining in consumer price increases and shyly inching toward possibly cutting interest rates.

Earlier on Sunday, the OPEC+ group — which combines the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies — agreed to extend official output cuts until the end of next year. A subset of the coalition will stretch out two further layers of additional voluntary supply reductions: This subgroup of eight countries will prolong a 1.7 million-barrels-per-day tranche all the way through 2025, and a larger 2.2 million-barrels-per-day cut until the end of the third quarter.
The production strategy decisions come at a time when OPEC’s own forecasts show a 2.25 million barrel-per-day increase in demand, according to the Monthly Oil Market Report of May. The imminent summer driving season and the end of refinery maintenance in China are also set to exacerbate the call on crude in the short term.
Energy costs spiked worldwide in the wake of Russia’s full-fledged invasion of Ukraine, aggravating the economic downturn that followed the Covid-19 pandemic. Global institutions have previously mentioned energy prices as underpinning inflationary concerns. In turn, the piled-on inflation has muzzled oil demand.

Expectations have mounted over the timeframe and number of rate cuts likely to be carried out by global central banks, whose nations battle indefatigably sticky inflation. The European Central Bank is widely projected to implement a long-awaited reduction during its meeting of June 6, even as inflation in the euro zone logged a recent annual bump to 2.6% in May, from 2.4% in April.
Policy easing was also anticipated in the short term from the U.S. Federal Reserve, but a recent spate of stronger-than-expected economic data and indications from policymakers dimmed those prospects.

“Show me any central banker who [has] a determination to give people a trajectory of when and where and how they are going to bring interest rates down,” Saudi Arabia’s Abdulaziz bin Salman said amid the ongoing ambivalence, stressing that the group awaits “more certainty on the overall economic trajectory that will probably cause demand to increase with a clear path.”
The OPEC+ coalition has repeatedly said that it will step in to promptly and flexibly address changes in the oil market, as needed. On Sunday, the Saudi energy minister defended that the alliance’s latest production strategy is based off the current market picture.
“As it is today, we believe that this thing requires us to give the market clarity on what signals that we are issuing, and it is paramount for people to take an example of what we are doing,” he said. More

Southern California appeared to be under siege from a blockade.More than 50 enormous vessels bobbed in the frigid waters of the Pacific Ocean, marooned off the twin ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, Calif. As days stretched into weeks, they waited their turn to pull up to the docks and disgorge their cargo. Rubberneckers flocked to the water’s edge with binoculars, trying to count the ships that stretched to the inky horizon.This was no act of war. This was what it looked like when the global economy came shuddering to a halt.It was October 2021, and the planet had been seized by the worst pandemic in a century. International commerce was rife with bewildering dysfunction. Basic geography itself seemed reconfigured, as if the oceans had stretched wider, adding to the distance separating the factories of China from the superstores of the United States.Given the scale of container ships — the largest were longer than four times the height of the Statue of Liberty — any single vessel held at anchor indicated that enormous volumes of orders were not reaching their intended destinations. The decks of the ships were stacked to the skies with containers loaded with the components of contemporary life — from clothing and electronics to drums full of chemicals used to concoct other products like paint and pharmaceuticals.Japanese Kit Kats on a shelf at 99 Ranch Market in Gardena, Calif.Adam Amengual for The New York TimesThe Port of Los Angeles.Erin Schaff/The New York TimesAmong the ships held in the queue was the CSCL Spring, a Hong Kong-flagged vessel that was carrying a whopping 138 containers from Yihai Kerry International, a major Chinese agricultural conglomerate. Together, they held 7.3 million pounds of canola meal pellets — enough animal feed to sustain 20,000 cows for a week. Their delay was exacerbating shortages of feed afflicting livestock producers in the United States.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

New research shows that people who develop dementia often begin falling behind on bills years earlier.Long before people develop dementia, they often begin falling behind on mortgage payments, credit card bills and other financial obligations, new research shows.A team of economists and medical experts at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and Georgetown University combined Medicare records with data from Equifax, the credit bureau, to study how people’s borrowing behavior changed in the years before and after a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s or a similar disorder.What they found was striking: Credit scores among people who later develop dementia begin falling sharply long before their disease is formally identified. A year before diagnosis, these people were 17.2 percent more likely to be delinquent on their mortgage payments than before the onset of the disease, and 34.3 percent more likely to be delinquent on their credit card bills. The issues start even earlier: The study finds evidence of people falling behind on their debts five years before diagnosis.“The results are striking in both their clarity and their consistency,” said Carole Roan Gresenz, a Georgetown University economist who was one of the study’s authors. Credit scores and delinquencies, she said, “consistently worsen over time as diagnosis approaches, and so it literally mirrors the changes in cognitive decline that we’re observing.”The research adds to a growing body of work documenting what many Alzheimer’s patients and their families already know: Decision-making, including on financial matters, can begin to deteriorate long before a diagnosis is made or even suspected. People who are starting to experience cognitive decline may miss payments, make impulsive purchases or put money into risky investments they would not have considered before the disease.“There’s not just getting forgetful, but our risk tolerance changes,” said Lauren Hersch Nicholas, a professor at the University of Colorado School of Medicine who has studied dementia’s impact on people’s finances. “It might seem suddenly like a good move to move a diversified financial portfolio into some stock that someone recommended.”Tell us about your family’s challenges with money management and Alzheimer’s. More

The personal consumption expenditures price index excluding food and energy costs increased 0.2% in April and 2.8% from a year ago.
Headline PCE rose 0.3% and 2.7% respectively, in line with estimates.
Personal income increased 0.3% on the month, matching the estimate, while spending rose just 0.2%.

Inflation rose about as expected in April, with markets on edge over when interest rates might start coming down, according to a measure released Friday that is followed closely by the Federal Reserve.
The personal consumption expenditures price index excluding food and energy costs increased just 0.2% for the period, in line with the Dow Jones estimate, the Commerce Department reported.

On annual basis, core PCE was up 2.8%, or 0.1 percentage point higher than the estimate.
Including the volatile food and energy category, PCE inflation was at 2.7% on an annual basis and 0.3% from a month ago. Those numbers were in line with forecasts.
Fed officials prefer the PCE reading over the more closely followed consumer price index, which the Labor Department compiles. The Commerce Department measure accounts for changes in consumer behavior such as substituting less expensive items for costlier alternatives, and has a wider scope than CPI.
“The core index came in at 2.8%. That’s fine, but it’s been trading in a range for five months now, and that’s pretty sticky to me,” said Dan North, senior economist for North America at Allianz Trade. “If I’m [Fed Chair Jerome] Powell, I’d like to see that start moving down, and it’s barely creeping. … I’m not reaching for the Pepto yet, but I’m not feeling great. This is not what you want to see.”
A 1.2% increase in energy prices helped push up the headline increase. Food prices posted a 0.2% decline on the month.

Goods prices rose 0.2% while services saw a 0.3% increase, continuing a normalization trend for an economy in which services and consumption provide much of the fuel.
Along with the inflation reading, Friday’s release included data about income and spending.
Personal income increased 0.3% on the month, matching the estimate, while spending rose just 0.2%, below the 0.4% estimate and off March’s downwardly revised 0.7%. Adjusted for inflation, the spending numbers showed a 0.1% decline, due in large part to a 0.4% decrease in spending on goods and just a 0.1% rise in services expenditures.
Market reaction following the release saw futures tied to major stock averages rising while Treasury yields moved lower.
“The PCE Price Index didn’t show much progress on inflation, but it didn’t show any backsliding, either. Based on the initial reaction in stock index futures, the market will see it mostly as a positive,” said Chris Larkin, managing director of trading and investing for E-Trade from Morgan Stanley.
“Investors will have to remain patient, though,” he added. “The Fed has suggested it will take more than one month of favorable data to confirm inflation is reliably moving lower again, so there’s still no reason to think a first rate cut will come any earlier than September.”
As inflation data has come in hotter than expected, central bank officials have encouraged a cautious approach. That means less likelihood that they will be cutting rates anytime soon.
Most recently, New York Fed President John Williams said Thursday that while he is confident inflation will continue to recede, prices are still too high and he has not seen sufficient progress on moving to the Fed’s 2% annual goal.
Markets have reined in their expectations for rate reductions this year. Pricing Friday morning indicated a probability that the first move likely won’t come until November, at the Fed’s meeting that concludes two days after the presidential election. More

Euro zone inflation increased to 2.6% in May from 2.4% in April, according to a flash reading from the European Union’s statistics agency.
Headline and core inflation both came in higher than economists expected, but markets continued to fully price in an interest rate cut at the European Central Bank’s June meeting, following weeks of strong signalling from policymakers.
Services inflation, a key metric for the ECB, rose to 4.1% from 3.7%.

General view of the center of Corfu with a little restaurant in Old Town in Corfu, Greece, in May 2024.
Sopa Images | Lightrocket | Getty Images

Inflation in the euro zone rose to 2.6% in May, statistics agency Eurostat said Friday, but a higher-than-expected print did not sway market bets of an interest rate cut from the European Central Bank next week.
Economists polled by Reuters had forecast a 0.1 percentage point increase from April’s headline figure of 2.4%.

Core inflation, excluding the volatile effects of energy, food, alcohol and tobacco, increased to 2.9% from 2.7% in April. A Reuters poll of economists had projected a flat reading.
The data comes with the ECB widely expected to cut interest rates at its June 6 meeting, the first reduction since 2019. The central bank for the 20-nation euro area began its latest hiking cycle in July 2022, hauling rates out of negative territory to 4% at present.
Any deviation from a 25 basis point cut at the ECB’s June meeting would be a major shock to markets, following weeks of strong signalling from policymakers.
In the wake of the reading, money markets continued to fully price in a June cut, followed by just one more reduction in 2024.
While headline inflation increased in May, fluctuations in the rate have been forecast over the coming months due to base effects from the energy market and the unwinding of government fiscal support schemes across the bloc, .

Overall, the headline figure has cooled significantly from a peak of 10.6% in October 2022, languishing below 3% for the past eight straight months.
However, ECB members may pay greater attention to the rate of services inflation — a key indicator of domestic inflationary pressures — which rose to 4.1% from 3.7%.
Staff are also due to release their latest round of inflation and growth projections at next week’s meeting, providing more clues on the pace and level of potential cuts this year.
ECB voting member Klaas Knot said earlier this week that the next phase of disinflation would be “more volatile,” and that monetary policy would need to be eased slowly and gradually to avoid inflation expectations de-anchoring from forecasts.
Kamil Kovar, senior economist at Moody’s Analytics, said in a note on Friday that the inflation print was likely “the last small bump in the disinflationary road rather than the beginning of any arduous last mile.”
He added, “Still, hopes for a July cut are buried very deep now, and based solely on data from recent weeks the ECB would not be cutting in June either. If rates are lowered in June this would be due to the building of momentum for a cut throughout the last nine months.”
The euro was slightly higher against the U.S. dollar and British pound at 11:30 a.m. in London, holding on to gains from earlier in the session. More