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ASSUMING THE weather co-operates—thunderstorms have already caused the abandonment of one launch, on April 9th—at some point in the coming days Amazon will get itself into the space business. A United Launch Alliance (ULA) rocket is on the launchpad in Florida, carrying the first batch of 27 satellites for Amazon’s new “Kuiper” satellite-internet system. The mighty e-commerce firm hopes to deliver “high-speed, low-latency internet to virtually any location on the planet”. More

It could have been worse, but it’s still not good. Many company bosses will have been relieved at Donald Trump’s 90-day delay in imposing “reciprocal” tariffs on imports to America from most countries, announced on April 9th. But a basic levy of 10% still applies. And the pause will not extend to countries that have dared to retaliate. This includes China, which raised tariffs on American goods to 84%, and now faces a tariff of 125%. More

MLB has never had a salary cap, but league and team officials are considering what that could look like as the league’s CBA expires in December 2026, sources say.
While the concept of introducing a salary cap has consistently been a nonstarter with the players’ union, there’s some evidence suggesting reforming MLB’s economics could be good for players.
Part of what’s causing spending discrepancies for MLB teams is local media revenue.

Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred answers questions during an MLB owner’s meeting at the Waldorf Astoria on February 10, 2022 in Orlando, Florida.
Julio Aguilar | Getty Images

For decades, Major League Baseball has stood alone among the major U.S. sports leagues as the only one without a salary cap.
Team owners may test that dynamic at the end of next year.

MLB owners as well as Commissioner Rob Manfred’s office have begun privately contemplating what a new league economic structure could look like as the league heads toward a new Collective Bargaining Agreement with players, according to people familiar with the matter. The league’s current CBA expires on Dec. 1, 2026.
MLB officials have discussed adding both a salary cap and a salary floor, said the people, who asked not to be named because the discussions are private. The Major League Baseball Players Association, however, has long been against a salary cap, and the group says its position hasn’t changed.
The result is a potential lockout in December of next year when the current CBA expires — one that appears increasingly likely given the opposing positions of both sides.
If MLB owners are ultimately successful in forcing through a salary cap, it would end decades of limitless spending that’s led to increasingly disproportionate spending between teams in the league. Critics of the format say the variability results in a competitive imbalance that reduces fan enjoyment and retention of star players in small markets.
The remaining three major sports leagues in the U.S. — the National Football League, the National Hockey League and the National Basketball Association — all have salary caps. The NHL adopted its cap in 2005. The NFL introduced a cap in 1994, and the NBA has had one since 1984.

While MLB maintains a luxury tax and revenue sharing, there’s no formal limit on what teams can spend on a roster.
Manfred addressed the issue of a salary cap last week on FS1’s “The Herd.”
“We do hear a lot about it from fans, particularly in smaller markets,” said Manfred. “But the reality is we’re two years away from the end of the [bargaining] agreement. We’re just not in a position where we are talking about or have made decisions about what’s ahead in the next round of bargaining. I think that a lot of water is going to go over the dam before we need to deal with that issue.”
In the meantime, the delta in spending between MLB’s highest spending teams and the lowest has reached an all-time high. This season, the New York Mets are spending $323 million on players. The Miami Marlins are paying just over $67 million. There are nine teams spending more than $200 million on players in 2025, and there are five spending less than $100 million, according to MLB calculations obtained by USA Today.
When including the league’s luxury tax, the Los Angeles Dodgers will spend more than $500 million — a record amount — given the value of their contracts this year, which include deferred payments. The Mets will pay more than $400 million.
The large gaps are evidence of “a massive disparity problem,” Manfred said in a New York Times article this week.
“I am really cognizant of it, and I’m sympathetic to fans in smaller markets who go into the season feeling like they don’t have a chance in the world to win,” Manfred said. “I think our game turns on fans having hope when you enter the season. I think it’s a really important issue that we need to pay attention to.”
This isn’t the first time MLB has considered installing a salary cap.
In 1994, a stalemate over spending led to an MLB strike and the cancellation of the World Series that year. Players successfully prevented a cap then, and nothing has changed, according to Tony Clark, the MLBPA president since 2013.
“We’ve always believed in as free a market system as possible, such that the individual player can realize his value against the backdrop of teams that are interested in his services,” Tony Clark, MLBPA president, told The Athletic in February. “A cap is an artificial lever that is the ultimate salary restrictor, independent of where you are on the salary food chain.”
Both sides appear to be preparing for an impasse.
The MLBPA has a so-called “war chest” of money to help non-star players afford a work stoppage, and it’s prepared to use it as soon as December 2026, according to people familiar with the union’s thinking. The money derives from licensing fees from baseball cards, video games and other merchandise.
The size of the war chest is unclear, but people close to the matter say it’s larger than that of the last round of bargaining, when it was considered a record amount.
The union executive board voted in December to withhold 100% of 2024 licensing money to prepare for bargaining to replace the current labor contract, said the people familiar.

Diverging spending

While the concept of introducing a salary cap has consistently been a nonstarter with the players’ union, there’s some evidence suggesting reforming MLB’s economics could be good for players.
The average MLB salary hasn’t kept pace with the league’s increase in revenue, which has grown at a rate of 4.1% per year in the past decade, according to Joel Litvin, former president of league operations for the NBA and a lecturer at Columbia University, who teaches a course called “The Business of Professional Sports Leagues and Franchises.”
That’s not the case in the NBA, NHL and NFL, which have a cap, said Litvin.
“Had salaries been tied to revenues (as they are in the other leagues), the players would have earned an additional $2.3 billion in salaries over that period,” Litvin wrote in a Sports Business Journal op-ed last month. His calculations conclude players’ salaries have increased 3% per year over the past ten years.
“The best outcome — for both teams and players — would be a salary cap/revenue-sharing system, which would promote competitive meritocracy and eliminate economic risk faced by both players and teams of a revenue/salary imbalance,” wrote Litvin, who worked for the NBA from 1988 to 2015 and managed the NBA’s salary cap for years.
While the MLBPA isn’t against a salary floor, it views any restrictions on what a player could earn in a free market as unacceptable, according to people familiar with the matter.
Unrestricted spending has led to outsized deals in baseball, such as the Mets’ 15-year, $765 million contract for Juan Soto this offseason — the largest contract in the history of American sports. The deal surpassed Shohei Ohtani’s 10-year, $700 million contract signed in 2023, though Ohtani’s $70 million per year remains tops in the U.S. on an annual basis.
Still, while the best MLB players benefit from the current rules, most of the league’s players don’t see the big bucks. This isn’t all that different from any sport, where stars command the biggest contracts.
But that’s where the concept of a salary floor could help tip the scales for the MLBPA. Small market clubs would be forced to pay higher salaries for their 26-man rosters.

Competitive balance

While the commissioner’s office, owners and executives legally can’t discuss the upcoming CBA publicly, talk in private of changing the rules has started to heat up. Executives across the league have hinted at a growing desire to address the problem — including, surprisingly, those that work for the Dodgers and Mets, the two teams who benefit most from the current league rules.
“I think greater parity would be a benefit to the game,” Dodgers CEO Stan Kasten told CNBC Sport just days after the Dodgers won the World Series last year. “It doesn’t help that our revenue per game is 10 times that of a team on the bottom. It really isn’t good for anyone. We have revenue sharing in our league, so we hope to close that gap, but I think there are other ways to achieve that. We see a lot of examples in the other sports.”
Mets President of Baseball Operations David Stearns echoed Kasten’s sentiments in a CNBC Sport interview earlier this year.
“I think there is a conversation that needs to occur, and it is ongoing, as to the importance to baseball closing some of those spending gaps,” Stearns said. “I think it’s primarily important because markets like Milwaukee, markets like Tampa — when you draft and develop, sign and develop a star, you should have the ability and the capability to really keep those stars in smaller markets. We’ve seen other sports figure out how to make that happen. Baseball has had a tougher time figuring out how to make that happen.”
While some sports fans may enjoy dynasties, more parity generally increases fan engagement — at least that’s the case in the NBA, Commissioner Adam Silver told CNBC Sport in October.
“The data is absolutely crystal clear that the more competition you have, the more it drives interest in the league,” Silver said.
Eight out of the last 10 World Series champions have payrolls in the top 10 most expensive for that specific year. As the Wall Street Journal noted, since 1998, teams ranked in the top five in payroll have averaged 89 wins a season, while teams in the bottom five have averaged 74 wins.
Still, the randomness of the MLB playoffs has equalized the World Series winner. The league has had 16 different World Series champions since 1998, more than any other of the major U.S. sports leagues. Yet, just one team has won the World Series with a bottom 10 payroll since 1998 – the 2003 Florida Marlins, who ranked 21st in terms of spend.
The MLBPA views stingy owners as the principal problem in competitiveness rather than outsized spending from teams like the Mets, who haven’t won a World Series since 1986, and Dodgers, who have won just two championships in the past 36 years.

The RSN problem

As the Dodgers’ Kasten noted, part of what’s causing spending discrepancies for MLB teams is local media revenue.
Even with nationally broadcast games, MLB teams have heavily relied on regional channels to house much of each team’s games. While NBA and NHL also air games on these networks, a broader assortment of games are nationally available.
While the Dodgers make more than $300 million per year from their 25-year deal with Charter Communications (originally signed with Time Warner Cable in 2013), smaller market teams like the Marlins make about $50 million.
Those figures may decline as fewer people subscribe to the cable bundle and regional sports networks are increasingly tiered by pay-TV providers to more expensive packages, further diminishing subscriber numbers.
Main Street Sports, the largest portfolio of these regional networks, emerged from a lengthy bankruptcy earlier this year after renegotiating deals with teams. Some teams accepted lower fees, while others walked away from their networks for other options.
MLB’s national media rights deals expire in 2028, and the league’s goal is to sell more packages of games to both new and old media partners, similar to the NBA’s recently inked $77 billion deals, people familiar with the matter have said. MLB also hopes to take back many of their local rights to sell them as new national packages, which would replace the current RSN-dominated model.
Industry bankers and consultants, however, are skeptical MLB could garner a blockbuster media rights deal akin to the NBA or NFL, even with a larger package of games. A salary cap could help MLB if it can’t generate the same type of huge TV rights fees as the NBA and NFL.
MLB has recently struck deals with streamers — but they have yielded far less revenue. Roku pays $10 million a year for 18 games for its free ad-supported streaming Roku Channel, while Apple spends $85 million annually to stream “Friday Night Baseball.” ESPN opted out of its $550 million-per-year deal with the MLB earlier this year because the sports media giant felt it was overpaying.
“Everyone knows that 2028 is going to be a reset,” said Shirin Malkani, co-chair of the sports industry group at Perkins Coie. “The league will have a new collective bargaining agreement, and I do think they will try to get a salary cap. Without a salary cap, it’s a system of haves and have-nots among the teams. Layer in the local media rights fee disparities and there can be a real disparity in terms of funding payroll.”
WATCH: CNBC Sport videocast: NBA Commissioner Adam Silver More

Some pharmaceutical stocks rose after President Donald Trump said he would pause most so-called reciprocal tariffs, temporarily easing fears about the impact of potential tariffs on pharmaceuticals .
Shares of most U.S.-based companies turned positive after Eli Lilly, AbbVie, Bristol Myers Squibb, Regeneron, Merck, Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson and Amgen all dropped at least 2% to 4% earlier Wednesday.
The president has said tariffs will incentivize drugmakers to move manufacturing operations to the U.S., but analysts and experts argue that it will be difficult and costly for them to do so and could disrupt the pharmaceutical supply chain at the expense of patients.

The Lilly Biotechnology Center in San Diego, California, on March 1, 2023.
Mike Blake | Reuters

Shares of some drugmakers rose on Wednesday after President Donald Trump said he would pause steep tariff rates on dozens of countries, temporarily easing fears about the impact of potential tariffs on pharmaceuticals imported into the U.S. 
Trump on Wednedsay announced he would reduce tariffs on most countries to 10% for 90 days, but would immediately hike tariffs on China to 125%. But the pause does not appear to apply to sector-specific tariffs.

Pharmaceutical stocks fell earlier on Wednesday on Trump’s comments a day earlier that doubled down on plans to impose pharmaceutical-specific tariffs.
Shares of most U.S.-based companies turned positive Wednesday after Eli Lilly, AbbVie, Bristol Myers Squibb, Regeneron, Merck, Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson and Amgen all dropped at least 2% to 4% earlier in the day. Some shares of foreign-based companies, such as AstraZeneca, Novo Nordisk and Novartis, were also positive, while British drugmaker GSK was still down 5%.
Trump on Tuesday said his administration will be announcing a “major” tariff on pharmaceuticals “very shortly,” despite market fallout from his global levies, according to several reports. He exempted pharmaceuticals from his sweeping tariffs unveiled last week in a temporary relief for drugmakers. 
The president has said tariffs will incentivize drug companies to move manufacturing operations to the U.S. – an effort that Eli Lilly, Johnson & Johnson and others are already pursuing. It comes as the pharmaceutical industry’s domestic manufacturing has shrunk dramatically in recent decades, with key parts of the production process moving to China, India and other countries where labor and other costs are cheaper. 
U.S. imports of pharmaceuticals reached almost $213 billion in 2024, more than two-and-a-half times the total a decade earlier, according to the United Nations COMTRADE database on international trade.

FILE PHOTO: The Pfizer logo is seen at their world headquarters in New York April 28, 2014. 
Andrew Kelly | Reuters

However, Wall Street analysts and companies have raised concerns that it will be difficult to reshore production in the country, which will be costly, could take several years and could disrupt the pharmaceutical supply chain and drive up drug costs for patients. Drugmakers rely on a complex network of manufacturing sites, sometimes in different countries for different steps of the production process. 
“Global supply chains are complex, with Pharma among the most–it’s not as simple as moving where someone screws in little screws to make an iPhone,” BMO Capital Markets analyst Evan Seigerman said in a note on Wednesday. 
He said the tariffs will “likely do little to shift manufacturing” back to the U.S. since companies already have robust operations in the country. 
Seigerman said he expects most large pharmaceutical companies will likely set a goal of “waiting until the end of Trump’s presidency to consider more permanent manufacturing decisions.”
A group of House Democrats is also reportedly calling on the administration to protect medical supply chains from what they called the “devastating consequences” the trade war could inflict on U.S. patients. 
“The supply disruptions of critical medical products will unavoidably hurt U.S. patients, force providers to make impossible rationing decisions, and potentially even result in death as treatments are delayed, or more effective medicines and products are swapped for less effective alternatives,” the lawmakers wrote in the letter, the Hill reported. 
Some companies that have invested billions to boost U.S. manufacturing and build goodwill with Trump have pushed back on the tariffs, warning about their potential impact on research and development in the industry and patients. 
“We can’t breach those agreements, so we have to eat the cost of the tariffs and make trade-offs within our own companies,” Eli Lilly CEO Dave Ricks told BBC in an interview, just over a month after the company announced $27 billion in new domestic manufacturing. 
“Typically, that will be in reduction of staff or research and development, and I predict R&D will come first. That’s a disappointing outcome,” Ricks said.
J&J in March also announced a new $55 billion investment in U.S. manufacturing, research and development and technology over the next four years. The company has not commented on tariffs. More

At the end of January, foreign countries owned $1.32 trillion worth of U.S. mortgage-backed securities, or 15% of the total outstanding, according to Ginnie Mae.
“If China wanted to hit us hard, they could unload Treasurys. Is that a threat? Sure it is,” said Guy Cecala, executive chair of Inside Mortgage Finance.
Selling of MBS by foreign entities could further spook the mortgage market.

A new housing development built along a canal near the Mokelumne River is viewed on May 22, 2023, near Stockton, California.
George Rose | Getty Images

Mortgage rates are rising sharply this week, as investors sell U.S. Treasury bonds at a swift pace. Mortgage rates follow loosely the yield on the 10-year Treasury. Some speculate foreign countries could be dumping U.S. Treasurys in retaliation against President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariff plan.
But there is another, even bigger, concern for both mortgage investors and for the all-important spring housing market. What if China, one of the largest holders of agency mortgage-backed securities, or MBS, decides to sell those holdings as well in response to the U.S. trade policies. And what if other countries follow?

“If China wanted to hit us hard, they could unload Treasuries. Is that a threat? Sure it is,” said Guy Cecala, executive chair of Inside Mortgage Finance. “They’re going to look at pushing levers and trying to put pressure. … Targeting housing and mortgage rates is a powerful driver of something like that.”
At the end of January, foreign countries owned $1.32 trillion worth of U.S. MBS, or 15% of the total outstanding, according to Ginnie Mae. The top owners: Japan, China, Taiwan and Canada.
China had already begun selling off some U.S. MBS last year, with the country’s holdings at the end of September down 8.7% year over year and down 20% by the start of December. Japan, which had shown gains in its MBS in September, showed a drop at the start of December.
If China and Japan were to accelerate those sales further, and if other nations were to follow, mortgage rates would rise even more than they are now.
“The concern, I think, is on folks’ radar screens, and being raised as a potential source of friction,” said Eric Hagen, mortgage and specialty finance analyst at BTIG. “Most investors are concerned that mortgage spreads would widen in response to either China, Japan or Canada coming in with a retaliatory objective.”

Widening spreads mean higher mortgage rates. The spring housing market is already floundering amid high home prices and weakening consumer confidence. Given the recent stock market rout, potential buyers are increasingly worried about their savings and their jobs. A recent survey from Redfin found that 1 in 5 potential buyers sell stock to finance their down payments.
Hagen said selling of MBS by foreign entities could further spook the mortgage market.
“The lack of visibility for how much they could sell and their appetite for selling, I think that that would scare investors,” he said.
To add to the pain, the U.S. Federal Reserve, which is a major owner of MBS, is currently letting the MBS roll off of its own portfolio, as part of an effort to shrink its balance sheet. In other times of financial crisis, like during the pandemic, the Fed was buying MBS to keep rates low.
“That is a source of potential pressure on top of this whole conversation,” Hagen added.

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Canada’s 25% auto tariffs took effect Wednesday on U.S.-produced vehicles, but the new levies differ in many ways from those implemented last week by President Donald Trump.
Canadian officials purposely carved out individual auto parts from the tariffs and are taking into account the United States-Canada-Mexico Agreement, or USMCA, trade deal into the new levies.
There also could be some relief for automakers on the Canadian tariffs in the form of remissions.

Trucks make their way to the Ambassador Bridge to cross into the United States at Detroit on April 1, 2025 in Windsor, Canada. 
Bill Pugliano | Getty Images

DETROIT — Canada’s 25% auto tariffs took effect Wednesday on U.S.-produced vehicles and many parts in American cars and trucks, but the new levies differ in important ways from the U.S. tariffs implemented last week by President Donald Trump.
Canadian officials purposely carved out individual auto parts from the tariffs and are taking into account the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA, trade deal with the new levies. There’s also a remissions process that could allow companies some relief from the duties, according to Canadian officials.

“We are responding today with, and we responded throughout with, carefully calibrated and targeted counter tariffs,” Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said during a Thursday news conference announcing the actions.
Canada’s response, which it reconfirmed Tuesday, includes 25% tariffs on vehicles from the U.S. that are not compliant with the USMCA — or CUSMA, as Canada refers to it — as well as non-Canadian and non-Mexican content of USMCA-compliant fully assembled vehicles imported into Canada from the U.S.
The latter part means that even if a vehicle made by General Motors, Ford Motor or Chrysler parent Stellantis in the U.S. is compliant with the USMCA, the parts that aren’t from Canada and Mexico could be taxed, pending a remission process.

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Auto stocks

Trump’s 25% tariffs, meanwhile, are on any vehicle not assembled in the U.S., which S&P Global Mobility reports accounted for 46% of the roughly 16 million vehicles sold domestically last year. The White House has said it also plans to place tariffs on some auto parts such as engines and transmissions by May 3.
Flavio Volpe, who leads the Automotive Parts Manufacturers’ Association in Canada, said his organization believed it was crucial to have the individual automotive parts carved out because tariffs on those products could rapidly shut down the North American auto industry.

“What we advised the prime minister was ‘keep parts out of this for now,'” he told CNBC on Tuesday. “We also insisted that if you’re going to do counter tariffs, make sure you’re targeting American. Don’t by accident or by omission hurt our Mexican sources, partners. Nobody wants to do this … but Canada has to respond.”
Mexico content was exempted, unlike the U.S., because the country is honoring the USMCA North American trade deal, Carney said last week.
GM, Ford and Stellantis each separately said their North American-produced vehicles are compliant with the USMCA, however the content of each varies greatly.
The traditional “Detroit automakers,” as well as Toyota Motor, are among the top-selling car companies in Canada. The country’s overall market is far smaller than the U.S., at roughly 2 million light-duty vehicles compared with around 16 million in the U.S.
Canada’s trade balance in regard to light-duty passenger vehicles was $8.33 billion, with $43.82 billion exported against $35.49 billion imported, according to leading Canadian auto firm DesRosiers Automotive Consultants.
Trade imbalances have been one of the driving forces for Trump’s implementation of the tariffs.

Remissions?

There could be some relief for automakers on the Canadian tariffs.
Officials said “a remission framework for auto producers that incentivizes production and investment in Canada, and helps maintain Canadian jobs, will also be implemented.”
Canadian officials in a press release Tuesday said more details about the program will be “announced shortly.” The Department of Finance Canada, which released the news, did not respond for a request for comment.

Read more CNBC auto news

“We are planning to ensure that the automakers do stay in Canada,” Canadian Minister of Industry Anita Anand said Monday on CityNews in Canada. “We actually are talking about a framework that we’ll put in place, we call that out remission framework, to ensure that Canadian production and investment is part of the long-term plan to maintain Canadian production.”
Trump has said that there would not be exemptions for the U.S. tariffs, despite automakers lobbying for carve-outs for vehicles and parts that are compliant with the USMCA, which Trump negotiated during his first term in the White House.
Five automakers — Ford, GM, Stellantis, Toyota and Honda Motor — were estimated to produce 1.3 million light-duty vehicles last year in Canada, largely for U.S. consumers, according to Trillium Network for Advanced Manufacturing.
The carmakers did not immediately respond regarding the Canadian remission process.
Carney last week said Canada’s new levies are expected to generate 8 billion Canadian dollars ($5.6 billion), which will be used to help workers and companies affected by Trump’s tariffs. Vehicle imports from the U.S. totaled CA$35.6 billion in 2024, according to the Department of Finance Canada.

‘Unjustified, unwarranted … misguided’

Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney speaks to reporters as he arrives on Parliament Hill to attend a meeting of the cabinet committee on Canada-U.S. relations and national security in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, April 2, 2025. 
Patrick Doyle | Reuters

Carney spoke bluntly about his disdain for the U.S. tariffs, which he called “unjustified, unwarranted and … misguided.” He also painted a dire future for the friendly relationship between the U.S. and Canada.
“That era has now ended unless the United States and Canada can agree on a new comprehensive approach,” Carney said. “While this is a tragedy, it also is the new reality. We must respond with both purpose and force.”
The U.S. and Canada have participated in a tariff-free trade deal that covers the automotive industry since the Canada-United States Automotive Products Agreement, commonly known as the Auto Pact, in 1965.
Canada is attempting to fight Trump’s tariffs in other ways as well, claiming they are illegal. The country on Monday filed a dispute with the World Trade Organization concerning Trump’s 25% tariffs on automobiles and automobile parts imported from Canada into the U.S.
The Canadian automotive industry has been on an upswing following a decades-long decline that escalated during the Covid pandemic.
Light-duty vehicle production in Canada hit 1.54 million vehicles last year, up from a recent low of 1.1 million in 2021, but still a 47% decline from the country’s peak of 2.9 million in 2000, according to industry data provided by the Global Automakers of Canada trade association.
“Canada continues to respond forcefully to all unwarranted and unreasonable tariffs imposed by the U.S. on Canadian products. The government is firmly committed to getting these U.S. tariffs removed as soon as possible, and will protect Canada’s workers, businesses, economy and industry,” François-Philippe Champagne, Canadian minister of finance, said Tuesday in a statement.

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Walmart-owned Sam’s Club plans to open 15 clubs per year and renovate all of its approximately 600 locations in the U.S., CEO Chris Nicholas said Wednesday at an investor day.
The warehouse club is speeding up its expansion plans, even as tariffs rattle Wall Street and injected fresh uncertainty about the economic outlook.
Club rivals, Costco and BJ’s Wholesale, also have aggressive plans for new stores.

Sam’s Club is opening a store in the Dallas area that will require customers to go all digital. Shoppers will use a smartphone app to scan and pay for their own purchases rather than standing in a checkout lane.
Sam’s Club

DALLAS, Texas — Walmart-owned Sam’s Club plans to supercharge its expansion by opening about 15 new stores per year going forward and remodeling all of its approximately 600 locations across the country, the warehouse club’s CEO Chris Nicholas said on Wednesday.
With the boost from those new locations, Sam’s Club aims to double its membership over the next eight-to-10 years, he said at Walmart’s investor day.

Sam’s Club already had aggressive expansion plans. The chain announced two years ago that it would open about 30 new stores in the U.S. over the next five years. That was a shift after Sam’s Club shut 63 locations across the country in 2018.
Yet Sam’s Club is speeding up expansion at a surprising time: President Donald Trump’s broad and steep tariffs have shaken Wall Street and injected fresh uncertainty about price increases, the U.S. economic outlook and consumers’ willingness to spend. The retailer pulled its first-quarter operating income forecast earlier Wednesday, saying profits could suffer if it tries to keep prices steady when costs increase due to tariffs.
In an interview with CNBC, Nicholas said he’s confident that demand for Sam’s Club will hold up, even if the economic backdrop gets worse. In fact, he said, the warehouse club’s focus on saving customers money may gain even more relevance.
“In times of plenty, we do well. But in tough times, we do really well,” he said.

Warehouse clubs gain traction

Warehouse clubs, including rivals Costco and BJ’s Wholesale, have benefitted from U.S. consumers seeking value and larger quantities of items over the past five years while stocking up during the pandemic, weathering Covid-related supply chain shocks and looking to avoid higher prices from inflation.

Sam’s Club rivals Costco and BJ’s Wholesale Club are both expanding, too. Costco, which has roughly 620 locations in the U.S., expects to open 28 new clubs during its current fiscal year, including three planned relocations of current clubs, its CEO Ron Vachris said in early March on an earnings call. He did not say how many of those clubs will be in the U.S.
BJ’s, a Massachusetts-based retailer that’s historically had more clubs on the East Coast, announced plans to open 25 to 30 new locations over the next two fiscal years, including in parts of Florida, Georgia, Tennessee and Texas.
Sam’s Club began its recent expansion by rolling out a club designed to represent its future. The new location, which opened in the Dallas suburb of Grapevine, Texas in October, was its first new store since 2017. The location, which replaced one destroyed by a tornado, has a new look and an all-digital approach to retail. It has no checkout lanes, store displays of online-only items and a larger area for fulfilling e-commerce orders for curbside pickup and home delivery.
Sam’s Club will take that store format nationwide as it remodels and opens new clubs, Nicholas said.
By the end of this fiscal year, Sam’s Club will have opened a total of three new clubs in Grapevine, Texas; Tempe, Ariz. and Lebanon, Tenn. It plans to start construction of seven additional locations that won’t open this fiscal year, as it ramps up store openings to the around 15 clubs per year pace.
The warehouse club is opening a wave of new stores as it tries to sustain strong sales growth.
Net sales for Sam’s Club totaled $90.2 billion in the most recent fiscal year that ended in late January. That represents a roughly 53% jump from the pre-pandemic fiscal year that ended in early 2020.
Sam’s Club’s comparable sales rose 5.9% year over year in the most recent fiscal year, excluding fuel.
Customer transactions across the website and store rose 5.4% in the company’s most recently reported quarter, which ended in late January. E-commerce sales shot up 24% during the period, as more customers ordered online for store pickup or got purchases dropped at their doors.
Sam’s Club does not disclose its total number of members, but reported that membership income rose 13% in the fiscal fourth quarter.
Nicholas declined to say how much Sam’s Club’s renovations and new clubs will cost. Its parent company Walmart has stepped up investments across its business, including remodels of its namesake stores and automation of fulfillment centers and other supply chain facilities.
Walmart spent $23.8 billion on capital expenditures in the fiscal year that ended in late January. In the current fiscal year, the discounter said it plans to spend between $20.24 billion and $23.61 billion on capital expenditures, including supply chain technology, store remodels and new clubs. More

Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian called President Donald Trump’s tariffs “the wrong approach.”
The airline cut its growth plans and said it can’t reaffirm its 2025 financial guidance.
Delta last month lowered its first-quarter forecast due to disappointing bookings.

Delta Air Lines won’t expand flying in the second half of the year because of disappointing bookings amid President Donald Trump’s shifting trade policies, which CEO Ed Bastian called “the wrong approach.”
Delta on Wednesday forecast its second-quarter revenue to decline up to 2% or grow as much as 2% over last year, while Wall Street had been expecting growth of 1.9%. The airline expects adjusted earnings per share of $1.70 to $2.30, compared with analysts’ estimates of $2.23 a share.

The carrier also said it is too early to update its 2025 financial guidance, a month after it confirmed the targets at an investor conference, though the carrier said Wednesday it still expects to be profitable this year. Last month, Delta cut its first-quarter earnings outlook, citing weaker-than-expected corporate and leisure travel demand.
It is a shift for Delta, the most profitable U.S. airline, which started 2025 upbeat about another year of strong travel demand, with Bastian predicting it would be the “best financial year in our history.”
His new comments show growing concern among CEOs about consumers’ souring appetites for spending and the impact of some of Trump’s policies. In November, Bastian said the Trump administration’s approach to industry regulation would likely be a “breath of fresh air.”
Wall Street analysts have slashed their earnings estimates and price targets for airlines in recent weeks on fears of slowing demand.
“In the last six weeks, we’ve seen a corresponding reduction in broad consumer confidence and corporate confidence,” Bastian told CNBC. He said that demand, overall, was “quite good” in January and that things “really started to slow” in mid-February.

Bastian said main cabin bookings are weaker than previously expected. He said that travel demand that was growing about 10% at the start of the year has since slowed because some companies are rethinking business trips, the Trump administration cuts the government workforce and markets reel. The White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
He said international and premium travel have been relatively resilient.
Delta planned to expand flying capacity by about 3% to 4% in the second half of 2025, Bastian said in an interview. Now the carrier’s capacity will be flat year-over year.
“We expect this to be the first of many 2H25 capacity reduction announcements from the airlines this quarter,” TD Cowen airline analysts Tom Fitzgerald and Helane Becker wrote after Delta released its outlook.

Delta Air Lines planes are seen parked at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport on June 19, 2024 in Seattle, Washington.
Kent Nishimura | Getty Images

“With broad economic uncertainty around global trade, growth has largely stalled,” Bastian said in Wednesday’s earnings release. “In this slower-growth environment, we are protecting margins and cash flow by focusing on what we can control.”
Delta is the first of the major U.S. carriers to report earnings. United, American, Southwest and others are scheduled to report later this month.
Here’s how the company performed in the three months ended March 31, compared with what Wall Street was expecting, based on consensus estimates from LSEG:

Earnings per share: 46 cents adjusted vs. 38 cents expected
Revenue: $12.98 billion adjusted vs. $12.98 billion expected

In the first quarter, Delta’s net income rose to $240 million, up from $37 million last year, with revenue up 2% year over year to $14.04 billion.
Stripping out Delta’s refinery sales, Delta posted adjusted earnings per share of 46 cents, up 2% from last year and above analysts’ expectations, and adjusted revenue of $12.98 billion, up 3% from last year and in line with Wall Street expectations. More