Economy

(Reuters) -Nordstrom missed Wall Street targets for third-quarter revenue on Tuesday as sticky inflation pressured consumer spending in the months leading up to the all-important holiday shopping season.Shares of the upmarket department store chain fell nearly 1% in volatile after-market trading. Fellow retailers Best Buy (NYSE:BBY) and Kohl’s (NYSE:KSS) have also hinted at a bleak holiday season with still-high interest rates, food prices and the start of student loan repayments prompting customers to spend less and push their shopping to the last minute. “The consumer is phasing out their shopping … they are shopping cheque to cheque,” Jane Hali & Associates senior analyst Jessica Ramirez said. Shoppers are also “prioritizing categories of interest”, helping some segments perform better than others, she added.Nordstrom (NYSE:JWN) executives said in a post-earnings call that the active, beauty and accessories segments were leading sales growth.They also joined other retailers in highlighting cautious consumer spending. The company’s eponymous label recorded a 9.4% drop in sales while discount banner Rack declined only 1.8%, its smallest fall in five quarters, as efforts to bring in trendier brands started to pay off.That, coupled with lower markdowns, helped the company post a 180-basis point increase in quarterly gross profit.”They did not do as much discounting as expected, but that may have hurt the top-line sales … especially at Nordstrom,” said Morningstar analyst David Swartz.Total revenue fell 6.4% to $3.32 billion, missing analysts’ estimates of $3.40 billion, according to LSEG data.Excluding items, Nordstrom earned 25 cents per share, topping estimates of 13 cents.Best Buy and Kohl’s had trimmed their annual sales expectations to account for difficult-to-predict consumer demand in an uncertain economy, but Nordstrom maintained its forecast.The company narrowed its annual adjusted profit forecast range, with the midpoint remaining the same. More

Prices for sports tickets have surged an eye-popping 25.1% between October 2022 and 2023, according to closely watched data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Sports have become the latest events to feel the impact of “funflation.”

John Brown #16 of the Buffalo Bills celebrates with fans after catching a touchdown pass during the third quarter against the New England Patriots at Highmark Stadium on January 08, 2023 in Orchard Park, New York. (Photo by Bryan M. Bennett/Getty Images)
Bryan M. Bennett | Getty Images Sport | Getty Images

Dan Hornberger has been a fan of the National Football League’s Philadelphia Eagles for as long as he can remember. As an adult, his office has team memorabilia lining the walls.
Last year, the devout supporter went to five home games, about an hour-and-a-half drive from his house. This year, however, Hornberger’s only on track to attend two games as costs soar.

“I’m a huge fan,” Hornberger, 40, said. “Ultimately, what it comes down to is just outright refusal on my part to pay those kinds of prices.”
Sports prices have surged this fall, according to federal data. That’s made game tickets the latest victim of “funflation,” a term used by economists to explain the increasing price tags of live events as consumers hanker for the experiences they lost during the pandemic.

‘A gigantic bounce back’

Admission prices for sporting events jumped 25.1% in October 2023 from the same month a year prior, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ consumer price index data. The category saw the highest annualized inflation rate out of the few hundred that make up the inflation gauge.
CPI as a whole rose a relatively modest 3.2% on an annualized basis. The index tracks the prices of a broad basket of items including milk, jewelry and airline fares.
“We’ve seen this through the entire leisure and hospitality sector,” said Victor Matheson, a professor and sports economist at the College of the Holy Cross. “People are getting back to things that they enjoy doing and are willing to pay a bunch.”

Part of the reason consumers may be seeing higher ticket prices for their favorite sports teams is because of the increasing use of dynamic pricing models, Matheson said. These structures allow ticket-selling platforms to fetch more or less per ticket, depending on demand for the event at any given moment.
There’s also an alignment of attention-grabbing sporting events taking place this fall. Beyond the typical major-league seasons, the Formula One race in Las Vegas last week and the announcement of soccer legend Lionel Messi’s move to the Inter Miami team this summer have boosted enthusiast spending.
But a large reason for the eye-popping 25.1% jump is because of how low prices were a year ago, Matheson said. Teams slashed ticket values in 2022 in a bid to win back fans who had grown accustomed to watching at home.
Sports ticket prices were 14.2% higher in October than in November 2019, a smaller gain than the entire index’s 19.6% increase, a CNBC analysis of CPI data shows. Much of the upward pressure on admission costs has come this year, underscoring the role of funflation as consumers shift their attention from Taylor Swift and Beyoncé concerts to NFL and Major League Baseball games.
“We’re seeing a gigantic bounce back in prices,” Matheson said. 

NFL and National Hockey League sales have approximately doubled in 2023 compared with the prior year, according to ticket platform StubHub. NBA sales were up nearly 60% at the start of the season compared with the last, while college football has seen an increase of around 50%.
To be sure, not every sport this year has seen the same price growth. StubHub said ticket prices across the top 10 sporting events were 15% higher in 2022 than they were in 2023.
Matheson said tamer inflation overall should help cool sector-specific growth. A return to a more normalized entertainment spending routine following the post-pandemic experience boom can also help quell demand and prices, he added.

‘Really upsetting’

Rodney Paul, director of the sports analytics program at Syracuse University, said interest in attending games should be somewhat stable even if the economy worsens. That’s because a sizable portion of the consumer base is well-off enough to afford pro-sports tickets — which he said is essentially a luxury item — and should be able to better weather a downturn given their financial status.
But Paul said a meaningful change to the state of the economy could push fans who are less financially stable to cut back on extraneous expenses, in turn hurting demand. Cash-strapped consumers may justify spending more than they’d like to this year by reminding themselves they didn’t splurge as much or at all on game tickets during the pandemic, Matheson said.

Part of the financial stress comes from the resale market for tickets, some sports enthusiasts say. The rising price of parking and food inside of the stadium also have to be factored in to the financial calculation of fans such as Hornberger and Sara Weddington.
Weddington was able to save enough enough to attend a Kansas City Chiefs game last season, but she said it feels out of the question this year as prices have climbed. The long-time resident of the Kansas City area said she feels for people who have never gotten to see a game before recent cost increases.
“To have such a monumental part of the community be so out of reach for a lot of people is really upsetting,” the 23-year-old said. “Not being able to go to a game is like going to a candy store and not being able to get any candy.”
Still, Paul of Syracuse University said sports have taken on a new meaning in the post-pandemic world. As people increasingly work from home, he said there’s a larger need for in-person social spaces — and those who can afford it are more willing to shell out.
“There’s a real craving for that kind of feeling of togetherness that the sports world brings,” he said. It’s “a really exciting experience that maybe is even more exciting now because people had lost it in the past.”
— CNBC’s Gabriel Cortes contributed to this report. More

(Reuters) -Retailers are preparing for what they hope will be yet another record-setting global shopping spree on Black Friday, the fourth Friday of November, which this year is Nov. 24.Known for crowds lining up at big-box stores to pounce on doorbuster discounts during the early hours after American Thanksgiving, Black Friday normally marks the unofficial start of the Christmas shopping season.Retailers in the U.S., Europe and elsewhere will be trying to cash in on the hoopla. Here is what to expect from Black Friday 2023.WHY IS IT CALLED ‘BLACK’ FRIDAY?Starting around the 1960s and early 1970s, police and bus drivers in Philadelphia used the term “Black Friday” to refer to the chaos an influx of people to the city created before the Thanksgiving weekend. Visitors would trawl the stores in Philadelphia on Friday with their Christmas lists looking for gifts. Shoplifting and parking violations ensued.Department stores re-branded the term to “Big Friday” to put a more positive spin on it. But the name did not stick, and since the 1980s retailers began to describe Black Friday as the day when their retail ledgers are allegedly “in the black,” or operating at a profit, as customers start holiday shopping, according to Marcus Collins, a marketing professor with Ross School of Business, University of Michigan.”What we know is Black Friday, because it’s so ceremonial, we get more people participating in it,” Collins said.WHAT ARE RETAILERS’ PLANS THIS YEAR?Retailers including Best Buy (NYSE:BBY), Macy’s (NYSE:M), H&M (ST:HMb) and pure e-commerce retailers like Shein and Temu are already touting early Black Friday “deals” of up to 30% off on some limited merchandise online and in stores.Such early promotions could help them measure shopper demand and avoid product shortages, which could be a big problem this year. Water levels in a key shipping artery, the Panama Canal, have dropped due to a severe drought, cutting the number of ships carrying merchandise through it.Many retailers in the U.S. intentionally muted their holiday hiring plans. Labor shortages are also a challenge for retailers in Europe, meaning shoppers could find fewer staff to help them.ARE BLACK FRIDAY CROWDS LIKELY THIS YEAR?Around 130.7 million people are planning to shop on Black Friday this year, according to data from the National Retail Federation (NRF). Thanksgiving weekend, which encompasses Black Friday and Cyber Monday – the Monday after Thanksgiving – is typically the busiest shopping period in the United States.But Dana Telsey, CEO of Telsey Advisory Group, said Black Friday itself will not be as important this year. With Christmas falling on a Monday, the “procrastination factor (is) even greater because shoppers can wait until Saturday or Sunday” before Christmas to get gifts, she said this week.Throughout the holiday season, in-store traffic is expected to fall slightly this year, dropping by 3.5% compared to last year, according to retail analytics firm Sensormatic Solutions.Wet weather, which deterred in-store traffic in some parts of the U.S. last year on Black Friday morning, is largely not expected this year, according AccuWeather.Although most U.S. stores will be closed on Thanksgiving again this year, opening for shoppers at 5 a.m. or 6 a.m on Friday, some retailers are advertising discounts online that kick in starting at 12:01 a.m. on Thanksgiving.Among them is Kohl’s (NYSE:KSS), which is promoting what it calls a “Super Deal” on Thanksgiving and Black Friday on products including Beats Studio Buds wireless noise cancelling earbuds for $89.99, from the regular price of $149.99.Retailers big and small are touting online ordering and curbside pick-up this year for the convenience of shoppers who want to avoid stores. In the past decade, Americans’ Black Friday purchases online have more than tripled, reaching $9.12 billion on the day last year, according to data from Adobe (NASDAQ:ADBE) Analytics.WILL SHOPPERS FIND BLACK FRIDAY DEALS THIS YEAR?Several major retailers from Dollar General (NYSE:DG) to Walmart (NYSE:WMT) and Macy’s could be saddled with too much stock for a second straight year, according to a Reuters analysis. They likely will need to offer discounts in order to drive shoppers to their stores and websites.Even ahead of Black Friday, research firm Jane Hali & Associates said discounts at Kohl’s and Macy’s were as high as 60%, with foot traffic lower at these two retailers and Nordstrom (NYSE:JWN) compared to last year.Adobe said online discounts were expected to be as steep as 35% on toys, 24% on sporting goods and 19% on furniture.HOW MUCH ARE SHOPPERS EXPECTED TO SPEND?Holiday sales online and in U.S. stores are expected to rise between 3% and 4% during November and December, their slowest pace in five years, according to a forecast by the NRF.Spending online during Black Friday is expected to rise 5.7% to roughly $9.6 billion, according to Adobe Analytics.In the United Kingdom, online spending during Black Friday is expected to rise 4.5% to 1.05 billion pounds ($1.30 billion), with total sales over the Cyber Weekend reaching 3.8 billion pounds, according to an Adobe forecast.WHAT ARE RETAILERS DOING TO ATTRACT HOLIDAY SHOPPERS?With student loan payments returning, and costs of housing and essentials pinching household budgets, analysts believe retailers will have to rely on promotions and early offers to stay afloat this holiday season.Consumers were looking to make the most of promotional events and wrap up their shopping in just 5.8 weeks this year, when compared to a 7.4-week window pre-pandemic, according to data from Deloitte.WHAT ITEMS ARE HOT FOR BLACK FRIDAY THIS YEAR?IPhones will be hot again, with the recent launch of the iPhone 15. Last year, shoppers looking for Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL)’s iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max returned empty handed as the technology company struggled with production snafus in China.Electronics are expected to be the top pick this shopping season, with estimates of a 6% growth, according to a report by Mastercard (NYSE:MA).Best Buy kicked off its Black Friday deals in late October with offers such as its Play Station 5 for $499.99 bundled with either “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III” or Marvel’s “Spider-Man 2”, though the retailer on Tuesday forecast a bigger decline in annual comparable sales and pointed to “difficult to predict” consumer demand.Skin and hair care products remain popular, with Ulta Beauty (NASDAQ:ULTA) offering up to 40% discount on CoverGirl and Lancome mascaras, Bobbi Brown concealers and select products of its own label.WHAT ARE RETAILERS SAYING ABOUT THIS YEAR’S BLACK FRIDAY?Macy’s CEO Jeff Gennette on Thursday said the competitive landscape has shifted to Black Friday deals prior to Black Friday. “We’re in the midst of that along with our competitors, customers are taking advantage of that.”Mattel (NASDAQ:MAT) President Steve Totzke told Reuters on Monday that he is expecting a strong Black Friday and run-up to the holidays even as the toymaker warned of slowing demand for the toy industry last month.($1 = 0.8048 pounds) More

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(Reuters) – A look at the day ahead in Asian markets from Lewis Krauskopf, markets correspondent.A rally in stocks took a breather ahead of Wednesday’s session in Asia as U.S. investors mostly shrugged off minutes from the Federal Reserve’s latest meeting. With the path of interest rates foremost in investors’ minds, the market was keen for any clues into thinking at the U.S. central bank.Minutes released on Tuesday showed that Fed officials agreed at their last meeting they could take a cautious approach to raising rates moving forward, and would only need to increase them if incoming information showed insufficient progress in lowering inflation.Still, major U.S. equity indexes ended lower on the day. The S&P 500 ended down 0.2%, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite fell 0.6% as both indexes snapped five-day winning streaks.Despite the day’s declines, stocks have soared in November, with the S&P 500 and MSCI’s all country index both up over 8% this month.The next immediate focus was on Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA). Reaction to the U.S. chip heavyweight’s quarterly report, out on Tuesday after the close of U.S. markets, was potentially set to ripple through markets globally, as well as through Asia’s semiconductor industry. Nvidia is at the heart of the fervor over artificial intelligence in markets this year. Its shares have been one of the Magnificent Seven megacap stocks whose massive gains have propelled equity indexes higher this year, with Nvidia hitting a record high this week ahead of its results.Equities will be looking for direction after a largely tepid session on Tuesday. Japan’s Nikkei ended marginally lower on Tuesday but was still near three-decade highs.In Chinese equities, the blue-chip CSI 300 Index edged up 0.1%, while the Shanghai Composite Index was largely flat, trimming early gains.The yen was last little changed against the dollar at 148.34 per dollar. Earlier in Tuesday’s session, the greenback hit its lowest level against the Japanese currency in about two months.In U.S. Treasuries, whose moves have been driving asset prices broadly, the benchmark 10-year Treasury yield edged down to 4.41%, continuing its slide for most of November.Trading volumes were poised to slow over the rest of the week, with the Thanksgiving holiday on Thursday in the U.S. Here are key developments that could provide more direction to markets on Wednesday:- Singapore GDP (Q3)- Taiwan jobless rate data (Oct)- US weekly jobless claims More

OTTAWA (Reuters) – Canada’s deficit spending will be much higher than forecast in March and its debt will come down more slowly, the finance ministry said on Tuesday in its mid-year fiscal update, as it pledged new measures to boost housing supply.With interest rates at a two-decade high and inflation still elevated, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government is under pressure to curb spending, which the central bank warned is stoking inflation.While analysts said the spending on housing and on green tech subsidies would ultimately be disinflationary, they expressed concern that the government was not showing enough restraint as debt servicing costs skyrocket.The fiscal year 2024/25 and 2025/26 deficits will be much higher than had been forecast. The deficit is seen at C$38.4 billion in 2024/25 and C$38.3 billion in 2025/26, compared with March estimates of C$35.0 billion and C$26.8 billion respectively.The federal debt-to-GDP ratio will rise in 2024/25 for a second consecutive year to 42.7% before it begins declining, a year later than had been previously forecast.”They’re pushing back the beginning of the debt decline,” said Robert Asselin, senior vice president of policy at the Busines Council of Canada. “That suggest to me they’re not on a sustainable fiscal track and they need to rein in their spending.”The finance ministry has said it targets a declining federal debt-to-GDP ratio in the medium term as a fiscal anchor. In the Fall Economic Statement (FES), the government pledged to ensure the ratio stayed on a downward track after 2024/25.”The government recognizes it is constrained in how much it can spend, but it’s spending up to that line all the time,” said Randall Bartlett, an economist at Desjardins Group. “To me that doesn’t speak to prudence.”On the growth side, the government uses a median of market forecasts from September, which do not project a recession, but they do see real GDP growth next year at just 0.4%, much lower than the March budget projection of 1.5%.The Bank of Canada hiked rates to a 22-year high of 5.00% between March of last year and July of this year. It has since held them steady, but warned that they could go higher if inflation – at 3.1% in October – does not come down to its 2% target.The FES sees debt servicing costs in 2024/25 at C$52.4 compared with C$46.0 billion forecast in the March budget, and in 2025/26 they will total C$53.3 versus C$46.6 in the budget.As Canadians struggle with higher living costs, housing affordability has emerged as the main criticism against the government. That is one of the reasons opinion polls show Trudeau badly trailing his main rival, Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre. An election is not due until 2025.Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland said she understood that after three tough years that Canadians were worn out and frustrated.”What Canadians deserve today is for us to address the very real pain that so many are feeling,” she said in prepared remarks to legislators.The FES includes a number of measures aimed at boosting housing supply, including C$15 billion in new loan financing from 2025/26 to spur apartment construction, an extra C$1 billion over three years to fund dedicated to building affordable housing, and new mortgage rules for lenders dealing with homeowners at risk amid high interest rates.It also commits to clamping down on short-term rental companies like AirBnB (NASDAQ:ABNB) by denying income tax deductions incurred to make money from short-term rentals in provinces where such the practice is illegal.The FES commits to a timeline for promised investment tax credits (ITCs) for clean energy and technologies, as previously reported by Reuters.The government will send legislation to parliament this month to start paying subsidies for carbon capture and net-zero energy projects, part of a plan to help the country spur green investment and compete with the United States.Legislation to fund the remaining ITCs will be sent to parliament during the course of 2024.($1 = 1.3718 Canadian dollars) More

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. Federal Reserve officials agreed at their last policy meeting that they would proceed “carefully” and only raise interest rates if progress in controlling inflation faltered, the minutes of the Oct. 31-Nov. 1 gathering showed on Tuesday. “All participants agreed that the Committee was in a position to proceed carefully,” according to the minutes, which appeared to show support for more rate hikes dissipating within the U.S. central bank’s Federal Open Market Committee, and the baseline shifting to one in which its benchmark overnight interest rate remains steady absent a bad inflation surprise.Inflation has been slowing – consumer prices did not rise at all on a month-to-month basis in October – and while the Fed has not declared its fight against rapid price increases over, the tenor of the discussion has been shifting towards a focus on how long to keep the policy rate in the current 5.25%-5.50% range.”Participants noted that further tightening of monetary policy would be appropriate if incoming information indicated that progress toward the Committee’s inflation objective was insufficient,” said the minutes, a statement that indicated it will take an unexpected shock of some degree to prompt a further rate increase. That sentence did not appear in the minutes of the Fed’s prior meeting in September, when “a majority of participants” still judged that another rate increase would be needed in a tightening cycle that has pushed the policy rate 5.25 percentage points higher in the past 20 months.The latest policy meeting readout, by contrast, said that “all participants judged it appropriate to maintain” the current rate setting, a stance that will be clarified at the Fed’s Dec. 12-13 meeting when policymakers issue a new set of detailed projections for interest rates and the economy.The document drew little reaction in financial markets, largely affirming the view that the Fed is done raising rates but won’t explicitly say so until more officials become convinced inflation won’t rebound. Contracts tied to the federal funds rate continued to show a near-zero probability of further increases. Odds of a rate cut at the Fed’s April 30-May 1, 2024 meeting rose slightly to roughly 60%, from about 57% before the release of the minutes, according to the CME Group’s (NASDAQ:CME) FedWatch Tool.U.S. stocks added slightly to losses and closed lower following the release of the minutes, while the U.S. dollar edged higher against a basket of currencies. U.S. Treasury yields slipped.The minutes showed U.S. central bank policymakers wrestling with conflicting economic signals that have made risks to the economy “more two-sided,” with rekindled inflation still a concern, but worries as well about clamping down on credit too far and damaging the economy’s prospects. U.S. economic growth had just registered an outsized 4.9% annualized gain in the third quarter, a seemingly inflationary pace. But financial markets had driven interest rates higher for households, businesses and the U.S. government, threatening to curb economic and job growth more than might be necessary to return inflation to the Fed’s 2% target.”Participants commented on the significant tightening in financial conditions in recent months, driven by higher longer-term yields,” the minutes said.Still, inflation “remained well above” the central bank’s target, likely requiring Fed policy “to remain at a restrictive stance for some time until inflation is clearly moving down sustainably.””The overall tone of the FOMC minutes was cautiously hawkish – the commitment to remaining in restrictive territory for ‘some time’ was the clearest takeaway,” said Ian Lyngen, strategist with BMO Capital Markets.NO VICTORY DECLARATIONFed Chair Jerome Powell had made liberal use of the “careful” concept at his last press conference in describing the central bank’s efforts to balance still-elevated inflation with a sense the economy was about to slow.There’s good reason to be cautious, with the Fed possibly on the verge of pulling off the unexpected by navigating out of the worst inflationary surge in 40 years without doing major damage to the economy.A New York Fed staff study released on Tuesday suggested in fact that the U.S. central bank’s late start in raising interest rates, with the first hike coming a year after prices began a sharp rise, allowed the economy to bank more growth with the same progress on lowering inflation than would have been the case if rate increases had started sooner.There’s little appetite among policymakers, however, to declare victory yet, or to give investors much direct guidance about what will happen next. “Inflation has given us a few head fakes. If it becomes appropriate to tighten policy further, we will not hesitate to do so,” Powell said at an International Monetary Fund research conference earlier this month. “We will continue to move carefully, however, allowing us to address both the risk of being misled by a few good months of data, and the risk of over-tightening.” More

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) -Top candidates have gone on the offensive in the final days of the Netherlands’ national election, with late polls showing Labour leader Frans Timmermans and anti-Islam politician Geert Wilders making gains.A first-place finish for Timmermans in Wednesday’s vote could swing the next government toward the centre and more spending on climate policies, while first place for Wilders could bring a hard-right coalition with a strong anti-immigration line.Either would mean an upset for Dilan Yesilgoz, caretaker Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s successor as leader of the pro-business VVD Party, who has been the frontrunner for much of the campaign and has a realistic chance of becoming the country’s first woman prime minister. “Ms. Yesilgoz has learned well from Rutte how to deal in hyperbole and half-truths,” Timmermans said in an attack during a debate on Monday in which she criticized his plans, which include increasing the minimum wage.”We are going to tax millionaires. That’s not nice for the millionaires, but that’s how you get a more fair country,” said Timmermans, who is leading a combined Labour and Green Left ticket.Major issues for Dutch voters include how to respond to climate change, the rising cost of living, and a desire to restrict immigration.The most recent opinion poll published by I&O Research on Tuesday forecast Yesilgoz’s VVD and Timmermans’ Labour/Green Left level on 27 seats each in the 150-member Dutch parliament, and Wilders’ Freedom Party ahead with 28 seats — a statistical tie, given the poll has a margin of error of three seats in either direction.”The focal point of Dutch politics has always been slightly to the right of centre… so that will likely not change and maybe increase even,” said Tom Louwerse of Leiden University.”Exactly how that will translate into coalitions is still unclear.”A newly launched centrist reform party known as New Social Contract is in fourth place at 21 seats. With 76 seats needed for a majority, lengthy coalition talks look inevitable.The VVD and New Social Contract are almost certain to make up part of the next government, with either Freedom or Labour, who won’t work with each other, as the third member of a coalition.Analysts said that given large numbers of undecided voters, much will depend on debate performances, including a final clash scheduled for Tuesday night.The election became necessary when Rutte’s previous government collapsed in July over disagreements on how to restrict an influx of asylum-seekers. Rutte later said he would leave Dutch politics.Wilders, a populist known for saying the Koran should be banned and calling for “fewer” Moroccans in the Netherlands, has sought to soften his image in hopes of entering government.Opposition to “Islam will never leave our DNA, but the priority is now on other matters,” he said last week.Yesilgoz, who had not ruled out a coalition with Wilders and had focused on Timmermans as her main opponent, has begun backtracking.”Every day it’s a mystery which Geert Wilders you’ll encounter,” she said on Monday. On Tuesday she ruled out serving in a cabinet in which Wilders is prime minister.The party that wins the most seats traditionally takes a lead in negotiations and provides the prime minister — but that is not guaranteed under the Dutch system.Rutte will remain on in a caretaker role until a new cabinet is installed sometime in 2024. More