CONSUMER WATCH
From BofA Institute:
Seasonally adjusted spending per household rose by 0.3% month-over-month, but that was not enough to fully offset the declines of 0.2% MoM and 0.7% MoM in the previous two months.
(…) across most categories the rise in June was not enough to offset April and May declines. Meanwhile, electronics and furniture spending remained soft, likely in part reflecting the lingering impact coming from the unwinding of “buying ahead” of tariffs, as discussed in the June Consumer Checkpoint.
While the rise in retail spending is encouraging, in our view, it’s concerning that consumers appear to be spending less enthusiastically on services, the mainstay of spending growth over the past few years. Services spending has now declined three months in a row on a seasonally adjusted basis – the first time it has fallen for three straight months in our data since 2008.
When we dig into services spending, we find evidence of a continuing pull back in “nice to have” discretionary services spending momentum.
(…) there are signs that the momentum in some areas of discretionary services spending, particularly travel and tourism, has cooled off, while spending on “necessity” services categories remains more robust. One large outlay is property insurance, with utility bills also seeing an increasing contribution. (…)
Overall, we would argue that while the spending data has softened, it is likely too early to wave the white flag. Household discretionary spending decisions, in our view, also remain supported by the freeing-up of spending power due to previous declines in gasoline prices (Exhibit 8) as well as the continued migration towards “value” when grocery shopping (Exhibit 9). Were these trends to end or reverse, this might put consumer discretionary spending under greater pressure.
The weakening in card spending growth appears to be particularly a lower-income story. In June, the three-month moving average of card spending was -0.2% YoY for lower-income households, the first outright YoY decline in over a year. However, middle- and higher-income household spending growth appears to be holding up better with rates of 0.7% and 1.2%, respectively.
So, BofA data has spending per household down 0.6% sequentially in Q2 spread “across most categories” but with particular concern on services, “the mainstay of spending growth over the past few years”.
That was my point on June 30th after revisions to Q1 data showed real consumer spending down 0.5% QoQ, shockingly revised from +1.8% initially reported. Revisions were particularly significant on services: +0.6% from a first estimate of +2.4%.
Consumption grew 1.1% in April but sank 3.3% annualized in May with real services down 0.3%.
Real spending on services rarely decline MoM. They have declined in 3 of the last 5 months and are up a paltry 0.36% annualized in the first 5 months of the year (2010-19 average: +1.7%).
So the “resilient consumer” has not increased its consumption since December (actually –0.2%), the first meaningful slowdown since the pandemic and a very rare occurrence outside of recessions.
This happened in spite of continued growth in real labor income, resulting in a 5-month jump in the savings rate from 3.5% to 4.5%.
Stalling mostly un-cyclical services are of concern: they generally do not weaken when total expenditures ex-durables do. They are this time, signaling unusual caution.
Importantly, spending on durables has been very strong since last fall, first as dealer inventories normalized, and in March April as Americans advanced purchasing cars ahead of expected price increases. Meanwhile, growth in other goods and services slowed measurably even while labor income remained solid.
Recall that retail sales (mostly goods spending) decreased 0.9% in nominal terms in May, restrained by autos, following a downwardly revised 0.1% drop in April, marking the first back-to-back decline since the end of 2023. Spending at restaurants and bars, the only service-sector category in the retail sales report, fell by the most since early 2023.
Softer spending on services is transpiring to the labor market.
Goods producers produced only 4k new jobs since March, 2k in the last 2 months. Contributions from service providers other than government, education and healthcare were only 17k in June,down from 49k on average in the previous 3 months.
BoA points out (like I have) that weaker oil prices have freed discretionary income this year as spending on gasoline declined 9% YoY. But oil prices troughed in early May at $56/bbl and are now $68.
This chart is telling: spend per transaction and the number of transactions are holding but the number of households transacting is down in all but one categories displayed. Lower income consumers are clearly retrenching. Aggregate data show that higher income Americans are hardly keeping total consumption positive.
In fact, real expenditures have not grown at all since December:
Carmakers and shipowners say Donald Trump’s port fees will hurt US consumers
Carmakers and shipowners have called on the Trump administration to rethink steep new port fees on car-carrying ships, arguing that the levies will hurt American consumers and exporters. (…)
The World Shipping Council and major US companies including Ford and Caterpillar have warned that the levies will be costly and counter-productive, in response to a US Trade Representative (USTR) industry consultation that closed on Monday. (…)
“This rule decreases the competitiveness of US exports” (…)
The National Retail Federation agreed, saying the fees would “not deter China’s broader maritime ambitions” but instead would “directly hurt” American businesses and consumers. “These fees will be passed along directly to the cargo owners, US importers and exporters to pay,” it wrote.
Trump to Impose 50% Brazil Tariff, Citing Bolsonaro Trial Prospective levy is highest yet in president’s flurry of letters to world leaders on trade
The U.S. will charge a 50% tariff on Brazilian goods starting on Aug. 1, President Trump announced in a letter to the Latin American country’s government on Wednesday, citing legal action against its former President Jair Bolsonaro and U.S. tech firms as justification for the levies. (…)
Unlike Trump’s other reciprocal tariffs, the letter outlining the levies explicitly cited his support for an embattled political ally—and criticism of the government that is putting him on trial.
Bolsonaro, the leader of Brazil’s political right and a longtime Trump ally, is on trial in Brazil over an alleged coup attempt against the sitting government of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a legal case that Trump sharply criticized in his tariff letter to da Silva.
“The way that Brazil has treated former President Bolsonaro, a Highly Respected Leader throughout the World during his Term, including by the United States, is an international disgrace,” Trump said in the letter, posted to his Truth Social platform.
Trump wrote a lengthy message in support of Bolsonaro on Monday on Truth Social, calling the criminal case a politically motivated witch hunt against the conservative leader by Brazil’s Supreme Court, and drawing parallels with his own legal problems.
Bolsonaro told The Wall Street Journal in November last year that he was banking on Trump to use economic sanctions against da Silva’s government to help him return to power in Brazil, where he also faces an electoral ban that prevents him from running for office until 2030. (…)
“The defense of democracy in Brazil is a matter for Brazilians,” da Silva said Monday after Trump’s message of support for Bolsonaro. “We are a sovereign country. We do not accept interference or tutelage from anyone.” (…)
The 50% tariff would be a major disruption to $92 billion trade in goods with Brazil—a country with which the U.S. ran a trade surplus of $7.4 billion in 2024, according to the trade representative’s office. Brazil is the U.S.’s 16th largest trading partner, according to the Census Bureau, and the U.S. exported $49.7 billion to the country in 2024, while importing $42.3 billion. (…)
Trump and his team have focused on reducing trade deficits in negotiations with many other nations, and his letter to Brazil references trade deficits as a national security threat, despite the fact that the U.S. runs a surplus with the country. (…)
(…) Levies now have nothing to do with the economy. They’re an exercise of power, made despite the risk of pain for the US. Putting tariffs on “any and all Brazilian products” would be inflationary. Brazil is the US’ largest coffee supplier, accounting for 35% of Arabica supply. This is a commodity many Americans simply cannot do without. (…)
Brazil also accounts for 55% of US iron ore imports. That’s not great for manufacturers, whom the tariffs are supposed to protect. That brings us to copper. (…)
Industrial use of copper is widespread and it’s difficult to replace with other materials. She argues that the greatest impact could fall on the US. That’s certainly suggested by the widening gap between the prices in London and New York: (…)
As Jefferies LLC’s Christopher LaFemina notes, the US doesn’t have nearly enough refinery capacity to be self-sufficient in copper. Thus tariffs would likely sustain the ongoing record price premiums in the US — and put manufacturers there at a competitive disadvantage. (…)
The FT:
“The problem is not to have tariffs between America and Europe. The problem is to have tariffs between US and Brazil, US and Vietnam, US and all the countries where coffee is produced,” said Lavazza. “The final outcome will be a rise in the cost of coffee in the US. So the US market becomes more expensive for consumers.”
- U.S. Pushes More African Countries to Accept Deported Migrants Five countries whose leaders held talks with Trump at the White House were sent a U.S. proposal to accept deportees, document shows
As President Trump met Wednesday with the leaders of five West African countries, his administration was pushing them to accept migrants deported by the U.S. whose home countries refuse them or are slow to take them back, according to an internal document and current and former U.S. officials.
Before the leaders of Liberia, Senegal, Mauritania, Gabon and Guinea-Bissau arrived at the White House for the summit on economic and security issues, the State Department sent each country requests to take in migrants, underscoring the overlap between the administration’s aggressive deportation campaign and its foreign policy. (…)
Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff and the architect of Trump’s deportation campaign, attended the roundtable with African leaders, along with Massad Boulos, a senior adviser on African affairs.
U.S. diplomats were asked to tell their West African counterparts that hosting third-country nationals was the most important issue for Trump, a State Department official involved in the summit planning said. Officials told the governments that aiding in migration was critical in improving commercial ties with the U.S. (…)
Canada Seeks Southeast Asia Trade Deal to Blunt Trump Tariffs
Canada’s top diplomat said she aims to finalize a free trade agreement with Southeast Asian nations “as soon as possible,” as the country looks to expand economic ties in the face of tariffs from President Donald Trump.
“We are diversifying and we are establishing those trade relationships,” Anita Anand, who has been Canada’s foreign minister since May, told Bloomberg TV Thursday on the sidelines of an Association of Southeast Asian Nations summit in Kuala Lumpur. “We are currently negotiating with Asean a free trade agreement, and we look forward to the conclusion of those negotiations.”
Her remarks come as Canada, like many countries, seeks to reduce its reliance on the US market amid rising American protectionism. (…)
Xi Signals China May Finally Move to End Deflationary Price Wars
Beijing’s messaging has noticeably shifted in recent weeks, with Xi and other top officials offering their bluntest assessment yet of the cutthroat competition that’s been dragging down prices and profits across industries, from steel and solar panels to electric vehicles. This pivot comes after nearly three years of factory-gate deflation and growing pressure from US tariffs and trade tensions.
Finding a solution would be welcome news for much of the world. A successful effort to rein in industrial overcapacity, long a source of friction with trading partners, stands to ease trade tensions and restore confidence in the globe’s second-biggest economy.
But the path forward is far from clear. Xi’s government must curb excess supply without stalling growth or putting jobs at risk, especially as external demand slows and a lasting trade deal with the US remains elusive. (…)
While no formal plan has been announced, optimism is building that a more coordinated policy response is on the way. A meeting this month of the top Communist Party body in charge of economic policy acknowledged the underlying causes of the problem, ranging from local governments’ drive to promote investment to a tax system that favors output over efficiency.
Though it doesn’t directly reference deflation, until recently a taboo topic in Beijing, the assessment “represents the strongest signal yet that Chinese policymakers are intending to tackle disorderly competition and the price wars in sectors like autos,” said Duncan Wrigley, chief China economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics.
It omitted a mention of industry associations — whose efforts at self-regulation have largely failed at limiting production — in what Pantheon said could indicate a new approach “with greater top-down determination.”
Industry groups and official media have echoed the shift in tone, calling for efforts to end the price wars. Some companies in sectors ranging from steel to glassmaking are reportedly planning to cut output. The cost of reinforcing bars, a key steel product used in construction, has fallen to the lowest since 2017, while glass prices are hovering near a nine-year low.
The People’s Bank of China expressed similar concerns, naming “prices running at a low level continuously” as a key challenge of the economy for the first time in recent years. In May, the central bank offered another detailed analysis of downward pressure on prices, which highlighted the limits of relying on monetary easing to reflate the economy under a growth model that’s tilted toward investment and supply.
China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, or MIIT, met with solar companies, while a group of almost three dozen construction firms signed on to an “anti-involution” initiative, a term used in China to describe intense competition sparked by excess capacity. The government also launched a platform to handle supplier complaints over late payments, part of a broader push to clean up unfair business practices.
For now, the lack of concrete policy measures is tempering expectations. If officials follow through, as they did after a similar meeting early 2024 that led to a consumer goods trade-in program — many economists expect them to reprise a playbook used between 2015 and 2017.
That supply-side reform largely consisted of aggressive cuts of heavy industry capacity including steel and coal, as well as a shantytown redevelopment program that encouraged residents to buy new homes. The effort helped revive commodity prices and home sales. Eventually, it contributed to a recovery in industrial profits and stabilized economic growth.
But the challenge now is more complex. Domestic demand remains weak, export prospects are deteriorating, and many of the sectors engaged in the most intense price wars — like EVs — are dominated by private firms, limiting the government’s ability to impose capacity cuts. Local officials, wary of unemployment, may resist moves that threaten jobs, even if it means keeping unprofitable firms alive.
For Citigroup Inc., upcoming measures could include capacity cuts in sectors dominated by big state-owned enterprises, such as coal, steel and cement, as well as stricter enforcement of environmental, labor and quality standards in private-dominated industries.
Authorities could also reduce subsidies for industries, including those motivated by local favoritism, or cut export tax rebate, according to a Citi report last week. The latter already happened for products including aluminum, copper and batteries in late 2024.
Officials may also move to rein in bad business practices, such as exploiting suppliers to win lower prices or delaying payments. In March, new rules required firms to pay suppliers within 60 days, and several automakers have since pledged to comply.
Analysts at HSBC Holdings Plc argue that demand-side measures will be equally important, with steps such as improving the social safety net as well as stabilizing employment and the property market.
But longer-term change will require deeper reforms to the China’s growth model, one which relies on investment and production. That could mean adjusting how local officials are evaluated, shifting from pure economic expansion targets to metrics like consumption and income growth, according to Morgan Stanley.
For now, the shift in tone is notable, but the follow-through remains uncertain. “The tone is sharper, the intent more coherent,” Morgan Stanley economists led by Robin Xing wrote in a report. “But no timeline has been laid out, and no mechanism for enforcement has been introduced,” they said, adding that “the gap between diagnosis and delivery remains wide.”
FYI:
U.S. Measles Cases Climb to 33-Year High Vaccination rates for kindergartners have fallen nationally
Measles cases in the U.S. have hit a three-decade high, reaching the highest yearly total since 1992 in less than seven months, according to data released Wednesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
At least 1,288 measles cases have been reported across the U.S. just over halfway through the year, surpassing the 1,274 cases reported in 2019, when outbreaks in New York pushed the national case count to its highest level in decades at the time.
More than 90% of those infected with measles so far this year were unvaccinated or had an unknown vaccine status, according to the CDC. Two doses of the measles, mumps and rubella, or MMR, vaccine are 97% effective at preventing measles.
The climbing case count is fueled largely by an outbreak that began in West Texas and spread to other states. The vaccine-preventable disease in 2025 has hospitalized hundreds and resulted in the first U.S. measles-related deaths in a decade. (…)
Children are required to receive these shots to enter schools nationwide—but dozens of states allow nonmedical exemptions that allow families to opt their children out of vaccines. The rate of children with these exemptions for one or more vaccines has climbed over the last 15 years, according to CDC data. (…)
The country declared measles eliminated 25 years ago after widespread vaccination efforts inoculated most of children with the highly effective MMR vaccine. But declining vaccination rates in recent years have left pockets of the population vulnerable to catching this highly contagious disease.
Some public health leaders and epidemiologists said they believe the outbreak might endanger the U.S.’s measles-elimination status—an indictment, they said, of a weakening front against the infectious disease.
“We’re in trouble,” said Dr. Andrew Pavia, chief of the division of pediatric infectious diseases at the University of Utah Health. “Functionally, we may have sustained transmission in the U.S. for quite a while.”