(NEW YORK) — Consumer attitudes worsened in March as President Donald Trump’s tariffs set off a market rout and warnings of a possible recession, Conference Board survey data on Tuesday showed. Sentiment worsened more than economists expected.
The fresh data on consumer sentiment arrives a week before the onset of additional U.S. tariffs, indicating potential fear of further escalation in an ongoing global trade war.
Trump has repeatedly referred to April 2 as “liberation day,” saying a wide-ranging slate of reciprocal tariffs would rebalance U.S. trade relationships.
Trump’s plan for reciprocal tariffs next week, however, is expected to be more targeted and narrower than he previously vowed, though the plan remains under discussion, sources told ABC News on Monday. The administration is focused on trading partners who have major trade imbalances with the U.S., the sources said.
The news of a potentially softer approach to forthcoming tariffs rallied U.S. stocks on Monday, recovering some of the losses suffered earlier this month.
Consumer sentiment appears to align with dampening expectations at the Federal Reserve. Last week, the Fed predicted weaker year-end economic growth and higher inflation than it had in a December forecast.
Speaking at a press conference in Washington, D.C., last Wednesday, Fed Chair Jerome Powell faulted tariffs for a “good part” of recent inflation.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(WASHINGTON) — Boeing is seeking to withdraw its guilty plea agreement with the Department of Justice in the criminal cases surrounding two deadly 737 MAX crashes, sources familiar with the matter told ABC News.
The agreement blamed the aerospace giant for misleading the Federal Aviation Administration before the two crashes in October 2018 and March 2019 that killed 346 people in total.
Boeing is seeking more lenient treatment from President Donald Trump’s administration and the DOJ is considering modifying aspects of the plea agreement, the sources said.
The Wall Street Journal was first to report the news.
The initial plea agreement was rejected by U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor in December 2024, who cited the government’s diversity, equity and inclusion policies as a factor in the selection of an independent compliance monitor for Boeing.
According to the most recent court filing, the two parties will continue to meet and negotiate and must notify the court by April 11 on how they plan to proceed forward.
Boeing declined to comment to ABC News and referred the question to the DOJ.
“Boeing got one of the most lenient deferred prosecution agreements in American history,” said Paul Cassell, a lawyer representing some families of the MAX crash victims. “The idea that after they breached that agreement, they get another opportunity to avoid acknowledging what it’s done seems, to me, to be wishful thinking on the part of Boeing.”
The first crash on Oct. 29, 2018, in Jakarta, Indonesia, killed all 189 passengers and crew. The second crash, on March 10, 2019, happened in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, when a Boeing aircraft crashed minutes after takeoff and killed 157 people onboard.
Both crashes preceded the Alaska Airlines incident in Jan. 2024, when a door plug fell out of the fuselage of a Boeing 737 Max 9, a newer model, after departure.
(NEW YORK) — Over the weekend, genetic testing and biotechnology company 23andMe filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
Founded in 2006, the company became popular with millions of Americans who sent in samples of saliva with the promise of learning about their ancestry and genetic health predispositions.
However, following a class-action settlement from a data breach, the resignation of the entire board of independent directors, layoffs and its drug development division closure, the firm has experienced business troubles and said it may be looking for a buyer.
“The Company intends to continue operating its business in the ordinary course throughout the sale process,” 23andMe said in a statement this week. “There are no changes to the way the Company stores, manages, or protects customer data.”
23andMe directed ABC News to its statement in a request for comment as well as to an open letter to its customers.
The bankruptcy filing has led to concerns over what will happen to the personal and genetic information of 23andMe’s more than 15 million consumers worldwide.
“I don’t think they ever built sufficient consent into people sending them information, saying, ‘We’ll do our best to protect it, but we can’t promise,”‘ Dr. Arthur Caplan, a professor of bioethics at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine, told ABC News.
“So, what you might have thought was safe and secure is clearly not, as the bankruptcy is making clear now, but hasn’t been from the beginning,” he added.
Anya Prince, a professor at the University of Iowa College of Law with research interests in health and genetic privacy, said what happens to the data 23andMe collects is covered by the company’s privacy policy.
In the event of a bankruptcy or sale, a user’s 23andMe data can go to a new company or be sold in bankruptcy, Prince noted.
“The privacy policy also says that the new company has to follow the existing privacy policy, which sounds great, but the existing privacy policy also says that it can be changed at any time,” Prince told ABC News. “So, the new company could adopt the same privacy policy and then change it in ways that maybe the customers don’t like.”
I. Glenn Cohen, a professor of health law and bioethics at Harvard Law School, told ABC News that in one of 23andMe’s bankruptcy filings, the company indicated that any bidder would have to express compliance with the current privacy statement.
However, it’s not uncommon for a new company to issue a new privacy statement and to ask people to click through to agree, he said.
One example of a change could be in how a new company would handle handing over data to law enforcement.
“Under the current 23andMe privacy rules, they will wait for a valid subpoena, search warrant or court order” before sharing data with law enforcement, Cohen said. “It’s possible this new company would have a different approach and would get you to opt in to their privacy statements such that the information might be more readily shared with law enforcement or possibly with employers and insurance.”
Additionally, about 80% of 23andMe users have selected the additional opt in for their data to be used for medical research.
Under existing 23andMe policy, when the data is shared with companies for research, it doesn’t have names attached to the genetic samples. While the data might be anonymous for the company that is conducting the research, it isn’t necessarily anonymous at 23andMe, experts told ABC News.
Cohen said that data will also transfer over to a new company as part of bankruptcy proceedings.
This information is not protected by HIPAA, which is a law that protects patient privacy and ensures the security of health information.
“Unlike your health records, which are covered by HIPAA, your electronic health records, and the kind of data you share with your doctor … 23andMe does business with you as a consumer, not as a patient,” Cohen said. “You don’t get those overall federal health privacy protections that we give, for example, to the data you share with your doctor.”
Added Caplan: “The privacy law we have applies to information in health care settings. It doesn’t apply to protecting information that you gave freely to a private company.”
Consumers have the option of deleting their account and asking for their sample to be destroyed, especially if they are in a state that has a genetic privacy law, such as California.
California’s Attorney General Rob Bonta put out a press release with steps on how to delete genetic data, destroy a test sample and to revoke permission for genetic data being used in research.
“There might be people out there who say, ‘I’m fine with that, I think the risks are low, and I’m happy for a new company to share my data in x, y or z way,'” Prince said. “But to the extent that that it’s somebody who does say, ‘Oh, I didn’t realize that that’s how my data can be shared, or I just I trusted 23andMe but I don’t know whether I trust the next company that might have this data, then they might want to consider going in and deleting that account.”
(NEW YORK) — A representative of the Securities and Exchange Commission served Elon Musk earlier this month with a copy of a complaint alleging he misled investors when he bought millions of dollars in Twitter stock in 2022, according to a court filing on Thursday.
An employee of a Virginia-based process server delivered the SEC complaint to Musk at SpaceX’s Starbase facility in Brownsville, Texas, on March 14, according to a sworn filing.
The process server said three different security guards refused to accept service of the legal documents, so he left it on the ground outside at the SpaceX facility.
“Upon arrival, I stepped one foot past the gate, but security told me to step back and that I was trespassing. I then spoke to three different security guards who refused to accept. I placed the documents on the ground then a security guard started taking pictures of me and my car as I departed,” he said in the filing.
According to a docket update, Musk was served on March 14.
Confirmation of the service came the same day that an attorney with the SEC mmission admitted to practice law in Texas filed a notice of appearance in the case.
The new developments are largely procedural and do not guarantee the lawsuit will move forward. Since Trump has taken office, the SEC has moved to drop some cases previously initiated under the Biden administration.
On Jan. 14 – six days ahead of Trump’s inauguration – the SEC filed the lawsuit against Musk, arguing he underpaid more than $150 million by failing to disclose his stake in Twitter. Musk’s failure to disclose his purchase to the public made the stock price he paid “artificially low,” according to the SEC.
“They spend their time on s— like this when there are so many actual crimes that go unpunished,” Musk said on X to respond to the lawsuit in January.
The SEC, Musk and the process service company could not be immediately reached for comment.
Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell/Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump late Wednesday criticized the Federal Reserve, urging the central bank to reduce interest rates, hours after it chose to leave borrowing rates unchanged.
The move marked the latest example of Trump exerting pressure on the Federal Reserve, despite a longstanding norm of political independence at the central bank.
Trump said lower rates would best prepare the economy for tariffs that are set to escalate over the coming weeks.
“The Fed would be MUCH better off CUTTING RATES as U.S. Tariffs start to transition (ease!) their way into the economy,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social on Wednesday, adding “Do the right thing.”
The president did not provide further explanation but as recently as January, Trump advocated for interest-rate cuts in response to what he described as the prospect of lower oil prices.
Speaking in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday afternoon, Fed Chair Jerome Powell faulted Trump’s tariffs for a “good part” of recent inflation, advocating for a wait-and-see approach as the new administration’s policy changes take hold.
Even as the Fed left its main policy lever unchanged, the central bank predicted weaker year-end economic growth and higher inflation than it had in a December forecast.
Uncertainty clouds the economic outlook, Powell said, pointing to the Trump administration’s potentially “significant policy changes” in areas like trade, immigration and regulation.
“Uncertainty around the changes and their effects on the economic outlook is high,” Powell said. “We are focused on parsing the signal from the noise.”
If the central bank raises rates as a means of protecting against tariff-induced inflation, the Fed risks stifling borrowing and slowing the economy, experts previously told ABC News.
On the other hand, experts said, if the Fed lowers rates to stimulate the economy in the face of a potential slowdown, it threatens to boost spending and drive up inflation.
The rare rebuke of the central bank by Trump came weeks after his tariffs touched off a global trade war that sent stocks reeling and triggered concern about a possible recession.
By some key measures, however, the economy remains in solid shape. A recent jobs report showed steady hiring last month and a historically low unemployment rate. Inflation stands well below a peak attained in 2022, though price increases register nearly a percentage point higher than the Fed’s goal of 2%.
In January, Trump also made a call for lower rates, days before the Fed opted to hold interest rates steady.
Speaking at a press conference in Washington, D.C. after that rate announcement, Powell declined to comment about Trump’s call for lower interest rates, saying it would be “inappropriate” to respond.
“The public should be confident that we’ll continue to do our work as we always have,” Powell said, adding that the Fed would continue to “use our tools to achieve our goals.”
After the rate decision on Wednesday, a reporter again asked Powell whether Trump may interfere with the Fed. In a brief response, Powell affirmed his previous comments.
“I think I did answer that question in this very room some time ago,” Powell said. “And I have no desire to change that answer, and have nothing new for you on that today.”
(WASHINGTON) — Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell stepped to the podium in August with a sunny forecast that defied the snow-capped mountains inscribed on curtains behind him.
The central bank planned to begin cutting rates, Powell announced, reversing a yearslong battle against pandemic-era inflation. “The time has come,” Powell told the audience at a conference in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, touting a steady cooldown of price increases.
Months later, economic uncertainty looms large, complicating the Fed’s approach while clouding the outlook for inflation and interest rates, some experts told ABC News.
President Donald Trump’s tariffs have roiled markets, stoked recession concerns and heightened worries about inflation. In short order, Trump has paused or reversed some tariffs, casting doubt over his plans and adding to the uncertainty, the experts added.
Policymakers, business leaders and everyday borrowers will turn their attention to the Fed on Wednesday for its latest interest rate decision, the first such move since days after Trump took office.
“The Fed is in a tough position,” Wendy Edelberg, director of the Hamilton Project and senior fellow in economic studies at the left-leaning Brookings Institution, told ABC News.
“We have all of the potential negative effects of tariffs, but we also have extraordinary uncertainty,” Edelberg added.
The Trump administration earlier this month slapped 25% tariffs on goods from Mexico and Canada, though the White House soon imposed a one-month delay for some tariffs. A fresh round of duties on Chinese goods doubled an initial set of tariffs placed on China a month prior.
Tariffs imposed on steel and aluminum last week triggered retaliatory tariffs from Canada and the European Union, adding to countermeasures already initiated by China.
By some key measures, the economy remains in solid shape. A recent jobs report showed solid hiring last month and a historically low unemployment rate. Inflation stands well below a peak attained in 2022, though price increases register nearly a percentage point higher than the Fed’s goal of 2%.
However, experts said, tariffs may threaten both parts of the Fed’s mission: controlling inflation and maximizing employment.
Economists widely expect tariffs to increase inflation, since exporters typically pass along a share of the tax to consumers in the form of price hikes.
Consumers expect the inflation rate to rise from 2.8% to 4.9% over the next year, according to University of Michigan survey results released last week. The measure marked a significant jump in year-ahead inflation expectations compared to findings in February.
“There will be a price impact,” Yeva Nersisyan, a professor of economics at Franklin & Marshall College, told ABC News.
Tariffs could also threaten economic growth and employment since duties slapped on imports risk increasing input costs for domestic businesses that rely on raw materials from abroad, some experts told ABC News. Retaliatory tariffs may crimp exporting businesses since the taxes make U.S.-made products less competitive in foreign markets, they added.
Goldman Sachs earlier this month hiked its odds of a recession over the next year from 15% to 20%. Moody’s Analytics pegged the chances of a recession at 35%.
“There’s a risk that the economy does roll over and fall into a recession,” William English, a professor of finance and former economist at the Federal Reserve, told ABC News.
“The Fed probably sees an upside risk to inflation and a downside risk to employment,” English added. “They’ll have to balance those as they consider the path of policy.”
For its part, the Trump administration has largely declined to rule out the possibility of a recession. Speaking at the White House last week, Trump said a “little disturbance” may prove necessary to rejuvenate domestic production and reestablish well-paying manufacturing jobs.
The thorny economic outlook presents potential difficulty for the Fed, experts said.
If the central raises rates as a means of protecting against possible tariff-induced inflation, the Fed risks stifling borrowing and slowing the economy. On the other hand, if the Fed lowers rates to stimulate the economy in the face of a potential recession, it threatens to boost spending and drive up inflation.
“If we were in an environment where inflation were to rise and rise consistently at the same time growth is slowing and unemployment is rising, that’s a real challenge for the Fed,” Claudia Sahm, chief economist at New Century Advisors and a former Fed official, told ABC News.
For now, the main quandary before the Fed stems from the wide range of possible outcomes, the experts said. Uncertainty, they said, will likely prompt the central bank to await further clarity.
Investors overwhelmingly expect the central bank to leave rates unchanged on Wednesday, according to the CME FedWatch Tool, a measure of market sentiment.
“For now, the Fed probably sees waiting as the best approach,” Nersisyan said.
(NEW YORK) — The Federal Reserve is set to announce its first interest rate decision since a global trade war touched off by President Donald Trump’s tariffs sent stocks reeling and triggered concern about a possible recession.
The move arrives less than two weeks after Fed Chair Jerome Powell said tariffs would likely raise prices, while voicing patience as Trump’s economic policies take shape.
“We are focused on parsing the signal from the noise as the situation evolves,” Powell told an economic forum in New York City. “We are not in a hurry.”
Investors expect the central bank to leave rates unchanged on Wednesday, according to the CME FedWatch Tool, a measure of market sentiment.
The Trump administration earlier this month slapped 25% tariffs on goods from Mexico and Canada, though the White House soon imposed a one-month delay for some of the tariffs. A fresh round of duties on Chinese goods doubled an initial set of tariffs placed on China a month prior.
Tariffs imposed on steel and aluminum last week triggered retaliatory tariffs from Canada and the European Union, adding to countermeasures already initiated by China.
Last week, the S&P 500 closed down more than 10% since a peak attained last month, meaning the decline officially qualified as a market correction. It marked the index’s first correction since October 2023. The Dow Jones Industrial Average suffered its worst one-week drop since March 2023.
By some key measures, the economy remains in solid shape, however. A recent jobs report showed steady hiring last month and a historically low unemployment rate. Inflation stands well below a peak attained in 2022, though price increases register nearly a percentage point higher than the Fed’s goal of 2%.
The Fed retreated in its fight against inflation over the final months of last year, lowering interest rates by a percentage point. Still, the Fed’s interest rate remains at a historically high level of between 4.25% and 4.5%.
Stretching back to his first term in office, Trump has repeatedly urged the Fed to lower interest rates.
During a virtual address to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in January, Trump called on the central bank to cut rates days before it was set to announce an interest rate decision.
At the ensuing meeting that month, the Fed decided to hold interest rates steady. Speaking at a press conference in Washington, D.C., after the announcement, Powell declined to comment about Trump’s call for lower interest rates, saying it would be “inappropriate” to respond.
“The public should be confident that we’ll continue to do our work as we always have,” Powell said, adding that the Fed would continue to “use our tools to achieve our goals.”
(NEW YORK) — As Tesla stock has fallen in recent weeks, members of the board and an executive at Elon Musk’s company have been selling off millions of dollars in stock, according to filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Together, four top officers at the company have offloaded over $100 million in shares since early February.
Last week, longtime Musk ally James Murdoch — the estranged son of Fox boss Rupert Murdoch and a board member since 2017 — became the latest to do so, exercising a stock option and selling shares worth approximately $13 million, according to an SEC filing. The sale took place on March 10, coinciding with the stock’s largest single-day decline in five years.
According to one filing, the shares were sold “to cover the exercise price relating to the exercise of stock options to purchase 531,787 shares, which are scheduled to expire in 2025.”
Elon Musk’s brother, Kimbal Musk, who also sits on the board, unloaded 75,000 shares worth approximately $27 million last month, according to a filing.
The chairman of the board, Robyn Denholm, has offloaded more than $75 million dollars worth of shares in two transactions in the past five weeks, federal filings show. The selloffs made by Denholm came as part of a predetermined sales plan.
A number of board members and executives made similar moves in November and December. But the recent sales come at a tumultuous time for Tesla, with the stock falling nearly 50% from a peak in mid-December. The company’s shares have suffered most of those losses since President Donald Trump took office and Musk began his controversial governmental cost-cutting efforts as the head of the newly created Department of Government Efficiency.
“Whenever insiders, including directors, are selling shares, it’s not a positive signal,” Jay Ritter, a professor of finance at the University of Florida, told ABC News.
However, Ritter added, an exception applies to the predetermined sales plan adopted by Denholm in July 2024, which marks a routine effort to avoid the perception an officer unloaded shares based on inside information.
“Filing a plan months ago to sell some of those shares over time is common,” Ritter said.
Tesla did not immediately respond to ABC News’ request for comment.
Seth Goldstein, an analyst at research firm Morningstar who studies the electric vehicle industry, said some of the stock sales may owe to personal financial choices made by individual officers.
“While a sale doesn’t necessarily mean an executive or board member feels negatively about a company’s outlook, it could mean they think the stock is at a fair price or even overvalued,” Goldstein said.
The share selloffs made by board members and executives totaled about $118 million, but the transactions often came after the individuals exercised stock options, the costs of which totaled about $16 million. The officers ended up with a profit of just over $100 million.
ABC News previously reported on concerns from shareholders and pension funds, some of whom have called on Musk to turn his attention back from slashing government spending to running his car company.
Tesla Chief Financial officer Vaibhav Taneja also sold off shares totaling more than $5 million over recent weeks. Some of those transactions came as part of predetermined sales plans, but a transaction earlier this month did not stem from a scheduled sale.
(NEW YORK) — President Donald Trump’s tariffs sent stocks tumbling in recent weeks, but the uncertainty helped propel a different asset viewed as a safe haven: gold.
The price of gold topped $3,000 per ounce for the first time ever last week, and the precious metal continued to hover around that mark in early trading on Monday.
Gold prices have soared 12% so far this year, while the S&P 500 has plummeted nearly 7%. Over that period, the Dow Jones Industrial Average has dropped 2% and the tech-heavy Nasdaq has tumbled 8.5%.
The rush toward gold makes financial sense, experts said. The asset offers investors a hedge against uncertain stock performance, since gold prices often display a degree of independence from movements in equities markets.
However, gold prices carry volatility of their own, some experts added, especially when buyers enter the market at a high point, risking losses instead of providing a security blanket. “Investors need to be careful,” Campbell Harvey, a professor at Duke’s Fuqua School of Business who studies commodity prices, told ABC News.
“At a time of heightened uncertainty, people look toward a safe haven – and gold is a perceived safe haven. But most people don’t realize that gold is volatile,” Harvey added.
The run-up in gold prices comes amid a market slump set off by an escalating global trade war.
Last week, the S&P 500 closed down more than 10% since its high in February, meaning the decline officially qualified as a market correction. It marked the index’s first correction since October 2023. At the same time, the Dow suffered its worst one-week drop-off since 2023.
“Right now, it’s a very anxious marketplace,” Jim Wyckoff, senior market analyst at Kitco Metals, told ABC News. “That’s been a detriment for stock-market bulls and a boom for gold-market bulls.”
The flight to gold in moments of market crisis draws on decades of evidence, according to an analysis co-authored by Harvey in 2020. The price of gold moved higher during seven of the last nine major stock market selloffs stretching back to the late 1980s, researchers found.
“It’s a good track record, but it’s not a sure thing,” Harvey said. “Even though it went up seven out of nine of these drawdown periods, that doesn’t mean it will be seven out of nine in the next nine drawdowns.”
Last week, Paris-based financial firm BNP Paribas raised its forecast for gold prices, predicting the precious metal would exceed $3,100 an ounce. The company attributed the rosy outlook to economic uncertainty incited by Trump, but it warned such gains would likely fizzle out by the second half of this year.
“The gold market will price in or normalize Trump-driven trade risks, as it typically does with geopolitical risk,” BNP Paribas said in a report shared with ABC News. “Thus, if there is no ongoing escalation in trade tensions, gold prices will, in our view, struggle to maintain further upside momentum.”
Some experts who spoke to ABC News acknowledged the current price boom may eventually lose steam, but they still encouraged investors to add the precious metal to their portfolios as a means of offsetting the heightened risk of stocks.
“Gold offers diversification,” Trevor Yates, an analyst at investment firm Global X, told ABC News. “We see gold warranting a place in the portfolio.”
Investors who add gold for the sake of diversifying their portfolio, however, may want to add other assets alongside it, such as Treasury bonds or real estate, Harvey said.
“There are other safe assets besides gold,” Harvey said. “Don’t put all of your eggs in one basket.”
Harvard Yard/ Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images)
(CAMBRIDGE, Mass.) — Harvard University on Monday announced that tuition will be free for students from families with annual incomes of $200,000 or less starting in the 2025-26 academic year.
“Putting Harvard within financial reach for more individuals widens the array of backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives that all of our students encounter, fostering their intellectual and personal growth,” Harvard University President Alan M. Garber said in statement.
This is a breaking news story. Please check back for updates.
