US stocks close down slightly amid tariff uncertainty
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(NEW YORK) — U.S. stocks closed down slightly on Tuesday as investors weathered ongoing uncertainty about President Donald Trump’s tariff plans.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average ticked down 156 points, or 0.3%, at the close of trading. The S&P 500 fell 0.1%, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq declined 0.05%.
The U.S. has received about 15 proposals for trade agreements, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters on Tuesday. Trump issued a 90-day pause of so-called “reciprocal tariffs” last week, saying he plans to negotiate trade agreements with roughly 75 countries targeted by the levies.
The remarks from Leavitt came a day after Trump signaled a willingness to ease auto tariffs, while saying he plans to impose new tariffs on computer chips and pharmaceuticals
Trump’s administration said on Friday that many consumer electronics would be exempt from his wide-ranging reciprocal tariffs, an announcement that sent global markets higher on Monday.
Trump on Monday also indicated a willingness to further ease tariffs, saying he is looking to “help some of the car companies” in the aftermath of 25% auto levies.
The White House also took steps on Monday that may result in new tariffs on pharmaceuticals and semiconductors, posting notices online about national security investigations into those products.
Markets in Europe also traded higher midday on Tuesday, after European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s 90-day pause on planned tariff countermeasures went into effect.
Germany’s DAX climbed about 1.21% midday and Britain’s FTSE 100 traded up about 0.90% midday.
South Korea’s KOSPI index closed up 0.88% on Tuesday, posting its second day of gains. And Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 climbed 0.84%.
Markets in China, where Trump’s reciprocal tariffs are still in place, showed less enthusiasm. Shanghai’s Composite Index rose just 0.15% and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index climbed 0.23%.
ABC News’ David Brennan contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — New Mega Millions rules will come into play next month, the company has announced, under which the minimum jackpot value will more than double to $50 million.
The new rules will come into force after the final drawing of the current game on Friday, April 4, the company said in a notice posted to its website. The first drawing under the new rules will be on April 8.
From that draw, jackpots will start at $50 million, rather than the current starting point of $20 million. “Jackpots are expected to grow faster and get to higher dollar amounts more frequently in the new game,” the company said.
Minimum non-jackpot prizes will jump in value from between $2 and $1 million to between $10 and $10 million. Every winning ticket will payout at least double the price, Mega Millions said.
Mega Millions will introduce a new $5 game with a built-in multiplier, with a multiplier value of 2, 3, 4, 5 or 10 randomly assigned at the time of purchase.
Prizes for match 5 — achieved by matching five white balls — will range from $2 million to $10 million with the new multiplier.
Matching the Mega Ball on its own will now payout $10 to $50, depending on the assigned multiplier.
Mega Millions said the new rules improve the odds of players winning the jackpot — from 1 in 302,575,350 to 1 in 290,472,336 — due to the removal of one gold Mega Ball from the game. The new format will have 24 rather than 25 Mega Balls.
Overall odds of winning any prize will improve to 1 in 23 from 1 in 24, the company said.
(NEW YORK) — For the last 130 years, four generations of Ernest Lepore’s family have baked the pastries – cream puffs, cannoli, sfogliatelle – that have come to define Manhattan’s Little Italy neighborhood, withstanding wars, economic downturns and drastic changes to the neighborhood that his family calls home.
But with the soaring cost of eggs – a staple ingredient in nearly half their products – it’s becoming increasingly difficult for Ferrara Bakery to avoid raising their prices.
“We can’t keep passing on costs to our guests,” Ferrara’s president, Ernest Lepore, told ABC News. “As you move closer to Easter, eggs are just growing exponentially in price. I can’t do anything about it.”
Egg prices have skyrocketed over the last year, reaching historic highs, and wholesale shoppers like small businesses were paying over $8 for a dozen eggs last week. According to the latest USDA report, released Friday, the national average wholesale price has dropped slightly to $6.85 per dozen.
However, many grocery stores sell their eggs at a loss to get customers in the door, bringing the average retail price of a dozen eggs to just under $5. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average price of a dozen eggs at the grocery store reached a record high of $4.95 in January 2025. More, the USDA predicted that prices might increase 40 percent this year, and experts are warning that those prices might stay high even if the supply of eggs in the U.S. rebounds.
But small businesses, unlike grocery shoppers, are tied to the market wholesale price, making these surging costs particularly devastating.
Theodore Karounos, owner of Square Diner in New York’s downtown neighborhood of Tribeca, said that translates into tens of thousands of dollars in additional yearly costs for him.
“If things hold up at this price, and we stay as busy as we were last year, I’ll pay $70,000 more for eggs than I did last year,” he told ABC News. “I can’t just absorb that hit for the next nine months.”
The exorbitant costs are a result of a nationwide shock to supply, brought about by a ravaging outbreak of the avian flu. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that over 166 million commercial poultry birds have been affected since 2022, when the outbreak began. But the last few months have been especially devastating.
“In just four months, we’ve lost 52 million layers and pullets within our nation’s egg supply, which is vastly different than any other outbreak that we’ve seen in the past.” Karyn Rispoli, managing editor of Expana, a firm that surveys and tracks the price of eggs, told ABC News. “The biggest difference of late is just that it has been more lethal and really devastated our nation’s egg supply.”
The avian flu has wreaked havoc on poultry flocks across the country. As a result, Rispoli says that the nation’s supply of egg-laying hens is at nearly a ten-year low. Once one chicken is infected, farmers are forced to cull the remainder, after which comes the challenge of repopulating their flocks.
But even as the U.S. faces an egg shortage, demand for the commodity remains relatively constant, creating a perfect storm for egg prices to soar. Consequently, those small businesses that rely on eggs, like Ferrara Bakery and Square Diner, are forced to make difficult decisions.
Unlike larger restaurant chains like Denny’s and Waffle House, which have adjusted to the surging costs by adding an egg surcharge to their menu item prices, smaller businesses are less inclined to follow suit, according to Dartmouth College economics professor Bruce Sacerdote.
“In the case of a restaurant, they aren’t necessarily able to pass on the full price increase. We’re not talking about a simple commodity where the markets clear immediately and you just have to pass on the full price increase,” he told ABC News. “Restaurants may be taking a hit to their margins in order to not pass on the full price increase.”
At Tom’s Restaurant on New York City’s Upper West Side – famous as the setting for the fictional Monk’s Café in the TV series “Seinfeld” – the soaring cost of eggs means that co-owner John Ieromonahos is spending an additional $2,000 a week to pay for eggs to continue supplying the restaurant, where approximately 70 percent of their business is breakfast.
“Of course, we don’t want to charge extra to customers,” Ieromonahos said. “This is not our customer’s fault, but I don’t know how long we’re going to last without charging extra.”
At The Hungarian Pastry Shop in Manhattan, owner Philip Binioris told ABC News that he’s trying his best not to pass the higher cost of eggs on to consumers, though he, too, isn’t sure how long he can absorb the increasingly prohibitive cost.
“It’s frustrating. I would like to not raise our prices. I think that we have fair prices, and I like to be able to keep them stable,” he said. “I’m just kind of waiting to see how bad this gets before I make a decision on how I’m going to change prices. It’s tight.”
While consumers, small businesses and their customers continue to shell out more for eggs amid the avian flu outbreak, the nation’s largest producer and distributor of eggs has reported soaring profits.
Cal-Maine Foods, according to SEC filings, saw an over three-fold increase in their gross profits in their fiscal year 2023, at the dawn of the bird flu outbreak. And according to their most recent filing, their gross profits are up 342% through the second quarter of their fiscal year 2025 versus the previous fiscal year.
Rispoli also told ABC News that grocery shoppers could see increased prices even when the egg supply does begin to recover, as grocery stores may seek to recoup lost earnings. She said that happened when egg prices soared at the beginning of the current avian flu outbreak.
“In the aftermath of that, as the market corrected and came down substantially, retailers were then holding shelf prices higher to try and recapture some of the margin that they had previously forfeited,” she said.
Back at Ferrara in Little Italy, Lepore is searching everywhere to find other ways to save money so he doesn’t have to increase their prices. He recently upgraded his building’s cooling system and improved his refrigerators, saving money on electricity in the long term. He also is taking a lesson from his grandparents, who kept the business going through the Great Depression, by baking smaller batches of goods in order to more easily keep product fresh and avoid waste.
“Eggs are determining production,” he said. “As we are going into Easter, I am going to be baking at the last minute not to waste an egg, because there can’t be any left over.”
(NEW YORK) — Hiring data to be released on Friday will offer a gauge of the nation’s economic health, just a day after President Donald Trump’s sweeping new tariffs triggered a major stock selloff.
The jobs report, which details employer activity in March, is set to provide a snapshot of staff cuts imposed by the federal government last month amid cost-cutting efforts undertaken by the Department of Government Efficiency.
The fresh data may also offer clues about possible fallout from a previous round of tariffs imposed on Mexico, Canada and China at the outset of March.
Economists expect the U.S. to have added 140,000 jobs in March. That figure would mark a slight slowdown from hiring in the previous month, but it would still amount to solid job growth.
Despite escalating trade tensions and market turbulence since Trump took office in January, the economy remains in solid shape by several key measures.
The unemployment rate stands at a historically low level. Meanwhile, inflation sits well below a peak attained in 2022, though price increases register nearly a percentage point higher than the Fed’s goal of 2%.
“The economy is strong,” Fed Chair Jerome Powell said at a press conference in Washington, D.C., last month.
Tariffs announced earlier this week, however, threaten to derail hiring and worsen inflation, multiple analysts previously told ABC News.
The far-reaching levies increase the likelihood of a recession by driving up prices, sapping consumer spending, slowing business activity and risking layoffs, they said.
The White House plans to slap a 10% tax on all imported products and place additional duties on items from some of the largest U.S. trading partners, including China and the European Union.
“These policies, if sustained, would likely push the U.S. and global economy into recession this year,” J.P. Morgan said in a note to clients after the tariff announcement.
“Recession risks will likely rise,” Deutsche Bank added.
U.S. stocks plunged on Thursday in the first trading session after Trump unveiled the new tariffs.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeted 1,679 points, or nearly 4%, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq declined almost 6%.
The S&P 500 tumbled 4.8%, marking its worst trading day since 2020.
