It can take mere seconds to announce a new spate of tariffs and mere seconds to announce they’ve been reversed. But it can take months to see how all the back-and-forth has affected the economy.

That’s why the latest Fed minutes, published on Wednesday, showed central bankers continuing to push for patience before adjusting interest rates due to uncertainty over broad economic conditions. But the minutes covered a meeting that ended May 7, and since that time, the fuzzy outlook has begun to come into focus, as seen in a fresh batch of retail earnings this week, which showed many consumer-oriented brands are becoming a little more upbeat.

Retail Therapy

There’s a reason why the Fed is slow-rolling any decision to move interest rates again. Chair Jerome Powell and his merry band of central bankers were already walking a tightrope over a bottomless pit of stagflation before waves of tariffs came to rattle the line. In fact, the minutes showed that the members of the Fed’s monetary policy committee believe trade-war pressures could be acutely stagflationary:

• Per the minutes, committee members said the tariffs can be “expected to boost inflation markedly this year” and can also be “expected to lead to slower productivity growth and therefore to reduce potential GDP growth over the next few years.”
• That was enough for the Fed to project the labor market would weaken “substantially” through this year. Committee members also considered “the possibility that the economy would enter a recession to be almost as likely as the baseline forecast.”

And yet, the Fed still sees the US economy as holding on, for now: “Recent indicators suggest that economic activity has continued to expand at a solid pace. The unemployment rate has stabilized at a low level in recent months, and labor market conditions remain solid,” committee members said. Which made ‘uncertainty’ the most important factor in their decision to stay patient on rate adjustments.

Let’s Go to the Mall: In the meantime, trade tensions are starting to cool, the bad vibes of consumer sentiment “soft data” are already starting to turn, and some consumer-facing brands are even growing optimistic about the year ahead. Fashion retailer Abercrombie raised its full-year sales forecast Wednesday from its estimate in March, saying that it is not planning “broad-based” price hikes now, “based on [its] current assumption on tariffs.” Dick’s Sporting Goods, meanwhile, reaffirmed its outlook for the year on Wednesday after announcing a revenue beat and projecting comparable-store sales would increase between 1% and 3% this year. Even the long-downtrodden Macy’s posted better-than-expected first-quarter results, though the mall anchor did ultimately cut its earnings outlook for the year citing — what else? — “a certain level of uncertainty.”

Stellantis has brought new meaning to car trouble, and now it’s hoping a shakeup at the top will help it steer clear of a fiscal dead end.

The multinational automaking giant — one of Detroit’s Big Three by virtue of its Chrysler ownership — announced Wednesday that Americas COO Antonio Filosa will soon sit in the driver’s seat as its chief executive officer. He’ll be called upon to maneuver out of a veritable traffic jam of issues, including his predecessor’s strategic blunders, the looming tariff war, and a challenging global auto market.

Getting Back on Track

When France’s Groupe PSA and American-Italian Fiat Chrysler merged to form Stellantis in 2021, it brought Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, Fiat, Maserati, Alfa Romeo, and more under one roof. The new automaking behemoth promised billions in savings through synergies and collaboration on emerging technologies, such as electric vehicles.

And, for a minute, it delivered. Under its first CEO, Carlos Tavares, the new group achieved a record $20 billion in net profit in 2023, an 11% year-over-year increase, and a record $203 billion in net revenue. And then, faster than a Maserati MC20, his strategy went south. Under Tavares, Stellantis hiked prices during the pandemic like most automakers — roughly 50% from 2019 to 2024 in its case, compared with 23% inflation. But then, unlike others, it refused to lower them. Customers balked at Jeeps that cost over $100,000, and inventory piled up, which forced Stellantis to sell off 100,000 units at a heavy discount to clear the backlog. There were other bad signs, namely layoffs and idled plants, and Stellantis’ US dealers grew furious: Their council blasted the company’s “reckless short-term decision-making” in an open letter last September. Other critics (car-beraters?) piled up, including the United Auto Workers, who threatened to strike.

Tavares abruptly resigned in December after several quarters marked by flailing performance. All told, Stellantis reported a 70% drop in net profits in 2024 to $5.7 billion. At the same time, its US sales plummeted 15%, and its US market share, which had declined roughly 3 percentage points over three years to 8%, fell into fifth place behind Honda. The first quarter of this year brought a 14% year-over-year revenue slide and North American shipments falling 20%. Enter Filosa, who will have to tackle all this and a geopolitical headache:

• Earlier this year, Stellantis pledged to invest more than $5 billion in the US, including the reopening of an Illinois plant, in an effort to court President Trump. But its international footprint, which includes facilities in Mexico and Canada in addition to Europe, means it is among the automakers most exposed to a trade war.
• Morgan Stanley analysts said earlier this year that Stellantis and Porsche had the highest US exposures, with about 25% of their unit sales potentially impacted, while Fitch estimates that close to 40% of the company’s US sales involve vehicles manufactured abroad.

Order Up: While Stellantis is undoubtedly facing pressure from tariffs on car imports, which Trump set at 25%, potentially good news arrived Wednesday. A federal court blocked the president’s plan to impose “reciprocal” tariffs on dozens of countries, which could have led to even higher duties. Trump, for example, recently threatened a 50% tariff for the EU, where much of Stellantis’ operations are based. The ruling does not, however, impact Trump’s auto tariffs, levied using a national security exemption. Moreover, Goldman Sachs chief US political economist Alec Phillips wrote, following the ruling, that the bank expects the administration “will find other ways to impose tariffs” such as broadening sectoral tariffs under Section 232 or launching Section 301 investigations on US trading partners, paving the way for tariffs to follow.

Girl/boy math is telling yourself that an $8 matcha latte costs just seven hundred-thousandths of a bitcoin. Soon, that conversion will matter because any shop that uses Square will be able to accept bitcoin payments.

Square parent Block said it’ll start supporting bitcoin later this year, reaching all 4 million of its sellers by next year. CEO Jack Dorsey said merchants can keep the bitcoin they’re paid in or have it automatically converted to fiat currencies (like the dollar, peso, or pound). Previously, sellers could only do the opposite, meaning convert their fiat sales into bitcoin.

Call It Bizcoin

Square rival Stripe started supporting stablecoin transactions last year, acquiring stablecoin platform Bridge in February for $1.1 billion to strengthen its infrastructure. It’s actually a circle-back for Stripe, which was the first payments company to process bitcoin in 2014 but discontinued its crypto offering four years later after running into low demand and high fees.

PayPal, meanwhile, has been letting shoppers check out with crypto since 2021. PayPal launched its own stablecoin in 2023 and began allowing US businesses to buy and sell bitcoin on its platform last year.

As payment platforms give millions of small businesses more exposure to bitcoin, big businesses are also piling into the digital asset — whose price popped 50% from last month to an all-time high of more than $111,000 last week:

• According to BitcoinTreasuries.net’s tracker, 114 publicly-listed companies now hold bitcoin, up from 89 at the beginning of last month. Together, they’ve amassed about $87 billion worth.
• GameStop disclosed yesterday that it bought $500 million worth of bitcoin to stash in its treasury. Similarly, POTUS Trump’s media company said Tuesday it plans to raise $2.5 billion to build its own treasury of the in-demand digital asset.

Hype Machine: Block announced its bitcoin expansion at Bitcoin 2025, an annual crypto conference where, last year, Trump said he’d make the US the “crypto capital of the planet.” Hopes are high that crypto will enter the mainstream under Trump as regulators push for legal frameworks that could help it gain wider adoption (a stablecoin bill is imminent). At this year’s Bitcoin 2025, VP JD Vance doubled down on the administration’s support, saying the crypto industry needs regulatory clarity ASAP.