By Rishi Iyengar, CNN Business For close to two decades, Apple and China have been inextricably linked. The world’s most populous country not only accounts for the bulk of Apple’s device manufacturing but also a significant portion of its sales. This year, however, several cracks have started to appear in an otherwise mutually beneficial relationship.
Continue Reading By Anna Bahney, CNN Business Mortgage rates dropped last week as fears grow that the US economy is entering a recession. The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 5.30% in the week ending July 28, down from 5.54% the week before, according to Freddie Mac. That is still significantly higher than this time last year when it
Continue Reading By Martha White and Alicia Wallace, CNN Business The US economy shrank again in the second quarter, the Bureau of Economic Analysis said Thursday. Gross domestic product, a wide-ranging measure of economic activity, fell by 0.9% on an annualized basis from April through June. That decline marks a key symbolic threshold for the most commonly
Continue Reading By Martha White and Alicia Wallace, CNN Business The US economy shrank again in the second quarter, the Bureau of Economic Analysis said Thursday. Gross domestic product, a wide-ranging measure of economic activity, fell by 0.9% on an annualized basis from April through June. That decline marks a key symbolic threshold for the most commonly
Continue Reading By Julia Horowitz, CNN Business Before the Federal Reserve announced another supersized interest rate hike on Wednesday, investors told Before the Bell they had no problem with the central bank’s messaging that it would continue to aggressively fight decades-high inflation. In fact, they relished it, viewing it as a sign the Fed was taking its
Continue Reading By Parija Kavilanz, CNN Business Shopping for back-to-school essentials is becoming a real struggle for families whose household budgets are stretched to the max by surging inflation. Mid-July is typically when shopping for necessities such as clothes, shoes, backpacks, classroom supplies and gadgets for the new school year gets underway in earnest. But as high
Continue Reading By Natasha Chen For 17 years, Ana Duran worked full time as a travel counselor. Late last year she lost that job, shortly before seeing the price of eggs rise to $7.99 a dozen and the price of a single avocado rise to $2.99 at her local store. In June, it cost her $94 to
Continue Reading By Chris Isidore, CNN Business JetBlue Airways on Thursday announced it would purchase Spirit Airlines, a combination that would create America’s fifth-largest airline. The announcement comes a day after Spirit pulled the plug on a deal to merge with Frontier. JetBlue had been pursuing a hostile bid for Spirit even while Spirit sought shareholder approval
Continue Reading By Laura He, CNN Business Yang Huiyan, Asia’s wealthiest woman, has seen her wealth fall to $11 billion from nearly $24 billion this year as China’s property crisis escalates, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. The 41-year-old controls Country Garden Holdings, China’s largest real estate developer by sales. Her stake was largely transferred from her
Continue Reading By Chris Isidore, CNN Business Spirit and Frontier airlines Wednesday finally pulled the plug on their proposed deal, which had been on life support for months, clearing the way for a possible purchase of Spirit by JetBlue Airways. The proposed merger of Spirit and Frontier, first announced in February, was never able to capture the
Continue Reading By Chris Isidore, CNN Business Ford shook off the impact of supply chain problems and limited vehicle inventory to post much better-than-expected profits and revenue in the second quarter. The number more closely watched by investors, its income excluding special items, jumped to $2.7 billion compared to the $510 million it earned on that basis
Continue Reading By Peter Valdes-Dapena, CNN Business Rivian, the Amazon-backed manufacturer of electric pickups, SUVs and delivery vans, is laying off about 6% of its workforce as the company adjusts as the “world has dramatically changed,” according to an email sent by CEO RJ Scaringe to Rivian’s roughly 14,000 employees. About 840 of those employees were told
Continue Reading By Clare Duffy, CNN Business Facebook is in decline. Meta, Facebook’s parent company, reported revenue of $28.8 billion for the three months ending in June, a 1% drop from the prior-year quarter and its first year-over-year revenue decline since going public in 2012. The company’s profit fell far more sharply. Net income during the quarter
Continue Reading By Matt Egan, CNN Business The Federal Reserve’s war on inflation will eventually kill the economic recovery from Covid-19, former Fed official Bill Dudley warns. The problem is that the Fed began its quest to tame inflation late, leaving the central bank little choice other than to slam the brakes on the economy by drastically
Continue Reading By Hannah Rabinowitz, CNN A Pennsylvania mortgage company owned by billionaire investor Warren Buffett discriminated against communities of color in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware, the Justice Department said Wednesday, in what they say is the first redlining agreement that the department has secured with a mortgage company. Under the terms of the agreement, Trident
Continue Reading By Clare Duffy, Rachel Metz and Brian Fung, CNN The Federal Trade Commission on Wednesday moved to block Facebook-parent Meta from acquiring virtual reality company Within, offering the clearest signal yet that the agency could take a tougher stance on Silicon Valley deals involving newer technologies. In a complaint filed Wednesday in federal court, the
Continue Reading By Catherine Thorbecke, CNN Business TikTok on Wednesday said it would share more data with certain researchers to study activity on the platform amid renewed scrutiny of the short-form video app’s impact on society and its ties to Beijing. Later this year, the company will provide “selected researchers” with access to its API, or application
Continue Reading By Nicole Goodkind, CNN Business What seemed unfathomable just six months ago — a 75-basis-point rate hike by the Federal Reserve — has now happened twice in a row. At the conclusion of its July monetary policymaking meeting, members of the US central bank on Wednesday once again approved a supersized interest rate hike of
Continue Reading By Jordan Valinsky, CNN Business Sprite is retiring its green plastic bottles after more than 60 years. Coca-Cola said Wednesday it’s changing the packaging from green to clear plastic beginning August 1 as part of broader efforts to become more environmentally responsible. Sprite’s current plastic contains green polyethylene terephthalate (PET), an additive that can’t be
Continue Reading By Matt Egan, CNN Business The Federal Reserve is stepping up its war on inflation. That means borrowing costs are going sharply higher for families and businesses. The US central bank last increased its benchmark interest rate by three-quarters of a percentage point, which is the biggest single hike since 1994. This follows the Fed’s
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