WSJ What’s News
Consumers Pull Back Spending, From Luxury Goods to Convenience Stores
Thu, 13 Mar 2025
P.M. Edition for Mar. 13. Low- and high-income consumers alike are spending less, and that’s having an effect on lots of retailers. WSJ food and agriculture reporter Jesse Newman tells us how fewer convenience store purchases of chips and candy bars could impact snack companies’ bottom line. Plus, a federal judge orders the Trump administration to reinstate thousands of fired workers at six federal agencies. And potential cuts to Medicaid put venture-backed startups at a crossroads. WSJ reporter Brian Gormley joins to discuss who could benefit. Alex Ossola hosts. Sign up for the WSJ's free What's News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
What are the key headlines discussed in this episode?
Vladimir Putin rejects a proposal for immediate ceasefire in Ukraine. Plus, a federal judge says the Trump administration must reinstate thousands of federal workers. And possible cuts to Medicaid put startups and their backers at a crossroads.
Investors will continue to show interest, but will be a little bit more circumspect about making new investments in this area.
It's Thursday, March 13th. I'm Alex Osola for The Wall Street Journal. This is the PM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories that move the world today. Russian President Vladimir Putin said today that Russia wouldn't agree to an immediate end to the fighting in Ukraine as Moscow's army made rapid gains towards expelling Ukraine's forces from its Kursk region.
He said that any pause in fighting at this point would be in Ukraine's interest and added that Russia wanted a truce that led, quote, to a lasting peace and the elimination of the root causes of the war, which he described as a crisis. Putin's comments were Moscow's first official response to a U.S.-backed proposal, which Ukraine agreed to this week, that would pause the war for 30 days.
The comments came as, according to U.S. officials, President Trump's special envoy Steve Witkoff was headed to Moscow to discuss the ceasefire proposal. President Trump announced another salvo in a fast-escalating trade war with the European Union, saying he would impose a 200% tariff on U.S. imports of wine, champagne, and other alcoholic beverages from the 27-nation bloc.
In a post on his Truth Social platform today, Trump said the tariff threat came in response to the EU's decision to impose a 50% levy on American whiskey, itself a response to 25% steel and aluminum tariffs that Trump imposed this week.
The tit-for-tat over alcoholic beverages, which push down shares in European drinks companies, could target more than $10 billion worth of European exports to the U.S., depending on how broadly Trump imposes tariffs. Meanwhile, Labor Department data out today showed that wholesale prices held steady last month.
But the department said that a data revision meant that prices charged by producers rose by more than initially estimated in January. The January increase was 0.6 percent, not the 0.4 percent previously estimated.
The prices charged for eggs, however, jumped by more than 53 percent in February, fueling a 0.3 percent increase in prices charged for goods overall, balanced by a 0.2 percent decline in prices charged for services.
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