Hamas Accepts Temporary Cease-Fire Proposal
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Hamas accepts a temporary ceasefire after rejecting a proposal to end the war.
This plan really comes with this looming Israeli threat of basically a military invasion and takeover of Gaza City, where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are believed to be sheltering and some Israeli hostages are believed to be held.
Plus, Home Depot says it will raise some prices due to tariffs. And a leading pediatrics group is recommending COVID shots for young children diverging from federal health guidelines. It's Tuesday, August 19th. I'm Sabrina Siddiqui for The Wall Street Journal, covering for Alex Osola. This is the PM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories that move the world today. Homebuilding in the U.S. increased last month, contradicting expectations that it would fall amid a fragile housing market. According to a report released by the Commerce Department today, housing starts, a gauge of new residential construction, rose to $1.428 million in July from an upwardly revised $1.358 million in June.
Economists polled by The Wall Street Journal had anticipated a lower 1.3 million starts. Today's report says the housing starts were 12.9 percent higher than a year earlier. But residential permits, another measure of trends in housing construction, fell short of forecasts and slipped to 1.354 million from a downwardly revised 1.393 million in June. The National Association of Home Builders said the increase in housing starts occurred despite a slight decline in builder sentiment due to persistently high mortgage rates. Tariffs will soon start hitting some price tags at Home Depot. The home improvement retailer said it will raise prices on some items due to tariffs, reversing an earlier position.
In an interview, Chief Financial Officer Richard McPhail said there will be some modest price movement for some categories. The company said that 50% of its products are sourced domestically and aren't subject to tariffs. Wall Street Journal reporter Nicholas Miller joins me now to discuss. Nicholas, the company previously said it wouldn't raise prices as a result of tariffs. What changed and what do they now anticipate the impact of tariffs to be?
The simple answer is that just tariffs are a lot higher right now than they were in May.
What is the episode overview and why does Hamas’ cease-fire matter?
In May, they said they were going to try to hold prices and work with suppliers that they don't have to pass tariff costs on to consumers. But they talked today about how they'll be having some modest price increases in certain categories. They said it won't be broad based, but that certain categories, particularly the ones that are impacted by tariffs, will see some modest price increases. They did say that they're still accelerating their supply chain transition to avoid too much exposure to one country. But yeah, this kind of admission that they were going to hike prices a little bit is definitely a notable shift from last quarter.
How does Home Depot see the current market and consumer behavior?
Home Depot mostly talked today about consumers being unwilling to undertake those kind of larger projects. So they're saying they're still seeing demand for kind of small projects, small renovation projects, but not big renovations. And the company said the number one reason for that was general economic uncertainty. People being unwilling to make some of those big expenditures, not knowing what the future of the economy looks like. And then the second reason they gave was high interest rates.
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