Tesla Inc.promised to start delivering Model 3 sedans built at its new Shanghai plant within six to 10 months—and priced them well below the imported version—as the electric-vehicle maker races to capitalize on booming Chinese demand. Offering up details on its China strategy, Tesla said prices for the locally built Model 3 will start from […]
U.S. inflation picked up in April after a very weak start to the year, a development that could help to ease Federal Reserve officials’ recent concerns about tepid price pressures. The Fed’s preferred inflation gauge, the price index for personal-consumption expenditures, rose a seasonally adjusted 0.31% in April from March and 1.51% from a year […]
New-home sales in the U.S. declined in April, posting the largest monthly drop since the end of last year, but there are signs the market for new homes is brightening. Purchases of newly built single-family homes—a relatively narrow slice of all U.S. home sales—declined 6.9% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 673,000 in April, […]
Many American households remain financially fragile and uncertain about their retirement prospects despite a booming job market that is lifting wages, according to a Federal Reserve survey released Thursday. One-quarter of working individuals say they have no retirement savings at all, the survey said, and 44% worry that their saving isn’t on track. Among younger […]
Spending at U.S. retailers declined in April, signaling hesitation among consumers as the second quarter began. Retail sales, a measure of purchases at stores, restaurants and online, declined a seasonally adjusted 0.2% in April from a month earlier, the Commerce Department said Wednesday. The drop fell short of economists’ expectations for a slight increase. It […]
U.S. officials no longer think the government will make money off the federal student-loan program and now project it will cost taxpayers tens of billions of dollars in coming years, according to a new congressional estimate. The program is losing money after a surge of borrowers defaulting on loans or enrolling in plans that ultimately […]
Last year’s big tax cut is about to start shrinking. The Internal Revenue Service on Thursday announced the tax code’s parameters for 2019, implementing a new method for making inflation adjustments that will result in higher tax payments—and government revenue—over time. The shift will cost Americans $133.5 billion over a decade, according to Congress’s Joint […]
Germany’s worst industrial scandal in recent memory arrived when auto companies fiddled with emissions tests to make diesel cars seem greener than they are. Now a new study suggests that electric cars touted as a diesel alternative also aren’t so great for the environment. A study this month by the IFO think tank in Munich […]
Investors who bet on the rapid growth of electric vehicles in China are getting a shock. Umicore , UMICY -0.83% a big player in the electric-vehicle supply chain, issued a profit warning Tuesday, sending its stock down 15%. The Chinese government cut subsidies for electric vehicles by more than expected last month, and Umicore is […]
Tesla Inc. cut the price of its mass-market Model 3 sedan for the second time this year, another step in Chief Executive Elon Musk’s quest to drive the sticker price—not counting tax credits and fuel savings—down to $35,000. The Silicon Valley auto maker shaved another $1,100 off the cheapest version of the Model 3, lowering […]
A growing list of public officials in high-tax states are expressing alarm that big earners are bolting to low-tax states as new data suggests some home buyers are moving in response to the year-old change in the federal tax law. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo became the latest on Monday when he blamed a $2.3 […]
Until recently, most white-collar, service-sector and professional jobs were shielded from automation by humans’ cognitive monopoly. Computers couldn’t think, so jobs that required any type of thinking—nuclear physics professor, florist and everything in between—required a human. But a form of artificial intelligence called “machine learning” has given computers skills like reading, writing, speaking and recognizing […]
Many political reporters have spent the last six weeks cataloging alleged harms to the economy from the partial government shutdown ended last week. Meanwhile outside of government, America’s small companies were ramping up their historic effort to employ new workers. That’s according to the latest National Federation of Independent Business employment survey, due out later […]
Oregon is poised to become the first state to enact statewide rent control. The Democrat-controlled state Senate is considering a bill to cap rent increases at 7 points above the annual increase in the consumer price index. Currently, that works out to about 10% a year. The bill also includes tenant protections, such as prohibiting […]
When I was CEO of Cypress Semiconductor, I chose Round Rock, Texas, over San Jose, Calif., for Cypress’s second wafer-fabrication plant, and I chose to locate our third plant in Bloomington, Minn. Other CEOs made similar decisions. Silicon Valley barely has any silicon left; there are now zero state-of-the-art wafer-fabrication plants here. We had to […]