As the Western U.S. faces more damaging droughts, local governmentsas well as an increasing number of homeownershave been successfully promoting landscaping practices that eschew the stereotypical water-hungry grass lawn for more resilient choices. The average U.S. family uses roughly 50 gallons of water per day for outdoor plants and lawns, per statistics from the Environmental Protection Agency; a third of residential water use, or about 9 billion gallons per day, goes toward lawns, plants, and irrigation.
Whether its called native planting, xeriscaping, or drought-tolerant landscaping, the push to use more local plants has gained significant momentum. But many landscape architects are finding that the plant industry is straining to keep up.
Were trying to create designs with plants that use less water, have deeper root systems, and are more resilient, said Tyler Krob, a senior associate and landscape architect at Denver-based Superbloom. And the reality is, the nursery market just isnt capable of supplying those.
The growth in demand for native plants has skyrocketed in recent years, as developers and landscapers have pushed to reduce water usage and promote local flora and fauna. But despite this significant growth in demand, supply remains lacking, and the growers who do specialize in these plants arent necessarily nearby; its becoming harder and harder to find native plants locally.
Putting pressure on the plant industry
Its causing many landscape architects to alter projects and even rethink the supply chain for flowers, bushes, and shrubbery for future projects. Its also putting pressure on the massive plant and nursery industry, a $13.8 billion-a-year sector of the economy that employs as many people as the clothing retail sector.
[Photo: /Pexels]
It’s a very concentrated and top-heavy industry consisting of a number of massive players making significant sales with popular, non-native species, along with a number of smaller, regional nurseries that face economic pressures such as high land prices and aging ownership. According to Garden Centers 2024 state of the industry report, only 42% of sellers focus on native plant species.
Superbloom, which works primarily in cities throughout the West, said the supply of local native plants has become such a challenge that it’s forced to order plants from out-of-state nurseries and work directly with local nurseries to grow its own native species for its projects.
Diane Lipovsky, cofounder and principal, said the shortage is forcing the company to swap out certain species and can even delay projects. Los Angeles-based landscape architecture firm Terremoto opened its own plant store to help expand the supply of local, native plants.
I started that shop because I believed that there should be independently owned, mostly native plant shops sprinkled through all cities and communities, so that they’re easy, affordable, and accessible, said Terremoto principal/owner David Godshall.
Superbloom has even persuaded clients to agree to grow their own plants at the onset of a large real estate project to avoid shortages later on. For the firms current work on city and county buildings in Denver, for instance, the city has agreed to grow native plants in its own greenhouse to avoid having to pay to import plants from nurseries in the Midwest.
Much of this push comes from good faith efforts to cut water usage and conserve natural resources, as well as emerging legislation to cut down water usage. The Colorado Legislature already passed SB 24-005, a bill that prohibits local entities from using non-native plant species on commercial, institutional, industrial, and common-interest community properties, as well as public spaces and state facility projects. It goes into effect January 1, 2026, and will likely exacerbate the shortage.
States including Illinois and Delaware have also passed legislation encouraging the use of native plants, and in 2022 the federal Native Plant Species Pilot Program Act, which establishes native planting pilots for federal land management, was signed into law.
Superblooms Krob and Lipovsky said the real budget challenge in relation to using native plants is that designers often face delays and potential design compromises via substitution requests. Due to lack of availability, sourcing native or water-wise species might require a custom contract to grow, which can push a project out by a full season or more. Thats just not feasible for many public or developer-led timelines.
Where do we get more native plants?
There are significant challenges to ramping up native plant production, said Deryn Davidson, a sustainable landscape specialist at Colorado State University.
Native plants havent been specially bred to grow in standard nursery-style containers, making it hard for larger contract growers to provide them to large commercial nurseries. You cant ask a manufacturer to crank out more products; plants need a lot of time and planning to grow. Lipovsky said shes seeing the industry gear up to expand, but its still far behind whats needed.
The pressure coming from government land managers and others seeking to restore natural habitats has caused a native seed shortage across the country. A 2023 report from the Committee on an Assessment of Native Seeds and Capacities found the industry was small and uncertain, with demand fluctuating wildly, while a 2022 report from the National Academy of Sciences found that nationally the supply of native plant material was severely insufficient. Years with significat wildfire damage, for instance, can put sudden demands on dwindling seed stocks.
In addition, many landscapers arent as familiar with the intricacies of watering and caring for native plants, making it crucial to educate more workers on maintenance. And theres also consumer perception, which has been altered by the ready-to-grow nature of plants found at stores like Home Depot.
These native plants can be slower to shine, and people will see these plants, which can take a year to really grow, and its not what theyre used to, Davidson said. Theres a bit of managing expectations that needs to take place.
Superbloom has found that specific species such as prairie dropseed, little bluestem, and pasqueflower have been particularly challenging to find on the current market. Krob found that even buying blue grama, Colorados state grass, for use in his own front yard meant importing from a nursery in Illinois or Oregon.
There are other key market forces at play. Landscaping, especially on a large, commercial scale, is intimately tied to the construction and real estate development industries, which continue to see declining new business. The American Institute of Architects Billings Index remains in negative territory after years of slow and even negative business growth.
Despite those issues, this supply-and-demand imbalance is in many ways a good problem to have, and a sign that the trend toward native plants that support pollinators and cut down on water usage are very much taking root. And in a market as volatile as construction, greater availability of diverse, drought-tolerant native species from local nurseries would benefit the entire industry, especially when factoring in increasing pressures around water use. It would help reduce costs, improve access, and support compliance with emerging policies and legislation.
Demand is probably just going to continue to go up, said Davidson. Its industry growing pains, but it’s exciting that were at this point.
The International Monetary Fund on Tuesday raised its global growth forecasts for 2025 and 2026 slightly, citing stronger-than-expected purchases ahead of an August 1 jump in U.S. tariffs and a drop in the effective U.S. tariff rate to 17.3%, from 24.4%.
It warned, however, that the global economy faced major risks, including a potential rebound in tariff rates, geopolitical tensions, and larger fiscal deficits that could drive up interest rates and tighten global financial conditions.
“The world economy is still hurting, and it’s going to continue hurting with tariffs at that level, even though it’s not as bad as it could have been,” said Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas, IMF chief economist.
In an update to its World Economic Outlook from April, the IMF raised its global growth forecast by 0.2 percentage point, to 3%, for 2025, and by 0.1 percentage point, to 3.1%, for 2026. However, that is still below the 3.3% growth it had projected for both years in January and the pre-pandemic historical average of 3.7%.
It said global headline inflation was expected to fall to 4.2% in 2025 and to 3.6% in 2026, but noted that inflation would likely remain above target in the U.S. as tariffs passed through to U.S. consumers in the second half of the year.
The U.S. effective tariff ratemeasured by import duty revenue as a proportion of goods importshas dropped since April, but it remains far higher than its estimated level of 2.5% in early January. The corresponding tariff rate for the rest of the world is 3.5%, compared with 4.1% in April, the IMF said.
U.S. President Donald Trump has upended global trade by imposing a universal tariff of 10% on nearly all countries in April and by threatening even higher duties to kick in on Friday. Far higher tit-for-tat tariffs imposed by the U.S. and China were put on hold until August 12, with talks in Stockholm this week potentially leading to a further extension.
The U.S. has also announced steep duties ranging from 25% to 50% on automobiles, steel, and other metals, with higher duties soon to be announced on pharmaceuticals, lumber, and semiconductor chips.
Such future tariff increases are not reflected in the IMF numbers and could raise effective tariff rates further, creating bottlenecks and amplifying the effect of higher tariffs, the IMF said.
Shifting tariffs
Gourinchas said the IMF was evaluating new 15% tariff deals reached by the U.S. with the European Union and Japan over the past week, which came too late to factor into the July forecast, but he said the tariff rates were similar to the 17.3% rate underlying the IMF’s forecast.
“Right now, we are not seeing a major change compared to the effective tariff rate that the U.S. is imposing on other countries,” he said, adding it was not yet clear if these agreements would last.
“We’ll have to see whether these deals are sticking, whether they’re unraveled, whether they’re followed by other changes in trade policy,” Gourinchas said.
Staff simulations showed that global growth in 2025 would be roughly 0.2 of a percentage point lower if the maximum tariff rates announced in April and July were implemented, the IMF said.
The IMF said the global economy was proving resilient for now, but uncertainty remained high and current economic activity suggested “distortions from trade, rather than underlying robustness.”
Gourinchas said the 2025 outlook had been helped by what he called “a tremendous amount” of front-loading as businesses tried to get ahead of the tariffs, but he warned that the stockpiling boost would not last.
“That is going to fade away,” he said, adding: “That’s going to be a drag on economic activity in the second half of the year and into 2026. There is going to be payback for that front-loading, and that’s one of the risks we face.”
Tariffs were expected to remain high, he said, pointing to signs that U.S. consumer prices were starting to edge higher.
“The underlying tariff is much higher than it was back in January, February. If that stays . . . that will weigh on growth going forward, contributing to a really lackluster global performance.”
One unusual factor has been a depreciation of the dollar, not seen during previous trade tensions, Gourinchas said, noting that the lower dollar was adding to the tariff shock for other countries while also helping ease financial conditions.
U.S. growth was expected to reach 1.9% in 2025, up 0.1 percentage point from April’s outlook, and edge up to 2% in 2026. A new U.S. tax cut and spending law was expected to increase the U.S. fiscal deficit by 1.5 percentage points, with tariff revenues offsetting that by about half, the IMF said.
The IMF lifted its forecast for the euro area by 0.2 of a percentage point, to 1%, in 2025, and left the 2026 forecast unchanged at 1.2%. It said the upward revision reflected a historically large surge in Irish pharmaceutical exports to the U.S.; without it, the revision would have been half as big.
China’s outlook got a bigger upgrade of 0.8 of a percentage point, reflecting stronger-than-expected activity in the first half of the year, and the significant reduction in U.S.-China tariffs after Washington and Beijing declared a temporary truce.
The IMF increased its forecast for Chinese growth in 2026 by 0.2 of a percentage point, to 4.2%.
Overall, growth is expected to reach 4.1% in emerging markets and developing economies in 2025, edging lower to 4% in 2026, it said.
The IMF upped its forecast for world trade by 0.9 of a percentage point, to 2.6%, but cut its forecast for 2026 by 0.6 of a percentage point, to 1.9%.
By Andrea Shalal, Reuters
A big American brand partners with a young, beautiful celebrity in what it thinks is a clever and iconic piece of advertising. But as soon as the ad drops, the reaction is exactly the opposite of what the brand was hoping for. There is an immediate backlash against how the ad has casually, and ignorantly, waded into issues like identity politics, societal divisions, and systemic racism.
Sound familiar? Of course, it sounds a helluva lot like the swamp of hot takes American Eagle and Sydney Sweeney currently find themselves wandering waist-deep in. But I was actually talking about the infamous Pepsi and Kendall Jenner ad from 2017. So much has changed since then, but oh, how any given brands lack of cultural awareness can remain constant.
Sydney Sweeney x American Eagle, oh my god. pic.twitter.com/tDkeGT9R7G— Sydney Sweeney Daily (@sweeneydailyx) July 24, 2025
Last week, American Eagle dropped a new campaign of ads featuring Sweeney. One has her sensually sliding into a pair of jeans while explaining what genes are. Jeans are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair color, personality, and even eye color, she said. My jeans are blue. Cut to a male voice-over and tagline: Sydney Sweeney has great jeans.
That double entendre between denim and genetic traits immediately raised the ire of the internet, with many pointing to the very blond hair and blue eyes of the campaigns star as a complicated and divisive ideal to be touting in 2025. Accusations hurled at the brand ranged from plain ignorance to full-on Nazi propaganda. On the other end are those finding fresh fodder for their screams against the woke mind virus.
Wherever you stand on that spectrum, there is no denying the fact that the campaign has gone much bigger than it ever would have as a result of this outsize negative reaction. No matter what anyone says, this was certainly not the brands intention.
Defining moment
This was no one-off social post, but a full-throated brand extravaganza. American Eagle chief marketing officer Craig Brommers was hyping its scale on LinkedIn last week, about how it would hit the Sphere in Las Vegas, 3D billboards in Times Square and L.A., a Euphoria partnership with HBO Max, and more. A massive thank-you and CONGRATULATIONS to our internal teams and external partnersand SYDNEY herselffor this defining moment, Brommers wrote.
Ashley Schapiro, American Eagles vice president of marketing, media, performance, and engagement, wrote a LinkedIn post outlining part of the process. She said that on a Zoom call with Sweeney, they asked her, How far do you want to push it?
Without hesitation, she smirked and said, Lets push it. Im game. Our response? Challenge Accepted, Schapiro wrote. From that moment on, Syds sentiment guided every frame, every stitch and every unexpected twist of the Sydney Sweeney Has Great Jeanscampaign. Infusing our own personal cheeky energy and making us as we envisioned how the world would experience the launch. The star power of Sydney and the double meaning behind the campaign has a culture-shaping power beyond anything I could have ever imagined being a part ofjust check your social feeds.
There are any number of ways to talk about this ad and campaign overallfrom whether it intentionally or not promotes outdated genetic ideals to whether the intended audience is people who buy jeans or those buying meme stocks. But let’s look at these spots as creative advertising ideas.
Reheated ideas
The spot featuring Sweeney squeezing into a pair of jeans while lying down and doling out a genetics lesson is a remarkable facsimile of Calvin Kleins 1980 spot with Brooke Shields giving her own breakdown of genetics while … you guessed it … squeezing into a pair of jeans while lying down.
Another Sweeney spot has her going all meta, insisting that shes not trying to get you to buy American Eagle jeans at all.
This hews incredibly close to a 2017 Sprite ad starring LeBron James, in which the NBA star insists that hes not here to convince you to drink the soda at all.
Just like the controversy itself, the ideas here arent new. But there was a very simple way to feature the exact same work without all the negative baggage.
Meaning over intent
Marcus Collins, a consultant, author, and University of Michigan marketing professor, often writes about brands as vessels for meaning. Meaning is subjective, not objective, and that is something all brand marketers need to keep in mind. On Instagram, Collins said: Despite whatever the intentions the brand had in making this ad, what it communicates to people is that there is a prototypical standard for good genes: white, blonde hair, blue eyes. And of course, especially considering the political and social cultural backdrop that we’re in right now, that could seem like some pretty bad dog whistling.
Collins goes on to outline how American Eagle could have done this campaign without the whistle. Why not feature other people, who may still be objectively beautiful, to illustrate a variety of good jeans? Collins points to stars like Idris Elba or Halle Berry, but American Eagle neednt even have looked outside their own brand roster.
Last year, the brand launched a collab collection with tennis star Coco Gauff, as well as her second ad campaign for the slogan Live Your Life. The 21-year-old is not only in the brand’s ideal age bracket, she’s also smart, stylish, beautiful, and just happens to have a collection of 19 professional tennis trophies, including the 2023 U.S. Open and 2025 French Open titles.
Now, those are some pretty damn good jeans, too.
Between 1863 and 1869, the first transcontinental line, known as the Pacific Railroad, was built in the United States. The line ran from Omaha, Nebraska, to Sacramento, California, and carried passengers and goods alike.
It was built mostly by the Central Pacific Railroad Company of California and Union Pacific, and marked a turning point in the Industrial Revolution and Americas economy when it came to shipping goods from the West Coast.
Now, Union Pacific is looking to expand upon history. Pending approval by the Surface Transportation Board (STB), it says it hopes to acquire Norfolk Southern through a stock and cash transaction by 2027, and create the Union Pacific Transcontinental Railroad.
According to a press release, this will involve Norfolk Southern shareholders receiving one Union Pacific common share, and $88.82 in cash for each share of Norfolk Southern. This will represent a $320 value per share, based on Union Pacifics July 16, 2025, closing stock price. Ultimately, it will allow them to buy Norfolk Southern for $85 billion.
Norfolk Southern shareholders would represent 27% of ownership in the combined company. If the merger is not approved, the agreement reflects a $2.5 billion termination fee.
Their end goal is to connect the West and East coasts across 43 states and link around 100 shipment ports throughout North America.
They say it would be the first transcontinental railroad in America, but in reality, it would be the first line to carry freight (not passengers) without needing to transfer shipments between rail lines.
This combination is transformational, enhancing the best freight transportation system in the worldit’s a win for the American economy, it’s a win for our customers, and its a win for our people, Union Pacific CEO Jim Vena said in a statement. It builds on President Abraham Lincolns vision of a transcontinental railroad from nearly 165 years ago and advances our Safety, Service, and Operational Excellence Strategy.
Who does a transcontinental railroad benefit?
Currently, there are seven Class 1 freight railroads operating in the U.S.: BNSF Railway Co., Canadian National Railway (Grand Trunk Corporation), Canadian Pacific (Soo Line Corporation), CSX Transportation, Kansas City Southern Railway Co., Norfolk Southern, and Union Pacific Railroad.
Echoing the sentiment of the Trump administrations America First strategy, the statement announcing the merger says this venture would transform the U.S. supply chain, unleash the industrial strength of American manufacturing, and create new sources of economic growth and workforce opportunity that preserve union jobs.
Additionally, Union Pacific claims the merging of routes would improve transit times, enhance rail competitionspecifically against the Canadian lines that operate in the U.S.and move more freight via train for a lower consumer and manufacturer cost.
The company cites the pros of rail shipping over highway truckers as more cost effective on a per-ton mile basis, faster due to a lack of traffic concerns, and more environmentally fuel efficient.
On the flip side, the cons of rail include that it’s less cost-efficient for smaller shipments, the shipping modes inability to reach specific locations all the time, and truckers are likely to have something to say about any transportation that moves from truck to rail.
Linking America’s coasts
According to the Federal Railroad Administration, 52% of rail freight consists of bulk commodities. These widely include agriculture, energy products, hazardous materials and chemicals, automobiles, food, and other various materials.
The other 48% consists of consumer goods and miscellaneous items like clothes, electronics, and producemost of which are considered intermodal, meaning that they are small enough to be transferred for the last mile of shipment via plane, truck, or another transportation mode.
And per Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern, these goods equal around 1.5 billion tons currently moved via freight railroads every year.
What happens next?
The STB will review the agreement after the companies file their application to mergesomething they say they plan to do within the next six months.
A merger of this capacity will likely raise questions regarding rail regulations and the ethics behind competition in America, as more and more freight rail mergers have taken place over the past few years.
As of this afternoon, both Norfolk Southern (NYSE: NSC) and Union Pacific (NYSE: UNP) shares are down nearly 3%.
President Donald Trump‘s administration on Tuesday proposed revoking a scientific finding that has long been the central basis for U.S. action to regulate greenhouse gas emissions and fight climate change.
The proposed Environmental Protection Agency rule would rescind a 2009 declaration that determined that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare.
The endangerment finding is the legal underpinning of a host of climate regulations under the Clean Air Act for motor vehicles, power plants and other pollution sources that are heating the planet.
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced the proposed rule change on a podcast ahead of an official announcement set for Tuesday in Indiana.
Repealing the endangerment finding will be the largest deregulatory action in the history of America,” Zeldin said on the Ruthless podcast.
There are people who, in the name of climate change, are willing to bankrupt the country,” Zeldin said. “They created this endangerment finding and then they are able to put all these regulations on vehicles, on airplanes, on stationary sources, to basically regulate out of existence, in many cases, a lot of segments of our economy. And it cost Americans a lot of money.
The EPA proposal must go though a lengthy review process, including public comment, before it is finalized, likely next year. Environmental groups are likely to challenge the rule change in court.
Zeldin called for a rewrite of the endangerment finding in March as part of a series of environmental rollbacks announced at the same time in what he said was “the greatest day of deregulation in American history.” A total of 31 key environmental rules on topics from clean air to clean water and climate change would be rolled back or repealed under Zeldin’s plan.
He singled out the endangerment finding as the Holy Grail of the climate change religion and said he was thrilled to end it as the EPA does its part to usher in the Golden Age of American success.”
Tailpipe emission limits also targeted
The EPA also is expected to call for rescinding limits on tailpipe emissions that were designed to encourage automakers to build and sell more electric vehicles. The transportation sector is the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States.
Environmental groups said Zeldin’s action denies reality as weather disasters exacerbated by climate change continue in the U.S. and around the world.
As Americans reel from deadly floods and heat waves, the Trump administration is trying to argue that the emissions turbocharging these disasters are not a threat,” said Christy Goldfuss, executive director of the Natural Resources Defense Council. It boggles the mind and endangers the nations safety and welfare.
Under Zeldin and Trump, the EPA wants to shirk its responsibility to protect us from climate pollution, but science and the law say otherwise,” she added. If EPA finalizes this illegal and cynical approach, we will see them in court.
Three former EPA leaders have also criticized Zeldin, saying his March announcement targeting the endangerment finding and other rules imperiled the lives of millions of Americans and abandoned the agencys dual mission to protect the environment and human health.
If theres an endangerment finding to be found anywhere, it should be found on this administration because what theyre doing is so contrary to what the Environmental Protection Agency is about, Christine Todd Whitman, who led EPA under Republican President George W. Bush, said after Zeldin’s plan was made public.
The EPA proposal follows an executive order from Trump that directed the agency to submit a report on the legality and continuing applicability of the endangerment finding.
Conservatives and some congressional Republicans hailed the initial plan, calling it a way to undo economically damaging rules to regulate greenhouse gases.
But environmental groups, legal experts and Democrats said any attempt to repeal or roll back the endangerment finding would be an uphill task with slim chance of success. The finding came two years after a 2007 Supreme Court ruling holding that the EPA has authority to regulate greenhouse gases as air pollutants under the Clean Air Act.
Passing court muster could be an issue
David Doniger, a climate expert at the NRDC, accused Trump’s Republican administration of using potential repeal of the endangerment finding as a kill shot that would allow him to make all climate regulations invalid. If finalized, repeal of the endangerment finding would erase current limits on greenhouse gas pollution from cars, factories, power plants and other sources and could prevent future administrations from proposing rules to tackle climate change.
“The Endangerment Finding is the legal foundation that underpins vital protections for millions of people from the severe threats of climate change, and the Clean Car and Truck Standards are among the most important and effective protections to address the largest U.S. source of climate-causing pollution,” said Peter Zalzal, associate vice president of the Environmental Defense Fund.
Attacking these safeguards is manifestly inconsistent with EPAs responsibility to protect Americans health and well-being,” he said. It is callous, dangerous and a breach of our governments responsibility to protect the American people from this devastating pollution.”
Conrad Schneider, a senior director at the Clean Air Task Force, said the Trump administration is using pollution regulations as a scapegoat in its flawed approach to energy affordability” and reliability.
He and other advocates “are dismayed that an administration that claims it cares about cleaner, healthier and safer air is seeking to dismantle the very protections that are required for those conditions, Schneider said.
Matthew Daly, Associated Press
Cash App wants you to take a dip into its newest feature: Pools.
The company announced the launch of a new pools feature Tuesday, which allows users toyou guessed itpool their money and make group payments. For instance, it can be used to pay for a dinner with friends, a vacation, or even to collect money for a birthday or wedding gift.
Owen Jennings, Business Lead at Block, Cash Apps parent company, says that implementing pools was something of a no-brainer, since they were able to simply look at how their users were utilizing the app, and create a new feature to facilitate the behavior the Cash App team was seeing.
Its really, really common behavior, we see more than half of our customers engaging in pooling behavior, he says of Cash App users sending money to each other to pay for a single, larger expense. To some extent, weve just built something thats custom for this specific use-case.
Jennings adds that what hes particularly excited about, in terms of pools, is that for the first time, were allowing out-of-network contributions, which means some users dont even need to have Cash App in order to participate. In those cases, their friends can send them a link to a Cash App pool, and the out-of-network participants can use Apple Pay or Google Pay to contribute.
While pools is an active feature for a subset of Cash App users currently, there is a wider rollout planned for the coming months.
Jennings also mentions that launching new features and products, such as pools, is the primary way that Cash App, and Block at large, have grown its customer base and deepened engagement with current customers. Folks typically come in because of our peer-to-peer features, he says, and increasingly attach to additional features. In that sense, the company is seeing a payoff.
Blockwhich was founded by CEO Jack Dorsey (perhaps most well-known for founding Twitter) in 2009 and is also the parent company of Square, Afterpay, TIDAL, Proto, and Bitkeyhas grown enough to become the latest entrant into the S&P 500. Investors evidently liked that news, too, because the companys stock has popped recentlyshares are up nearly 24% over the past month, as of writing.
German semiconductor materials supplier Siltronic on Tuesday lowered its full-year sales guidance and warned on sales in the next quarter, amidst continued weakness in its semiconductor business and high customer inventories.
The group now expects sales to be in the mid-single-digit percentage range below the previous year, having previously guided towards sales being in the same region as the previous year.
Shares in Siltronic, which have fallen 11.3% since the start of the year including today’s session, were down 7% as at 1014 GMT.
In 2024, the company, which makes silicon wafers used in semiconductor chips, achieved revenue of 1.41 billion euros ($1.63 billion), which was 7% below the previous year.
Siltronic, whose customers include Infineon, Intel, Samsung, and TSMC, also said it expects third-quarter sales to be below the previous quarter’s level, due to shifts in delivery volumes in 2025, most of which have been postponed to the fourth-quarter.
Its second-quarter revenue amounted to 329.1 million euros, down from 351.3 million euros a year earlier. That was ahead of analysts’ average forecast of 322 million euros, according to a poll by LSEG.
On a conference call with analysts, CEO Michael Heckmeier said that high customer inventories were an issue across the entire industry.
Semiconductor materials suppliers have suffered from slower than expected customer inventories reductions.
“We are stable, there’s no indication that we are doing significantly better or worse than our peers,” he said.
U.S. President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs and uncertainty over his trade policies have sent global markets into a tailspin and significantly dampened investors’ economic optimism.
Analysts at Jefferies said in a note that the U.S. and European Union agreement still poses some questions on the potential impact on wafers.
Last week, ASML, the world’s biggest supplier of computer chip-making equipment, also warned that it may not achieve revenue growth in 2026 as chipmakers building factories in the U.S. await clarity on the potential impact of tariffs.
($1 = 0.8631 euros)
Ozan Ergenay, Reuters
Want more housing market stories from Lance Lamberts ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter.
In a normal housing market environment, giant homebuilder PulteGroupwhich is worth $23 billionspends $18,000 to $21,000 on incentives on a $600,000 home sale. But with affordability strained and housing market softness spreading, the homebuilding giant is now shelling out closer to $52,200 per sale of a home of that value.
Incentives for the second quarter were 8.7% of gross sales price, which is up from 6.3% last year, and on a sequential basis [quarter-over-quarter] up from 8.0%, Jim Ossowski, CFO of PulteGroup, said during the builders July 22 earnings call.
Ever since mortgage rates spiked in mid-2022, which followed a historic run-up in U.S. home prices during the Pandemic Housing Boom, U.S. housing affordability has been strained. In housing markets where that affordability strain has manifested into spiked active inventory/months of supply and soft/falling home prices, giant homebuilders have leaned into doing bigger incentives, in particular, mortgage rate buydowns to pull in priced-out homebuyers and keep sales going.
Of course, given the widespread housing market softeningmost acute over the past year in parts of the West, Southwest, and Southeastmany homebuilders, including PulteGroup, have further increased their incentive spending to prevent a deeper pullback in home sales.
We have responded to these conditions by adjusting [net] sales prices where necessary and focusing sales incentives on closing cost incentives, especially mortgage interest rate buydowns, wrote PulteGroup in its earnings report published on July 22.
That strategy has led to some additional builder gross-profit compression.
PulteGroups gross margin in Q2 2025 still came in at 27.0%. While thats down from the cycle high of 31.3% at the end of the Pandemic Housing Boom in Q2 2022, it remains above pre-pandemic levels seen in Q2 2018 (24.0%) and Q2 2019 (23.1%). (Some builders, like Lennar, have seen greater margin compression.)
Are bigger incentives essentially falling home prices?
Sometimes, yes. Sometimes, no.
In some cases, increased incentive spending is effectively a price cutjust delivered in a less visible way. But not always. Since 2022, part of the rise in incentive spending in some markets has come from homebuilders increasing base home prices and then using some of that additional revenue to fund incentives.
That said, based on PulteGroups own commentary and the visible margin compression, its clear that in at least some markets, its increased incentive spending is functioning as a net effective price cut.
Instead of bigger incentives, why dont homebuilders like PulteGroup just do bigger outright home price cuts?
Some homebuilders prefer offering larger incentives rather than outright price cuts to protect community comps. Outright price cuts can sometimes complicate future sales and upset homebuyers currently in the backlog.
Another reason more homebuilders are leaning into bigger incentives is because large builders claim theres currently arbitrage in financial markets, where every $1 spent on a mortgage rate buydown delivers a greater monthly payment reduction for the buyer than a $1 home price cut.
“The focus still has been on rates and rate buydowns [rather than outright price cuts] and keeping consistency of that. And if we see a little weakness in a market or buy community, we may adjust further down, but [its] still more advantageous to the buyer and the cost is less to increase the rate buy down than to cut the price, D.R. Horton CEO Paul Romanowski told investors in April.
Why does $1 spent on mortgage rate buydowns by builders create more payment savings right now than a $1 price cut?
The answer is a little wonky.
Heres the in-depth breakdown by housing analyst Kevin Erdmannwho is the author of the Erdmann Housing Tracker.
As Erdmann explains to ResiClub:
One reason that mortgage rates are higher than treasuries is that they have prepayment risk. If interest rates go up, the investors are stuck with fixed income that is lower than the new market rate. If interest rates go down, the borrowers refinance and the investors dont get the extra income from the higher fixed rates. So they charge an extra spread for prepayment risk. When short term rates are higher than [long-term rates], like they are now, the prepayment spread is higher because they expect mortgage rates to drop at some point in the future and the borrowers to refinance. If the builders arrange the terms so that the buyers are paying [a] 4% or 5% [mortgag rate] out of the gate, they [the borrower] arent going to prepay [because theyre less likely to refi] and so the prepayment spread is very low. From the borrowers perspective, the rate buydown only pays off slowly over time as you make the payments based on the low rate. They are incentivized not to refinance, sell the home, or pay the loan off early, so the expected duration of the mortgages is much longer. The builder and borrower can pocket the gains from the lower prepayment spread.”
What risks do builder buydowns pose to homebuyers?
While mortgage rate buydowns can offer meaningful monthly payment relief, they could also come with trade-offs. If a buyer accepts a builder buydown instead of negotiating a lower sale price, they may be locking in a deal (depending on the terms) that only pays off if mortgage rates stay elevated. Should rates fall soon after closing, that buyer may find themselves unable to benefit fully from refinancing. In that scenario, a lower sale price or another form of incentive might have offered more long-term value.
Another risk is overpaying for the buydown. If a buyer stretches their budget or accepts a higher purchase price to secure the incentive, they could be more vulnerable to ending up underwaterowing more than the home is worthif local home prices decline and they need to sell within a few years.
Speaking to analysts last month, KB Homewhich tends to favor direct price reductions over incentives when affordability adjustments are neededindeed warned that some buyers opting for competitors rate buydown deals may be overpaying for new homes. If those buyers need to sell soon, they could struggle to recoup the inflated base price tied to the incentive-heavy purchase.
“I believe that there are customers [of other homebuilders] that are overpaying for the home to effectively get an incentive. So they’re tied into this higher price that they’re gonna be stuck with forever until they sell that home. They may potentially be upside down when they try to sell that home versus a clean, simple, transparent way of sellingthe value of what we offer, KB Home COO Rob McGibney said on the company’s June earnings call.
Builder buydowns have lost a little of their magic lately
Over the past year, many public homebuilders have seen mortgage rate buydowns lose some of their magicat least compared to early 2023, when buydowns played a key role in firming up new construction sales.
I think the commentary that youve heard from us is that theres actually inelasticity in, you know, pricing. And that more incentives dont necessarily translate into incremental volume. So were trying to get incentives, you know, to the level where we get the appropriate level of volume. But pouring more incentives on top of that doesnt necessarily translate into the incremental volume that would justify those incentives. So, you know, thats why weve tried to continue to maintain some discipline around what were doing on the incentive load, Ryan Marshall, CEO of PulteGroup, said during the builders July 22 earnings call.
Marshall added: We think the opportunity is to bring incentives lower over time. Were clearly not there right now, but, you know, I would long for the days of, you know, more normal incentive loads of 3.0% to 3.5%.
Note: Net of incentives, PulteGroups average sale price was $559,000 in Q2 2025which is why we used $600,000 in the hypothetical example in the articles intro.
Global shares were mixed Tuesday at the outset of a second day of trade talks between Chinese and U.S. officials.France’s CAC 40 jumped 1.1% in early trading to 7,887.57, while the German DAX rose 1.0% to 24,191.38. Britain’s FTSE 100 added 0.3% to 24,191.38. The future for the S&P 500 was up 0.2%. The future for the Dow Jones Industrial Average edged 0.1% higher.Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 fell 0.8% to 40,674.55 on broad selling of major companies including automakers and big banks. Toyota Motor Corp. dipped 2.3% and Honda Motor Co. fell 2.1%. Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group finished 1.8% lower, while Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group stock dipped 1.6%.Hong Kong’s Hang Seng dropped 0.2% to 25,524.45, while the Shanghai Composite gained 0.3% to 3,609.71.Analysts said investors were watching for the latest from U.S. President Donald Trump and U.S. trade talks with China in Stockholm. U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng were meeting in the Swedish capital.“Aside from addressing economic imbalances, tariffs are also now well entrenched in the geo-political arena,” Tan Boon Heng of the Asia & Oceania Treasury Department at Mizuho Bank said in a commentary.Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 edged 0.1% higher to 8,704.60.South Korea’s Kospi gained 0.7% to 3,230.57. Samsung Electronics edged 0.3% higher after jumping nearly 7% on Monday on news that it signed a deal with Tesla to provide computer chips for its electric vehicles.This week will bring a flurry of potentially market-moving data releases, corporate earnings and an interest rate decision by the Federal Reserve.The widespread expectation on Wall Street is that Fed officials will wait until September to resume cutting interest rates, though a couple of Trump’s appointees could dissent in the vote. The Fed has been on hold with interest rates this year since cutting them several times at the end of 2024.On Monday, the S&P 500 was nearly flat, edging up by less than 0.1% to 6,389.77 and setting an all-time high for a sixth straight day. The Dow dipped 0.1% to 44,837.56, while the Nasdaq composite added 0.3% to its own record, closing at 21,178.58.Hundreds of U.S. companies are lined up to report how much profit they made during the spring, with nearly a third of the businesses in the S&P 500 index scheduled to deliver updates.Companies are broadly under pressure to deliver solid growth in profits following big jumps in their stock prices the last few months. Much of the gain was due to hopes that Trump would walk back some of his stiff proposed tariffs, and critics say the U.S. stock market looks expensive unless companies will produce bigger profits.In energy trading, benchmark U.S. crude jumped 50 cents to $67.21 a barrel. Brent crude, the international standard, gained 47 cents to $69.79 a barrel.In currency trading, the U.S. dollar fell to 148.53 Japanese yen from 148.56 yen. The euro cost $1.1567, down from $1.1589.
Yuri Kageyama, AP business writer
Whats better than one peptide? A whole stack of them, apparently.
Peptide stacking is the latest health hack going viral online, promising to optimize workouts and overall well-being.
Peptides are short chains of amino acids that help build proteins. As the name suggests, peptide stacking involves taking multiple types of supplementsoften in the form of tablets, powders, or injectionsat once to enhance their effects and target specific fitness goals, such as building muscle, burning fat, boosting testosterone, or aiding recovery.
Bodybuilders and biohackers have incorporated peptides into their wellness routines for decades. But now, interest is exploding, with social media feeds and forums flooded by users sharing (and selling) their favorite stacks.
Pov: my fridge watching me inject my 20th peptide today, one TikTok user posted (their bio includes a 10% off link). Tried Semax + Dihexa and felt like I unlocked god mode for a few hours, someone wrote on Reddit. Then realized I forgot to eat all day and nearly blacked out. 10/10 focus, 0/10 life management.
The fact that many of the touted benefits come from people earning commissions via discount codes or bio links is enough to raise eyebrows.
Some of the concerns of what we see trending on social media are the recommended sources that you may find online that arent coming from legitimate compound pharmacies, Brandon Dawson, cofounder of 10X Health System, tells Fast Company. Also, most of these online trends are not tracked by healthcare providers or a team of specialists like you would have at 10X Health.
More than 80 peptide therapies have been approved worldwide. Prescription drugs like Ozempic and Mounjaro are peptides, as is the popular fitness supplement creatine. Peptide stacking can be a powerful tool in a systems-based functional medicine plan, but its not a shortcut, Dawson adds. Without addressing foundational health pillarssleep, toxins, gut, nutritionpeptides wont reach their full potential and could cause harm if used improperly.
Another concern is how peptides are being marketed to teenagers on social media. A 2023 report by the nonprofit Center for Countering Digital Hate linked peptide promotion to the broader looksmaxxing world of workout supplements and steroid-like drugs that prey on young mens insecurities.
Youre falling behind bro, read the closed captions of a TikTok video posted earlier this month. Welcome to the world of peptides.
