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Ford is recalling more than 300,000 vehicles over concerns that problems with the power brake assist system could lead to a crash. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration issued the safety notice, noting that the issue could extend stopping distances for a vehicle in motion. The affected vehicles are 2025 versions of Fords Lincoln Navigator SUV, F-150 and Ranger trucks, and Expedition, Bronco, and Ranger SUVs. According to the NHTSA, the vehicles might also experience malfunctions in the electronic brake booster (EBB) module when using the advanced Driver Assistance System (ADAS) feature, which could similarly interfere with the power brake assist system and cause an accident. For affected vehicles, the EBB issue can be resolved with an over-the-air software update or at a dealership for free. The new recall is the latest in a spate of recent recalls for the automaker. In July, Ford recalled almost 700,000 vehicles over a fuel leak problem that could cause a fire under the hood. That recall, which impacted some Bronco Sport and Ford Escape models, was the result of a yearlong investigation into ongoing problems with the vehicles fuel injectors. Just prior to that, an even wider recall was issued over worries about the low-pressure fuel pump on more than 850,000 Ford vehicles. Car recalls are on the rise broadly, but Fords issues stand out. The manufacturer tops the list for the most vehicle recalls in the U.S., though the companys leadership hopes to nip future issues in the bud by holding new vehicles for an extra phase of quality checks. What were going to see long term is fewer recalls and lower warranty costs because of this new process, Ford CEO Jim Farley said in an earnings call last year.
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E-Commerce
If a new experiment pans out, Medicaid and Medicare could begin covering the costly weight-loss drugs that price out many Americans who might want to try them. After killing a Biden-era plan with the same goal, the Trump administration is working on a five-year pilot program that would allow state Medicaid programs and Medicares prescription plan to opt into covering drugs like Ozempic, Wegovy, Zepbound, and Mounjaro for weight management, The Washington Post reports. During its final months, the Biden administration proposed expanding Medicaid and Medicare coverage for popular weight-loss drugs, extending it to roughly 7.5 million people enrolled in those programs. In April, the Trump administration tossed that plana move that was somewhat expected, given Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.s vocal opposition to the weight-loss drugs that have taken America by storm. Now, something very similar appears to be back on the table. Differences of opinion Kennedys view is at odds with other members of the Trump administration, including Dr. Mehmet Oz, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). Oz, a former surgeon best known as a daytime television personality prior to joining the federal government, has long boosted weight-loss drugs like Ozempic. Ill respect you no matter what your weight might be, but for those who want to lose a few pounds, Ozempic and other semaglutide medications can be a big help, Oz said in a social media post in 2023. We need to make it as easy as possible for people to meet their health goals, period. Oz has been paid to promote the drugs in the past. In 2019, Ozempic maker Novo Nordisk sponsored a nine-minute-long infomercial on Ozs daytime talk show praising the benefits of using Ozempic for Type 2 diabetes. On the other side of the coin, Kennedy at HHS is staunchly opposed to weight-loss drugs like Ozempic and has made misleading claims about the class of drugs in the past. Theyre counting on selling it to Americans because were so stupid and so addicted to drugs, Kennedy said in an interview he shared on Instagram last year. Kennedy, a prominent figure in anti-vaccine circles before joining the Trump administration, has a long track record of elevating health conspiracy theories, even while promoting other commonsense ideas around health and wellness. Kennedy, who opposes the use of many prescription medications, believes that the prominence of processed foods in the American diet is a root cause of many of the countrys health woes. What is the status now? While Medicaid and Medicare dont evenly cover GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic for weight loss, 13 state Medicaid programs do offer coverage to treat obesity. For people on Medicaid and Medicare, coverage is much more widely available when GLP-1 drugs are prescribed for Type 2 diabetes. The Washington Post reports that the trial program is slated to start in April 2026 for Medicaid and in January 2027 for Medicare. The program is connected to the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation, which experiments with new ways to lower costs and deliver coverage for people enrolled in those subsidized insurance programs. According to documents viewed by The Post, the program has yet to be finalized. Whether it goes into effect or not, the experimental plan to extend coverage shows that the anti-Ozempic faction of the Trump administration might find itself overruled when it comes to the weight-loss drug.
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E-Commerce
If youre interested in understanding the current state of the U.S. economy and corporate America, and what the rest of the year might look like (and who isnt?), this was the week for youwith five days packed full of earnings reports, policy announcements, and economic data. And although the picture that emerged from all that information was arguably more fuzzy than sharp, a couple of things do seem clear: The economy is limping, not booming, and the impact of tariffs is finally being felt. The most important data point of the week came on Friday morning, when the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the U.S. economy created just 73,000 jobs in July. More importantly, the BLS also said that the jobs numbers for May and June had been revised dramatically downward: The May number went from an estimated 144,000 jobs created to just 19,000 jobs, while the estimate of jobs created in June fell from 147,000 jobs to just 14,000. Even assuming that the July number is correct (and that it wont eventually be revised downward as well), that means that the U.S. economy created just 35,000 jobs a month, on average, over the past three months, compared with 168,000 jobs a month last year. Employers pump the brakes on hiring The current jobs numbers are not quite as terrible as that comparison suggests, since a drop in immigration and the continued aging of the population mean that the economy needs to create fewer jobs in order to stay at full employment. (Unemployment in Fridays report was still just 4.2%.) But the jobs number does suggest that, at the very least, businesses are being far more cautious about adding jobs. And thats only confirmed when you look at the details of the jobs report: The U.S. lost manufacturing jobs in each of the past three months, while essentially all of the private-sector job growth since May has come in healthcare and social services. Not all the news this week was bad: On Wednesday, gross domestic product (GDP) growth in the second quarter came in at a solid 3%. That was a big jump from the negative number we got in the first quarter, even if it still means GDP grew in the first half of the year at a below-average 1.2%. Average hourly earnings are up 3.9% year over year. And earnings reports gave us blowout earnings numbers from Microsoft and Meta, good numbers from Apple and Amazon and, perhaps most interestingly, excellent numbers from Mastercard, which suggests consumers are continuing to spend. Still, there were reasons for concern, particularly with that 3% GDP number. Private purchaseswhich are generally thought of as a good measure of domestic demandwere up just 1.2% year over year. Consumption rose 1.4%, which is respectable but not impressive. Business investmentparticularly investment in everything other than computer equipmentactually fell. And spending on imports tumbled sharply. The AI boom is fueling massive investment in technology and computer equipment, which is boosting overall GDP. But while Big Tech is roaring, much of the rest of the economy seems to be drifting in the doldrums. Normally, that would have made a strong case for the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates at its meeting this week (it didn’t), just as President Donald Trump has been berating Fed chair Jerome Powell to do. The problem for the Fed is that even as the economy seems to be stalling, or at least slowing down, inflation has shown no sign of going away and, in fact, it may be picking up. In addition to all the other data this week, we heard news about the personal consumption expenditures price indexthe Fed’s preferred measure of inflationwhich jumped 0.3% in July and is now up 2.6% year over year, well ahead of the Feds 2% inflation target. So the Fed is looking at a weak job market and stubbornly high inflation: not a great place to be in. The elephant in the room The big complicating factor in all this, of course, is the tariffs that Trump has imposed, paused, rolled back, and now is preparing to impose again. To begin with, the tariffsand how businesses have responded to themhave a lot to do with those big swings in GDP growth we saw in the first half of the year. Imports spiked in the first quarter as businesses loaded up on inventory before the tariffs hit, helping shrink the GDP. Then they plummeted in the second quarter as businesses worked through that inventory, giving GDP an artificial boost. The tariffs are also eating into company profits. This week, Black & Decker, Ford, and Procter & Gamble all said that tariffs had hurt their earnings. And theyre starting to feed into inflation: Adidas said this week that it may hike prices to deal with higher costs, and P&G said it would be raising prices on 25% of its products. The impact of tariffs could also be seen in this weeks economic reports: Goods prices (the prices that tariffs would have the most direct impact on) were up 3% year over year. The uncertainty surrounding Trumps tariff policyand where rates are going to end uphas also made it difficult for companies to plan and to invest. And theyve made consumersalready unhappy with inflationmore cautious, which you can see in consumer sentiment numbers. The current University of Michigan consumer sentiment index, which was released on Friday, shows that consumer sentiment, while better than it was in April, is still broadly negative, down 7% from a year ago. And consumer expectations of the future are even worse, down 16% year over year. All of this arguably helps explain why so many businesses seem to have been in a holding pattern: Caution is a logical response to uncertainty. Trump removed some of that uncertainty Thursday night when he issued a new executive order imposing new tariff rates on almost every country in the worldrates that are scheduled to go into effect on August 7. The rates are in most cases 15%, and often higher. (A few countries got a 10% rate.) Thats better than the original tariff rates that Trump had imposed on what he called Liberation Day back in April. But they still represent a massive hike in import costs from last year. To be sure, nothing we saw this week says that the economy is headed for disaster. But, at the very least, this weeks numbers make it very hard to be bullish (except, of course, about Big Tech). The U.S. is stuck in neutral, and neither the Trump administration nor the Federal Reserve is doing much to get it back in gear.
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E-Commerce
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