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As the holiday shopping season approaches, some smaller retailers could find themselves attracting new customers who turn away from big-box stores facing mounting tariff pressures.

Burt Flickinger III, managing director of Strategic Resource Group, a New York-based retail and consumer goods consulting firm, cited a Bloomberg report that tariff issues are slowing things down because manufacturers and shippers are eating about 50% of the tariffs and the retailers are eating the rest.

“Because of the cross-world traffic on the tariffs, inventory levels are low because people didn’t preorder enough before the tariffs went into effect in the first half of this year,” he said. “We have low inventory, and we have the highest prices in history in all 12 monthly consumer expenditure areas for the first time in 70 years.”

Flickinger believes the current economic landscape sets up well for small shops to flourish.

“The local merchants should have the biggest retail renaissance they’ve had since before COVID because everything is locally sourced, the inventory and replenishment levels are high, the quality is the highest compared to mass-manufactured goods, and the prices will be far more competitive than products imported from central Asia, China, southeast Asia, Vietnam and Cambodia,” he said. “This should be a bonanza for the independents.” read more

By STAN CHOE, AP Business Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — The U.S. stock market is drifting near its record heights on Tuesday.

The S&P 500 added 0.3% in afternoon trading. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 336 points, or 0.7%, as of 1:50 p.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.8% higher. All three indexes are coming off their latest all-time highs.

Moves were also modest in the bond market as Wall Street waits for a few events that could shake things up. On Wednesday, the Federal Reserve will announce its latest move on interest rates, while some of the stock market’s most influential companies will report how much profit they made during the summer. On Thursday, President Donald Trump will meet China’s leader, Xi Jinping, in hopes of smoothing tensions between the world’s two largest economies.

Until then, profit reports from overnight and the morning were the main drivers of Tuesday’s action.

United Parcel Service rallied 7.8% after delivering stronger profit and revenue for the latest quarter than analysts expected. UPS also gave a forecast for revenue in the all-important holiday shipping season that was slightly above analysts’ expectations. read more

By MATT OTT, Associated Press Business Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) — Consumer confidence weakened slightly in October as Americans remain anxious about their future financial prospects.

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The Conference Board said Tuesday that its consumer confidence index fell by 1 point to 94.6 in October from an upwardly revised September reading of 95.6. Economists were expecting the reading to come in unchanged from the previous month. One year ago, the reading was 109.5.

A measure of Americans’ short-term expectations for their income, business conditions and the job market dipped by 2.9 points to 71.5, remaining well below 80, the marker that can signal a recession ahead. read more

Since the start of the government shutdown, thousands of flight delays have bottlenecked travel at major U.S. airports due, in no small part, to staffing shortages.

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Air traffic controllers and other TSA workers are considered essential, which means they’ve been required to work since Oct. 1, when the shutdown began. Like other essential federal government workers, controllers are expected to clock in — without pay — until the shutdown ends.

It’s no secret that workers prefer to get paid for their labor, which has led to some calling out sick. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has threatened to fire the “problem children” workers who don’t show up — estimated to be around 10% of controllers. read more

By Sarah Foster, Bankrate.com

If it feels harder to get ahead right now, that’s because it is. Many Americans are navigating a “worst-of-both-worlds” economy: a cooling job market on one side and stubborn inflation on the other.

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Prices aren’t rising as rapidly as they once were when the U.S. economy roared back after the coronavirus pandemic. Yet, the largest share of workers in four years (62 percent) say that their paychecks have not kept pace with increases in their household expenses due to inflation over the past 12 months, according to Bankrate’s annual Pay Raise Survey. read more