A federal judge has cleared Estée Lauder Companies to proceed with and expand its trademark lawsuit against Walmart over fake luxury beauty products sold.
News
High-signal headlines only - macro events, earnings, M&A, regulatory. Listicles and analyst clickbait filtered out by default. Refreshed hourly.

Kroger cuts its fiscal-year same-store sales outlook, citing the impact of the Inflation Reduction Act.

The new probe into retailers seems to build on the department’s antitrust investigation into meatpackers.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) has extended the federal government’s scrutiny of rising beef prices to the retail level of the food supply chain. The retailers now under investigation include Kroger, Publix, Walmart Inc., Albertsons, Aldi, Ahold Delhaize, Costco Wholesale...

Amazon.com (AMZN) trades at $255, down 10% over the past month and about 10% below its 52-week high. The second quarter of 2026, reported in July, was a strong one: revenue rose 20% year over year to $200.6 billion and operating income rose 43%, though about $1.2 billion of that income came from tariff refunds and an energy-contract accounting gain. That makes the drop worth sizing, because this is a stock with a long habit of falling further than the market.

The Federal Trade Commission on Monday filed a lawsuit against Amazon.com alleging that the e-commerce giant manipulated prices businesses paid to advertise on its retail platform, reaping tens of billions of dollars for itself over seven years. The lawsuit, joined by a bipartisan group of more than 20 state attorneys general, alleged that Amazon deceived advertisers by secretly raising the minimum price advertisers had to pay to place ads promoting their products. Third major litigation: The case, filed in a Seattle federal court, becomes the consumer-protection agency’s third major case against Amazon, which agreed to pay $2.5 billion last year to settle an earlier suit alleging it tricked people into signing up for its Prime service and made it hard to cancel the subscription.

In a turn of good fortune, tariff refunds are arriving for companies as they confront higher costs stemming from the war in Iran, WSJ Leadership Institute reporters Kristin Broughton and Jennifer Williams write. In a story published this morning, Kristin and Jennifer take a look at the retailers and consumer goods companies using their refunds to fund price cuts. Walmart CFO John David Rainey nodded to these pressures in an earnings call this month, discussing the retailer’s move to cut prices on 11,000 items, funded with its $2.9 billion refund.

Beauty, Walmart and Tractor Supply are funding price cuts with refund payments due to them after the Supreme Court earlier this year struck down President Trump’s global tariffs. The price cuts are aimed at boosting sales at a time when many consumers are looking for value, stretched thin from years of rising costs. Tariff refunds are also helping companies protect their profit margins amid a spike in inflation.

Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward said federal pharmacy rules exist to protect the public and that profit cannot justify conduct that fuels the opioid epidemic.
Walmart Reaches Federal Opioid Settlement as Legal Overhang Fades

Dollar Tree has had a good 2026 compared with a number of other retailers, but it is facing some of the same challenges that have tripped up peers.

Higher gas prices cut into Americans’ overall spending, leading to the slowest sales growth at Walmart’s US stores since the earliest months of the pandemic.

The Federal Reserve now looks somewhat unlikely to raise interest rates at either of the next two meetings after a weak July retail sales report further assuaged concerns that the economy may be overheating. Last Friday's weak jobs report and the even weaker retail sales report "are bad news for workers and consumers, but potentially good news for the stock market, because it reduces the urgency at the Fed to raise rates to fight too-high inflation," wrote Chris Zaccarelli, chief investment officer at Northlight Asset Management.

Eric Criscuolo, Market Strategist at the NYSE, reviews a quiet week on Wall Street marked by tight trading ranges, cooling inflation, and a major new AI financing development. The S&P 500 consolidated near all-time highs before breaking through 7,800 for the first time on Thursday, lifted in part by Nvidia's partnership with major Wall Street firms to launch a $500 billion compute financing platform. In-line CPI and a cooler-than-expected PPI pushed yields lower across the curve, with the long end finally joining the downtrend. Looking ahead, markets will turn their attention to FOMC meeting minutes, August Flash PMIs, and earnings from consumer and housing bellwethers including Walmart, Home Depot, and Deere.
The discount retailer is lowering thousands of prices, but grocery chains are too. The problem: Americans have lost their patience, and so has Wall Street.
Trump claims credit for the retailer's summer rollbacks -- a reversal from May, when he told Walmart to "eat the tariffs" instead.
Walmart shares gained Tuesday after the retailer announced plans to lower prices on thousands of items across its namesake stores and its warehouse retailer Sam’s Club.

<body><p>STORY: Walmart said Monday it would cut prices on many summer barbecue favorites, including meat, chips and soda.</p><p>The move comes after U.S. President Donald Trump said the retailer was acting at his administration's request.</p><p>In a Truth Social post, he said Walmart would be lowering prices significantly, "to celebrate our great Country's 250th birthday."</p><p>Trump said the firm would, “be dropping the price for a pound of ground beef by almost 15%.”</p><p>Walmart said in a statement that the price of one pound of 73% ground beef roll would drop to $5.94 from $6.74 in its stores, a decline of about 12%.</p><p>The retailer also said it lowered prices on items including Coca-Cola and PepsiCo sodas and chips.</p><p>Prices for steaks and hamburger meat soared after a persistent drought burned pasture lands and hiked costs of cattle feed, forcing U.S. ranchers to slash their herds.</p><p>Now the price cuts mark a notable shift from last year, when Walmart warned that tariffs would push some prices higher, a move Trump had rebuked.</p><p>The president had previously encouraged low-tariff imports of Argentine beef to cool U.S. prices, which angered American ranchers.</p><p>He had also directed the Department of Justice to investigate whether U.S. meatpackers were colluding to raise prices.</p><p>Walmart is widely viewed by economists and investors as a gauge of U.S. consumer health because of its size and broad customer base.</p></body>
AI hardware shares slide as investors digest Super Micro’s massive stock sale, hot inflation, and rising tensions in the Gulf, today, June 10, 2026.
The President wants rate cuts. His pick is set to take the chair at the Federal Reserve. Futures markets have spent weeks pricing in easing. Then the Bureau of Labor Statistics released the April Consumer Price Index report, and the door slammed shut. Headline CPI rose 3.8% year-over-year in April, up from 3.3% in March, ... Trump Wants Rate Cuts. The Data Just Made That Nearly Impossible.