Trump May Defer Tariff Payments to Help Businesses
Here’s what else is happening:
-
The Cheesecake Factory will not be able to make rent payments on any of its storefronts on April 1 because of the coronavirus pandemic, a spokeswoman said on Wednesday.
-
Nordstrom will extend its temporary store closures through April 5 and continue to pay store staff through that date, but will furlough “a portion” of corporate employees for six weeks, and the company’s executive leadership group will take a pay cut. Macy’s said that it would reduce pay for director-level employees and above starting April 1 and that its chief executive, Jeff Gennette, would not receive compensation.
-
SP Global Ratings lowered Ford Motor’s credit rating to junk status on Wednesday, citing “supply-side and demand-side shocks” of the coronavirus outbreak on the company. Ford, which already had a junk rating from Moody’s Investors Service, said on Wednesday that it would keep its North American plants closed past March 30 because of the outbreak.
-
Hollywood agencies are moving ahead with layoffs and announcing that senior executives — Ari Emanuel among them — will forgo salaries for the remainder of the year. On Wednesday, Endeavor, a media company that includes the William Morris and IMG agencies and is run by Mr. Emanuel, laid off about 250 of its 7,500 employees. United Talent Agency instituted a companywide salary cut on Monday, with pullbacks based on income. And Paradigm, an agency with a large roster of musicians, jettisoned more than 100 of its 700 employees on Friday.
-
Gap said it would help source masks and protective gowns from its vendors for California hospitals. Canada Goose said it would reopen two manufacturing facilities to produce scrubs and patient gowns for health care workers and patients in Canada.
-
President Trump’s daily briefings on the coronavirus have attracted an average audience of 8.5 million on CNN, Fox News and MSNBC, roughly the viewership of the season finale of “The Bachelor.” On Monday, nearly 12.2 million people watched Mr. Trump’s briefing on cable news, according to Nielsen. But some journalists and public health experts say that could be a dangerous thing: Mr. Trump has repeatedly delivered information that doctors have called ill-informed, misleading or downright wrong.
Reporting was contributed by Michael Corkery, Sapna Maheshwari, Jesse Drucker, Karen Weise, Ana Swanson, Brooks Barnes, Ben Casselman, Patricia Cohen, Niraj Chokshi, Jim Tankersley, Alan Rappeport, Alexandra Stevenson, David Gelles, Julie Creswell, David Yaffe-Bellany, David Enrich, Rachel Abrams, Steven Kurutz, Eduardo Porter, Clifford Krauss, Michael M. Grynbaum, Edmund Lee, Brian X. Chen, Neal E. Boudette, Elaine Yu, Daniel Victor, Jason Karaian, Kevin Granville and Carlos Tejada.
Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/25/business/stock-market-corona.html