Good morning. With fall in full swing, it seems like a good time to do a gut check on the state of the American consumer. I pored through financial results reported over the last two weeks by a variety of big retailers and found a mixed bag. Though there are pockets of optimism, it’s clear that consumers are worried. The big wild card going into the fall will be the full impact of tariffs, expected to be felt acutely in the second half of the year. Indeed, Best Buy had a strong second quarter but did not raise its full-year guidance during its late August earnings call because of the tariff uncertainty. Many companies rushed their buying in the spring before tariffs came into effect, but that can only shield them for so long. Here’s what some prominent CEOs are seeing.
Michael Bender, interim CEO of Kohl’s: “Consumers continue to be pressured and are being choiceful with their purchases … Lower to middle-income customers continue to prioritize value and are trading down into lower opening price point products.”
Todd Vasos, CEO of Dollar General: “Seeking value, we’re seeing that in all cohorts of customers, meaning our core customer, mid- and high-end customers, all of them.”
Ted Decker, CEO of Home Depot: “The No. 1 reason for deferring the large project is general economic uncertainty.”
Corie Barry, CEO of Best Buy: “We have seen both breadth and depth of promotions higher than last year and we assume that will continue. Customers continued to be resilient but deal-focused… In the current environment, customers continue to be thoughtful about big-ticket purchases and are willing to spend on high price point products when they need to or when there is technology innovation.”
Doug McMillon, CEO of Walmart: “As we replenish inventory at post-tariff price levels, we’ve continued to see our costs increase each week, which we expect will continue into the third and fourth quarters.”
Robert Ball, CFO of Abercrombie & Fitch: “Our customer doesn’t come to us for price. We’re not necessarily going to chase traffic and conversion through price … We’ve seen tariffs 1.0. We’ve seen the pandemic. We’ve seen inflation, cotton spikes, freight rate spikes, you name it, and those are just a couple of examples.”Many retailers have managed all the noise and macro angst capably, posting strong sales results for the first half of 2025. Walmart, Abercrombie & Fitch, Dollar General, Dick’s Sporting Goods and Costco to name just a few. But one thing’s for sure: When consumers get nervous, CEOs should be nervous too.—Phil Wahba
Contact CEO Daily via Diane Brady at diane.brady@fortune.com
Top news
Nestlé fires CEO over undisclosed romantic relationship
“The departure of Laurent Freixe follows an investigation into an undisclosed romantic relationship with a direct subordinate which breached Nestlé's Code of Business Conduct,” the company said in a press release. No other details were given. Freixe had been CEO for about a year. He will be succeeded by longtime Nestlé executive Philipp Navratil. “This was a necessary decision. Nestlé's values and governance are strong foundations of our company. I thank Laurent for his years of service at Nestlé,” Chairman Paul Bulcke said in the statement.
Modi, Xi, and Putin literally join hands
At the Shanghai Cooperation Organization—a summit that the U.S. is not attending—Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and Chinese President Xi Jinping were photographed holding hands as they greeted each other. Their warm relations came a day after President Trump complained on social media that India was too slow in agreeing to his tariff regime. “It has been a totally one sided disaster!” he wrote. The U.S. imposed a 50% tariff on India plus a further 25% tax as a punishment for buying Russian oil. Context: India had positioned itself as a manufacturing alternative to China for the supply chains of Western countries. The tariffs tear that plan to shreds and are drawing India, Russia and China closer together, the NYT argues.
Trump family gains $5 billion from crypto ventures
On paper, the Trumps are holding $5 billion in digital assets after their token, WLFI, was made available for trading on the open market. The Trumps hold just under a quarter of all WLFI tokens—meaning that if they tried to sell them it would likely depress the price dramatically.
Trump responds to health concerns
President Donald Trump posted to Truth Social over the weekend that he’s “never felt better” amid speculation around his physical health. In the same barrage of posts, the President demanded that Judge Jia Cobb, who is overseeing proceedings in a court case between the president and Fed Governor Lisa Cook, recuse herself from the case.
Dalio warns of autocracy and debt, again
“I think that what is happening now politically and socially is analogous to what happened around the world in the 1930-40 period,” Bridgewater Associates founder Ray Dalio told the FT. “And by the way, during such times most people are silent because they are afraid of retaliation if they criticise.” He also predicted that the U.S. would face “a debt-induced heart attack” in roughly three years.
Revolut and Starling looking to acquire U.S. banks
The fintech platforms Revolut and Starling—popular in the U.K.—are both considering acquiring American banks because the process of registering as a bank in the U.S. is so difficult.
Space: The next job frontier
Gen Z workers are finding it more and more challenging to fetch entry-level jobs as AI gets better at taking those jobs over. Tech pioneers like Sam Altman, Elon Musk, and Jeff Bezos suggest space may be the next place to look.
The markets
S&P 500 futures were down 0.48% this morning. The index closed down 0.64% in its last trading session. STOXX Europe 600 was down 0.6% in early trading. The U.K.’s FTSE 100 was down 0.64% in early trading. Japan’s Nikkei 225 was up 0.29%. China’s CSI 300 was down 0.74%. The South Korea KOSPI was up 0.94%. India’s Nifty 50 was flat before the end of the session. Bitcoin rose to $110.6K.
Around the watercooler
Reeling after being widowed, Suzy Welch created NYU’s most popular b-school class ever, offering Gen Z the one thing they want most: purpose by Geoff Colvin
A tech founder says his son spurned the Ivy League as ‘unfun, judgey and biased against white boys’—he’s one of many heading South for college instead by Jeff John Roberts
This OpenAI engineer left her dream job and San Francisco home to move to Stockholm—all because of Trump 2.0 by Eleanor Pringle
How the midlife crisis was replaced by a decadelong rise in ‘young worker despair’ in the U.S.—and what it means for Gen Z by Nick Lichtenberg
Trump’s trade adviser says tariffs aren’t permanent after appeals court strikes down reciprocal duties by Jason Ma
CEO Daily is compiled and edited by Joey Abrams and Jim Edwards.
