Target's red flag, Walmart vs. Trump, and Elon Musk vs. Bill Gates: Business news roundup

High-income U.S. consumers are pulling back. Mortgage applications are down, Walmart (WMT) is reporting grocery gains from monied households suddenly keen for deals on eggs and bananas. And now Target joins a growing list of beloved brands waving the red flag that a recession may be coming.

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President Donald Trump has long insisted that the on-again, off-again tariffs he’s imposed will be fully paid by other countries at no cost to Americans. But both Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Trump himself undercut that case over the weekend.

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The Chinese government issued a blistering statement on Monday, accusing the Trump administration of undercutting ongoing trade talks with Beijing.

The U.S. cautioned against using Huawei’s Ascend semiconductor chips last week, and now the Chinese Commerce Ministry says the warning “seriously undermined the consensus reached at the high-level talks between China and the U.S. in Geneva.”

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Noom will start offering smaller doses of compounded Wegovy (NVO), the blockbuster weight-loss drug, as the digital health company continues to adapt to the growing demand for affordable weight-loss solutions and a changing market.

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President Donald Trump claimed over the weekend that Walmart (WMT) made “BILLIONS OF DOLLARS” more than expected last year. That’s not just wrong — it’s preposterous on multiple levels. In fact, you could say Walmart is one of the least likely companies in the world to deliver surprise windfalls.

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Elon Musk has hit back at Bill Gates’s claim that his cuts to the U.S. foreign aid budget will kill millions of children.

“Who does Bill Gates think he is to make comments about the welfare of children, given that he has frequented Jeffrey Epstein?” the Tesla (TSLA) CEO said Tuesday, during an interview at the Qatar Economic Forum in Doha. “I’d like him to show us any evidence,” Musk added.

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Drugs being explicitly developed to treat rare diseases are getting more expensive.

An analysis by Reuters found that prices for newly launched pharmaceuticals more than doubled last year compared with 2021. Medicines that treat the rarest diseases typically fetch higher prices

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President Donald Trump is again escalating pressure on U.S. trade partners – as well as the tech companies caught in the middle.

In back-to-back social media posts on Thursday morning, the president threatened new tariffs on iPhones made in India and a sweeping 50% levy on goods from the European Union, reigniting tensions around global supply chains, assuming they ever had time to subside.

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House Republicans are rushing to get a sweeping domestic policy bill over the finish line within days, as uncertainty over President Donald Trump’s on-and-off approach to tariffs continues to hang over the economy.

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Someone might want to check UnitedHealth’s (UNH) vitals. The U.S.’s largest health insurer is taking hits from all sides — its stock is sliding, the Department of Justice is circling, and an investigation just accused it of secretly paying nursing homes to keep patients from going to the hospital.

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