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Asian markets point to a drop in stocks.
On Monday, Asian markets pointed to a decline earlier in the week, with falling stocks and futures markets forecasting a negative open for Wall Street.
Shares in Hong Kong and South Korea were lower as of noon, on a day when Japanese and Chinese stocks were not trading due to a holiday. Prices of US Treasury bonds. USA They also increased during the Asian trading, amid investor skepticism about the global economic outlook.
Sentiment was partly affected by mounting tensions between the United States and China. The Trump administration, under pressure from its own problems in dealing with the outbreak, has increased criticism of China’s response. Other governments have also added their criticism.
Shares in Hong Kong, which were not trading on Thursday and Friday due to the holidays, fell 3.9 percent at noon. South Korea’s Kospi index was down 1.6 percent. Taiwan’s Taiex fell 2.2 percent.
Known for producing preppy fashion with mass market appeal, J. Crew is expected to file for bankruptcy on Monday. The company will be the first major retailer to fall victim to the pandemic that has hit the global economy.
The company, whose popularity was raised more than a decade ago by Michelle Obama, had accumulated enormous debt even before the outbreak. Since then, he has seen sales virtually disappear at more than 170 J. Crew stores, and another 140 operated under the popular Madewell brand that he also owns.
J. Crew had struggled to keep up with changing tastes, but seemed to have adapted in recent months, having named Jan Singer, formerly of Nike and Victoria’s Secret, as its new CEO. The company had been planning an IPO this spring for Madewell, a popular denim brand among millennials, to pay off debts and renew the J. Crew brand.
While it is the first major retailer to fall for the coronavirus, J. Crew is unlikely to be the last. The pandemic halved sales of clothing and related accessories in March and is believed to have had an even greater effect in April. Neiman Marcus has significant debt, for example.
And Brooks Brothers already faces questions about their future.
Even as the lines at food banks grow and Americans worry about eating enough, farmers have had to destroy products, break eggs, and pour milk, as demand for restaurants, hotels, and schools has declined. dramatically decreased in the coronavirus pandemic.
Now, the Department of Agriculture plans to spend $ 300 million on surplus products, milk and meat and send them to food banks. States have also joined the effort: New York is giving food banks $ 25 million to buy products made from extra milk produced on farms in the state.
Even college students have stepped in, renting trucks to rescue unsold eggs and onions from farms. They have created a website that connects farmers and food banks across the country.
But the combined efforts are just a “bucket drop,” said Jackie Klippenstein, senior vice president of Dairy Farmers of America, the largest dairy cooperative in the United States. The cooperative has diverted nearly a quarter of a million gallons of milk to food banks.
And more food is coming: California strawberry growers are worried about how to sell their produce, and the peak harvest season is coming up in May.
“Time is not on our side,” said Mary Coppola, vice president of the United Fresh Produce Association, a trade group of fruit and vegetable growers and processors. “In my personal opinion, we are not reaching supply chain logistics solutions as fast as the product grows.”
FIGHT AGAINST FOOD WASTE Read our full story in plans to distribute onions, strawberries and farm eggs to food banks.
Amazon and objective They are the focus of renewed labor protests about the health risks of working during a pandemic.
In addition to previous demands to keep workers safe, the protests presented a newer goal: discouraging employers from reversing security measures in a rush to return to business as usual, especially when states lift orders. to stay home.
The companies are not unionized, and the scattered protests on Friday were organized ad hoc.
Some Amazon workers said they were alarmed that the company was ending an unlimited free time policy, which many workers had taken advantage of to avoid exposure to the coronavirus in warehouses.
Jordan Flowers said he refused to return to work Friday at an Amazon warehouse on Staten Island. “They will have to fire me,” said Flowers, who joined more than a dozen people, not all of them employees, at a nearby protest. “I choose my life over this.”
An Amazon spokeswoman said “there was no measurable impact on operations” of the protest and that the company was extending a $ 2 per hour pay increase and double overtime pay in the United States and Canada through Dec. 16. may. She did not question that. The unpaid free time policy had changed, but said Amazon was providing a range of other licensing policies.
At Target, some workers expressed concern that the company would again allow customers to return products to stores, a practice that had been discontinued to reduce possible exposure to the virus.
“That’s a point of frustration,” said Adam Ryan, a Target worker in Christiansburg, Virginia, who helped organize a protest there. “When they stopped accepting guest returns, we thought it was a good decision.”
A Target spokeswoman confirmed that returns were again being accepted at stores, citing cleanup, security and social distancing measures currently in place. She said the company knew fewer than 10 of its 340,000 front-line workers who had participated in the protest, and that it had extended a $ 2 per hour pay increase through May 30.
The federal government has distributed stimulus loans worth more than $ 1 billion to public companies as part of a program aimed at protecting payrolls in small businesses, according to an analysis of public documents and company announcements by The New York Times.
In total, more than 300 publicly traded companies have disclosed that they received loans from the $ 660 billion salary protection program, which is administered by the Small Business Administration.
The loans sparked a protest and prompted the agency to issue a new guideline that pushes public companies to pay back, especially since many smaller operations were left empty-handed in the early stages of the program. In the past few weeks, at least 32 public and private companies have revealed that they had repaid loans, including the Shake Shack hamburger chain and car dealerships like AutoNation.
Approximately 36,000 employees of media companies have been affected by layoffs, pay cuts, or leave since the coronavirus crisis began in March in the United States, according to New York Times estimates.
The past few weeks have led to layoffs in The New York Post and Protocol, while other media, such as Condé Nast, continue to reflect on them. But, on the other hand, the hundreds of billions of dollars in federal stimulus money have started pouring into bank accounts. The Vermont weekly newspaper Seven Days even brought five fired employees back receiving your loan from the Payment Check Protection Program. But such loans may still not go to newspapers owned by large chains.
This week, the general public will begin to get a more complete picture of how the crisis has affected newspapers, particularly when Gannett, Lee Enterprises and The New York Times Company make their quarterly earnings reports.
Catch up – this is what’s happening.
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Taubman, the mall owner, said he would reopen three major shopping malls on May 6 as retailers seek to return to business: International Plaza in Tampa, Florida, The Mall at University Town Center in Sarasota, Florida, and City Creek. Center in Salt Lake City, Utah. The company unveiled its plans after Simon Property Group, the largest mall operator in the United States, said it planned to reopen 49 shopping centers this weekend in 10 states. Macy’s, which also owns Bloomingdale’s and Bluemercury, said Thursday that it planned to open 68 stores on Monday.
The reports were contributed by Vanessa Friedman, Sapna Maheshwari, Michael J. de la Merced, Carlos Tejada, Noam Scheiber, David McCabe, Marc Tracy and Sapna Maheshwari.
