The U.S. Postal Service is staring down a cash crunch within a year — just as its biggest customer, Amazon, prepares to sharply scale back deliveries.
Why it matters: Even as major retailers build their own logistics networks, millions of Americans — especially in rural areas — still rely on USPS for essentials like prescription medications and last-mile delivery.
A nearly 50% spike in wholesale vegetable prices in February is grabbing attention — but economists tell Axios it's likely a short-lived blip that may not meaningfully hit grocery bills.
Why it matters: Big swings in wholesale food prices can signal trouble ahead — but this looks like a temporary disruption, not a broader return of food inflation.
The Federal Reserve on Wednesday kept interest rates steady, and chair Jerome Powell said that he will remain in place until his successor is confirmed, raising the prospect that he could continue leading the central bank after his term is up May 15.
Why it matters: Powell's remarks set up a high-stakes standoff with the Trump administration over who will lead the world's most important central bank in less than two months.
Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) has questions about a $10 billion fee that TikTok's buyers reportedly are paying the U.S. Treasury Department, on top of what they spent to buy the actual business from China's ByteDance.
Elon Musk and the SEC are working on a settlement over Musk's failure to disclose purchases of Twitter stock prior to making his April 2022 takeover offer, per an SEC court filing.
Why it matters: SpaceX bankers would like this matter put to bed before launching what may be the largest IPO of all time.
The federal government is trying to clear a regulatory path for new types of vehicles that drive themselves and don't have a steering wheel or pedals.
Why it matters: Fully automated robotaxis don't need driver controls, but the law still requires them. Updating federal standards could determine who leads the global race in autonomous vehicle technology.
What the taxman giveth, the energy shock taketh away. That's the upshot of the arithmetic around how much the average American household is on track to pay for higher gasoline prices this year.
Why it matters: Forecasters have been betting on an economic tailwind this year from super-sized tax refunds, thanks to tax legislation passed last year.
New calculations from the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, however, suggest that the benefits of higher tax refunds will be roughly offset by higher prices for crude oil and refined oil products in the wake of the Iran war.
President Trump has formally waived requirements that only U.S. ships can carry cargo between domestic ports as officials look to ease access to fuel and supplies while the Strait of Hormuz remains throttled.
Why it matters: The White House is looking to pull multiple levers as the Iran war sends gasoline prices soaring and restricts access to goods needed by farmers and other industries.
Wholesale prices — including for consumer staples like fresh vegetables — rose at a rapid clip in February.
Why it matters: It is a fresh warning for the Trump administration and the Federal Reserve. Price pressures were already building across the economy, even before the Iran war introduced new inflation risks.
Snowflake, the cloud-based data platform, is rolling out a new autonomous AI platform on Wednesday that will enable users to quickly access enterprise data and execute business functions.
Why it matters: The product launch shows how enterprise software companies are aggressively responding to a workplace reshaped by AI.
Even for those accustomed to the indignities of air travel, it's clear that right now is a particularly terrible time to fly.
The big picture: The Iran war is creating major travel headaches on top of an already chaotic situation at airports in the U.S., raising the prospect of a downturn in the travel industry.
New U.S. homebuyers spend a far higher share of their income on housing than existing homeowners — and that gap is growing, an analysis out this week finds.
Why it matters: There's a huge bipartisan push to make homeownership more affordable — but policy ideas often target existing homeowners, the ones least in need of help.
Worse, some efforts to increase affordability — particularly the push to lower mortgage rates — can exacerbate the problem.
How it works: New homeowners almost always spend more of their income on housing. They're typically younger, earn less money and face higher home prices.
But the share of income they're devoting to housing has spiked over the past four years, as the pandemic drove up home prices and then mortgage rates surged.
By the numbers: In 2024, the most recent year with available federal data, new homeowners — defined as those who bought a house within the past year — spent nearly 27% of their income on housing, according to the new analysis from the centrist Economic Innovation Group.
That's close to the level last seen in the years before the housing bubble began to burst in 2007, when buyers with bad credit were taking out mortgages they couldn't afford.
Existing homeowners, meanwhile, spent just 20% of their income on housing, near record lows.
The gap between the two groups is the widest in at least 40 years.
Friction point: President Donald Trump and many lawmakers like to focus on mortgage rates as a way to make homes more affordable for new homeowners.
"We got to get interest rates down even lower," Trump said at a Cabinet meeting in January. "To me, the biggest factor is interest rates for housing."
The White House has touted the decline in rates over the past year — though they've come back up over the past two weeks, as the war has raised borrowing costs.
Between the lines: Mortgage rates are big and splashy, but they don't actually do much to make homes more affordable, EIG finds.
Instead, when rates are low, more new buyers enter the market — and bid up prices.
Low rates do benefit existing homeowners, who can refinance.
"Rate cuts likely would help recent homeowners to refinance at lower rates, but it's unlikely that they would do much to lower the barrier to entry for new buyers," writes Jess Remington, a research analyst at EIG who links to similar research from the Dallas Fed.
Zoom in: When interest rates fell from 2019 to 2021, new homeowners' real monthly mortgage payments actually increased, the analysis notes.
That's been the pattern since 1980, other research finds.
The big picture: Buying a house — once the American dream — has increasingly become a fantasy for many.
There's remarkable bipartisan agreement that something needs to be done to bring down housing costs. Big housing affordability bills have now passed both the House and Senate — though have since stalled out, as Trump is focused on election legislation and the Iran war.
Still, Trump has floated ideas outside of Congress — introducing 50-year mortgages, preventing investors from buying single-family homes and directing the purchase of $200 billion in mortgage bonds.
Last week, he issued executive orders that would make it easier to build and finance homes.
The bottom line: Some of the policies that focus on building new supply could ultimately make homes less expensive — by addressing a housing shortage.
But those policies will succeed on fairly long-time horizons.
Mortgage rates move much faster than home builders ever could — don't expect anyone to stop talking about their benefits anytime soon.
President Trump'seconomic pressure on Cuba is exacerbating a widespread humanitarian crisis as the U.S. continually threatens to intervene in the Caribbean island.
The big picture: Despite surviving 60 years of U.S. economic pressure, Cuban officials claim Trump is escalating the crisis by threatening to tariff its oil suppliers and openly musing about regime change.
The number of DoorDash deliveries using two-wheeled vehicles (bikes, e-bikes, scooters, etc.) in the U.S. and Canada grew nearly four times faster than those using cars between 2024 and 2025, per the company's new report shared first with Axios.
Why it matters: Bikes, scooters and such are typically cleaner and quieter than cars — plus they don't contribute as much to road congestion.
Israeli forces' killing of two top Iranian officialsin separate strikes Tuesday marked a major blow to Tehran's leadership, which has been decimated during the Iran war.
The big picture: National security chief Ali Larijani and Basij paramilitary commander Gholamreza Soleimani are among dozens of Iranian officials killed during the war. Many died along with the late Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Feb. 28, the first day of U.S. and Israeli airstrikes.
