内容摘要：Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, Madison, Wis. (2,477 square feet)

Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, Madison, Wis. (2,477 square feet)

That uncertainty has been hitting U.S. households and businesses, raising worries that they may freeze their spending and long-term plans in response, which would hurt the economy. The latest reading in a survey of U.S. consumers by the University of Michigan showed, though the pace of decline wasn’t as bad as in prior months.

Perhaps more worryingly, expectations for coming inflation keep building, and U.S. consumers are now bracing for 7.3% in the next 12 months, according to the University of Michigan’s preliminary survey results. That’s up from a forecast of 6.5% a month before.When everyone expects inflation to be high, it could kick off a vicious cycle of behavior that only worsens inflation.To be sure, only some of the University of Michigan’s survey responses for the preliminary May reading came after the United States and China announced their 90-day truce.

On Wall Street, Charter Communications rose 1.8% after it said it agreed to merge with Cox Communications in atwo of the country’s largest cable companies. The resulting company will change its name to Cox Communications and keep Charter’s headquarters in Stamford, Connecticut.

CoreWeave jumped 22.1% after Nvidia disclosed that it had increased its ownership stake in the company, whose cloud platform helps customers running artificial-intelligence workloads. Nvidia now owns 7% of CoreWeave, up from its nearly 6% stake before CoreWeave’s initial public offering of stock in March.

Novo Nordisk’s stock that trades in the United States fell 2.7% after the Danish company behind the Wegovy drug for weight loss said that Lars Fruergaard Jørgensen willthat could suck away more revenue, as well as the nation’s limit on how much it can borrow.

If Washington has to pay more in interest to borrow cash to pay its bills, that could filter out and cause interest rates to rise for U.S. households and businesses too, in everything from mortgage rates to auto loan rates to credit cards. That in turn could slow the economy.The downgrade adds to a long list of concerns that have already weighed on the market. Chief among them is President Donald Trump’s trade war, which itself has forced investors globally to question whether the U.S.

still deserve their reputations as some of the safest places to park cash during a crisis.The U.S. economy seems to be holding up OK so far despite the pressures of tariffs, and hopes are high that Trump will eventually relent on his tariffs after striking trade deals with other countries. That’s a major reason the S&P 500 has rallied back within 3% of its all-time high after falling roughly 20% below that market last month.