The number of companies at the greatest risk of defaulting are at an 11-month high, thanks to continued uncertainty around Donald Trump’s global trade war and how it has worsened credit conditions, according to a Moody’s Ratings report. In the second quarter, 16 companies were added to the cohort of businesses with the highest default risk. The group now stands at 241 companies.

Beauty products company Conair and brake kit company Power Stop are among firms Moody’s downgraded further into junk in the second quarter, given “significant pressure on their earnings and cash flow from high tariffs on goods sourced from China and other countries,” according to the report.

With market volatility, the number of companies that defaulted also increased last quarter compared to the prior period. Most were technology companies, though Moody’s expects firms in the consumer products sector to see more defaults in coming months. —Jordan Parker Erb

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US retail sales rebounded in June according to data released by the US Commerce Department Thursday. The numbers exceeded almost all estimates in a Bloomberg survey of economists. The value of retail purchases—not adjusted for inflation—increased 0.6% after declines in the prior two months, the government said.

Excluding cars, sales climbed 0.5%. Ten out of 13 categories posted increases, surprisingly fueled by motor vehicle sales, which climbed after back-to-back declines, according to the report. At the same time, prices of products more exposed to Trump’s tariffs, like toys and appliances, rose notably in the latest inflation data, suggesting import costs are getting passed through to consumers.

Executives at some of Russia's biggest banks have privately discussed seeking a state-funded bailout if the level of bad loans on their books continues to worsen over the next year. The banks’ assessment of the quality of their loan books is far worse than what official data show, according to current and former officials and documents. The banks have discussed internally how they would raise the prospect of a bailout with the central bank should that become necessary.

Central bank Governor Elvira Nabiullina has downplayed the risk of a systemic crisis, saying Russia’s banking system was “well capitalized” and had capital reserves of 8 trillion rubles. Russia has used bailouts and other mechanisms to recapitalize failing banks in the past. In 2017, the central bank spent at least 1 trillion rubles to rescue three large private banks, Otkritie, Promsvyazbank and B&N Bank, a move it said was necessary to save the financial system.

Russian soldiers in March walked past destroyed houses in a Russian village previously occupied by Ukrainian forces. Russia’s 3 ½ year war on its neighbor has killed tens of thousands of Ukrainians while resulting in global sanctions that have damaged Russia’s economy. Photographer: Tatyana Makeyeva/AFP

Amazon is firing people working in its cloud-computing division, making it the latest big tech company to engage in mass terminations of employees, ostensibly to fund artificial intelligence. The dismissals affected various teams at Amazon Web Services.

The move comes weeks after Chief Executive Officer Andy Jassy said he expected the company’s workforce to decline in the next few years as the company uses AI to handle more tasks. Earlier this month, Microsoft, which also has been spending lavishly on AI, began firing 9,000 of its workers, its second round of cuts this year.

Andy Jassy  Photographer: F. Carter Smith/Bloomberg

USAID workers reportedly lobbied for weeks to save emergency food rations meant for distribution to the needy following Trump’s funding cuts, with a US official only agreeing to a deal for the food to be used after a warning of “wasted tax dollars,” Reuters said. While a deal saved more than 600 metric tons of food in June, almost 500 tons is to be destroyed.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has defended Trump’s move to deny funding to aid programs. A recent study warned that Trump’s dismantling of such efforts could result in 14 million deaths by 2030, mostly of children. A model by researchers at Boston University estimated hundreds of thousands of people, also mostly infants and children, have already died as a result of Trump’s shuttering of USAID.

US Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials will get access to Medicaid recipients’ personal data as part of an effort to radically expand Trump’s immigration crackdown, the Associated Press reported. The unprecedented breach of privacy for roughly one quarter of all Americans will include home addresses and ethnicities, allowing ICE employees to target more people for arrest.

Earlier this month, 20 state attorneys general sought to block the administration from sharing personal health data with the Department of Homeland Security for immigration enforcement. The data sharing violates the Medicaid Act, the attorneys general said, which allows sharing of personal information only in narrow circumstances that benefit public health and the integrity of the Medicaid program.

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