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Mind the gap

The US still has an inflation problem — so does China, it’s just the exact opposite one

Since the pandemic, the world’s biggest economies have been wrestling with two very different problems.

3/19/25 10:07AM

Prices go up too fast? Boo. Prices go down? Also boo.

That’s the short version of the dueling narratives in the two most important economies on the planet, after the latest set of Chinese and the US inflation prints, out last week, revealed that the gaping inflation hole between the world’s two biggest economies is now at its widest since the end of March 2024.

Though the US breathed a sigh of relief as its inflation rate eased to a lower-than-expected 2.8% in February, consumer expectations for how much prices will rise in the coming 12 months have nearly doubled since November, as the American middle class expects to continue having to contest with price rises. In China, however, the opposite is true — the latest consumer inflation figures dropped far more than expected to -0.7%, leaving Chinese CPI below zero for the first time in 13 months.

Despite ongoing efforts on both ends of the inflation spectrum, the fire and ice situation between the two countries is expected to continue, particularly amid an escalating trade dispute whose impacts are yet to be fully reflected in the respective CPI data.

During the pandemic, Beijing had eyes on the supply side, encouraging production at the price of offering consumers appropriate stimuli, while the US mobilized major monetary easing to keep things moving. To oversimplify, since then, Chinese economists have been losing sleep over ways to open people’s wallets, while the worry in Washington has been about keeping a lid on demand.

The lesser of two evils

While prices falling sounds like a nice reprieve — particularly if you’re a US consumer who’s faced over three years of inflation — that’s arguably the worse of the two problems to be facing, at least if you’re an economist. Deflation incentivizes saving, as consumers and businesses withhold spending as they wait for prices to drop... which tends to lead to more price drops, more saving, and a vicious cycle of delayed consumption or investment.

Investors will be closely watching today’s Federal Reserve meeting for any hints of how the US will tackle still stubborn inflation. In China, it’s Hail Mary time, with the government revealing a 30-point stimulus plan on Sunday in a bid to keep the economy out of a prolonged deflationary spiral.

Max Knoblauch & David Crowther13h

Nike’s China business declines for seventh straight quarter, stock sinks as soft guidance outweighs Q3 earnings beat

Sportswear kingpin Nike reported results for its third quarter, which ended in February, after the bell Tuesday. At a headline-level, the fiscal Q3 numbers were pretty solid, with Nike reporting:

Earnings of $0.35 per share, comfortably above the Wall Street consensus of $0.29 per share compiled by FactSet.
$11.28 billion in total revenue, roughly in line with the $11.26 billion estimate.

However, weakness in China and a revenue forecast that implies sales will continue to drop are weighing on the shares, which are down more than 9% in early trading on Wednesday.

On the earnings call, management said that revenue is expected to drop 2% to 4% in the coming quarter, and that overall they “expect revenues to be down low-single-digits versus the prior year, with gains in North America offset by declines in Greater China.” That's a disappointment to analysts, who were anticipating 2% growth in the coming quarter, and even more in the latter stages of the year, per Bloomberg.

Nike’s sales in China — where the company earns about 15% of its revenue — fell 7% to $1.62 billion. That’s its seventh straight quarter of sales declines in the market, though this quarter’s was less than feared. The company had issued weak guidance for this quarter considering continued softness in the region.

“This quarter we took meaningful actions to improve the health and quality of our business,” said Nike CEO Elliott Hill. “The pace of progress is different across the portfolio and the areas we prioritized first continue to drive momentum.”

Nike shares are trading near decade lows this month, as tariffs continue to weigh on profits and shipping costs rise amid the war with Iran. As of Tuesday’s close, the stock was down 17% year to date.

Luke Kawa, Tasha Matsumoto

14h

Stocks end worst quarter since 2022 with best day since May

Optimism that the end of the war may be near sent stocks surging.

Max Knoblauch15h

Oil-sensitive travel stocks pop following Iran state media reporting on potential war resolution

Travel stocks are surging on Tuesday as oil prices fall following reports from Iranian state media that President Masoud Pezeshkian said the country has “the necessary will to end this war,” but would only do so with guarantees that “prevent the recurrence of aggression.”

The war has sent oil prices and refining margins surging this month, causing airlines and cruise lines to cut profit forecasts despite reported high demand.

Following Tuesday’s update, shares of the big four US airlines (Delta Air Lines, United Airlines, American Airlines, and Southwest Airlines) all climbed, along with smaller rivals including JetBlue. US airlines have stopped fuel hedging in recent years, increasing their exposure to upward swings in oil prices.

Cruise stocks also rallied, with Carnival and Norwegian up more than 6% and Royal Caribbean up about 5%.

J. Edward Moreno18h

The FDA is expected to lift restrictions on certain peptides, the NYT reports

The Food and Drug Administration is expected to lift restrictions on certain peptides, allowing the experimental, often injectable substances to be sold by compounding pharmacies, The New York Times reported Tuesday.

The potential move was previously reported by The Wall Street Journal, and teased by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on the “Joe Rogan Experience” podcast in late February.

Peptides have boomed in popularity recently, with search interest for “peptides” surpassing “ozempic” this month. Many of them are currently understudied and not approved for human use, a rule consumers are able to bypass by purchasing them from suppliers that sell them for, ostensibly, research purposes only.

As reports of the FDA changing its stance of peptides mount, consumer health companies like Hims & Hers and Superpower have been getting ready to roll out their peptide offerings as soon as they get the FDA's blessing.

The peptide gold rush: How impending deregulation could supercharge a shadow industry

Matt Phillips19h

Memory stocks bounce as Bernstein analyst calls TurboQuant fears “overdone”

Memory stocks rose Tuesday, after Bernstein analysts called the recent panic over Google’s TurboQuant AI algorithm “overdone.”

Bernstein analyst Mark Newman wrote:

“[Hard disk drive] and Memory stocks have sold off significantly due in part to fears from Google’s TurboQuant report. This however, should have zero impact on HDD demand and negligible impact on NAND demand. Given the stock sell-off we see this as an attractive entry point for Seagate Technology Holdings, Western Digital and Sandisk’s and upgrade WDC to Outperform.”

All three stocks were up early Tuesday, as was memory chip maker Micron.

Today’s rally stands in stark contrast to the pummeling these shares have endured over the last week, after Google Research published a technical paper on March 24 detailing its TurboQuant AI algorithm, which compresses the amount of data associated with AI operations without affecting the accuracy of AI models.

That was seen as a threat to surging AI demand for memory storage, which has supercharged prices for memory chips and memory-related stocks over the last year.