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Walmart expands grocery discount for 1.6 million employees as tariffs renew inflation concerns
Groceries are seen at a Walmart supermarket in Houston, Texas, on May 15, 2025.
Ronaldo Schemidt | AFP | Getty Images
As tariffs spark worries of higher prices, Walmart is dangling more discounts for its own employees.
The largest private U.S. employer said Wednesday that it will offer a 10% employee discount on nearly all groceries, including milk, meat and frozen food. That discount previously applied to fresh produce and most general merchandise items, such as clothing and toys, but only to other food during the holiday season.
In a memo to employees obtained by CNBC, Walmart’s chief people officer, Donna Morris, said the expanded price cut takes effect immediately. Walmart’s approximately 1.6 million U.S. employees qualify for the discount after their first 90 days with the company. With the expansion, the reduction will now include 95% of regularly priced items across the store, she said.
“We’ve heard your feedback that these savings make a real difference for you and your families,” she wrote in the memo. “And we have continued to hear that you would like to see this benefit expanded. In fact, it’s one of our most requested benefits.”
Walmart’s announcement comes as economists and companies closely watch how rising tariffs trickle through the U.S. economy and shape consumer spending. The consumer price index, a closely watched inflation metric from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, came in better than feared on Tuesday, with food prices flat. Yet the data still pointed to higher prices on some items. For example, household furnishings and supplies rose 0.7% month over month after climbing 1% in June.
Walmart itself has warned that higher prices are coming. In May, the company’s CFO, John David Rainey, told CNBC that the discounter was “wired for everyday low prices, but the magnitude of these increases is more than any retailer can absorb.”
The expanded employee discount could boost Walmart’s own business, too. It could motivate its huge workforce to spend more of their money at its stores and website rather than at other grocers or retailers. And the perk could also help attract and retain workers.
Walmart announced the expanded discount at its holiday meeting in Houston, which all store managers attended.
According to a video obtained by CNBC, Walmart U.S. CEO John Furner brought a Walmart store manager to the stage to read the surprise announcement that its 10% discount on food would become year-round.
“All I can think is about my associates back at home,” the store manager told Furner, as he thanked him. He said employees at his store “don’t know how they’re going to be paying their next meal and now this is going to help them.”
Walmart is scheduled to report its latest earnings on Aug. 21. The retailer’s expanded discount was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.
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FDA official calls UniQure’s gene therapy a ‘failed’ treatment for Huntington’s disease
Thomas Fuller | SOPA Images | Lightrocket | Getty Images
UniQure needs to run another study to prove that its gene therapy “actually helps people with Huntington’s disease,” a senior U.S. Food and Drug Administration official said on a call with reporters Thursday.
The official, who requested anonymity before discussing sensitive information, confirmed the agency has asked the company to run a placebo controlled trial of its treatment, which is administered directly into the brain. UniQure has said that type of study isn’t ethical because it would require putting people under general anesthesia for hours, a characterization the official disputed.
“So what is really going on? UniQure is the latest company to make a failed therapy for Huntington’s patients,” the official said. “They likely acknowledge or understand at some deep level that their trial failed years ago, and instead of doing the right thing and running the correct clinical study, UniQure is performing a distorted or manipulated comparison in the mind of FDA.”
The comments mark the latest development in a messy public spat between UniQure and the FDA, and as the agency comes under fire for a number of recent drug approval application rejections, including some where companies have accused it of going back on previous guidance. FDA Commissioner Marty Makary in an interview with CNBC’s Becky Quick last week seemingly criticized UniQure’s gene therapy for Huntington’s disease. Makary didn’t name UniQure but described its treatment.
UniQure then accused the FDA of reversing its stance that the company’s clinical trial data would be sufficient to seek approval. UniQure’s study used an outside database to measure how patients with Huntington’s disease might decline without treatment, known as an external control. UniQure has said it wouldn’t be feasible to run a true randomized, double-blind placebo-controlled study, considered the gold standard, because it wouldn’t be ethical to make people undergo a sham hours-long brain surgery.
The FDA official said the agency “never agreed to accept this distorted comparison” and the FDA “never makes such assurances.” Instead, the “FDA will always say, ‘Well, we have to see the data when we get it.'”
UniQure didn’t immediately comment.
The company’s stock rose more than 10% on Thursday and has fallen 58% this year as of Thursday afternoon.
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US mortgage rates rise to 6% after three-week slide as oil-driven bond yields climb – The Times of India
The average long-term US mortgage rate edged higher this week, ending a three-week decline as bond yields rose amid oil-price pressures linked to the war with Iran.The benchmark 30-year fixed mortgage rate increased to 6% from 5.98% last week, mortgage buyer Freddie Mac said on Thursday. A year ago, the average rate stood at 6.63%, AP reported.The modest uptick breaks a three-week slide in borrowing costs, with mortgage rates having hovered close to the 6% mark for most of this year. Last week’s average had marked the first time the rate dipped below 6% since September 2022, reaching its lowest level in nearly three and a half years.Mortgage rates are influenced by several factors, including the Federal Reserve’s interest-rate policy, investor expectations about inflation and economic growth, and movements in the bond market.They typically track the direction of the 10-year US Treasury yield, which lenders use as a benchmark for pricing home loans.The 10-year Treasury yield rose to 4.14% at midday Thursday, up from around 4% a week earlier.Treasury yields have moved higher in recent days as rising oil prices added fresh inflation concerns, potentially complicating the Federal Reserve’s plans to cut interest rates.
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