U.S. orange production has plummeted as the industry faces volatile threats from extreme weather events, an incurable disease and economic pressures.

Citrus growers are losing millions of dollars every year, according to the United States Department of Agriculture. 

At the same time, orange juice futures have hit record highs.

“Citrus production in the United States [is a] pretty dire situation right now,” Daniel Munch, economist at the American Farm Bureau Federation, told CNBC. “When you have a lack of supply that’s unable to meet demand, prices for consumers shoot up.” 

Florida has seen a dramatic orange production decline in recent years. According to the USDA, there were over 658,000 orange acres in Florida in 1998. As of 2023, there were just over 303,000 acres of oranges planted in Florida, or a total acreage drop of more than 50% in just 25 years.

A large part of the problem can be traced to the spread of citrus greening disease, which is considered to be one of the most serious plant diseases in the world that is currently incurable.

“When citrus greening starts to enter the grove, it reduces the productivity of those trees, ultimately forcing them into death, and then therefore removal from the grove,” Amy O’Shea, CEO of Invaio Sciences, an agricultural sciences company, told CNBC.

The problems plaguing citrus production are not easily remedied as climate change has made extreme weather more common and scientists have yet to come up with scalable citrus greening treatments.

Some of the key research areas include fruit breeding for citrus greening-resistant varieties, antimicrobial treatments and other pest control solutions, like crop covers. 

Invaio is one of the companies researching and developing treatments for citrus greening.

“We’ve developed a very unique precision delivery technology called Trecise, that we’re able to insert into the tree and deliver a very reduced amount of an antimicrobial, “O’Shea told CNBC.

When Trecise is inserted into a tree, the active ingredient goes into its vascular system as opposed to being applied outside of the tree, according to O’Shea.

In August 2023, Invaio’s Trecise received emergency approval for use from the Florida Department of Agriculture and Community Services.

The volatility of these threats may cut into citrus harvest expectations, which leads experts to believe that higher prices for orange juice are likely to remain, at least in the short term. 

Yum Brands hopes to use artificial intelligence to take down drive-thru orders at hundreds of Taco Bell restaurants by the end of this year.

The restaurant company announced on Wednesday that it is expanding its rollout of the tech in the U.S. as it eyes implementing it in drive-thru lanes globally.

Yum Brands joins restaurant rivals such as Wendy’s and White Castle in betting on voice AI, but its plans are the most ambitious to date. While tech companies may promise that voice AI can speed up service times, reduce labor costs and boost sales through upselling, restaurant companies have taken a more measured approach so far, testing the tech to make sure both its employees and customers enjoy the experience.

In June, McDonald’s said it would end its trial of Automated Order Taker, an AI technology tested in partnership with IBM. The Chicago-based company now plans to turn to other vendors instead.

Yum Brands has moved quickly on its test. In May, executives said Taco Bell would expand its pilot of voice AI from five locations to 30 restaurants in California. Currently, more than 100 Taco Bell restaurants in the U.S. use voice AI. Taco Bell had nearly 7,700 U.S. locations at the end of 2023, according to company filings.

Yum Brands said the tech has improved order accuracy, reduced wait times, decreased employees’ task load and fueled profitable growth for the restaurant company and its operators.

“With over two years of fine tuning and testing the drive-thru Voice AI technology, we’re confident in its effectiveness in optimizing operations and enhancing customer satisfaction,” Yum Brands Chief Innovation Officer Lawrence Kim said in a statement.

Five KFC restaurants in Australia are also testing voice AI tech in drive-thrus, Yum Brands said.

Yum Brands is expected to report its second-quarter earnings on Tuesday.

Venu Sports, the sports streaming joint venture between Disney’s ESPN, Warner Bros. Discovery and Fox Corp., will cost $42.99 a month.

The upcoming streaming platform announced its pricing on Thursday and said it plans to launch in the fall. It will offer a 7-day free trial. Further details are expected to be released when it launches. Venu is still pending regulatory approval.

The goal is for Venu Sports to become available ahead of the start of the NFL season, which begins on Thursday, Sept. 5, according to a person familiar with the matter. Fox holds the rights to Sunday NFL games, while ESPN is the broadcaster of Monday Night Football.

CNBC earlier reported the service would likely start at between $45 and $50 a month.

The high-end pricing — common in direct-to-consumer sports streaming services — was expected in part so it wouldn’t shake up any carriage agreements with traditional pay TV distributors. Live sports remain the highest rated TV programming and are the most costly part of the pay TV bundle. In turn, media rights valuations have ballooned, most recently the NBA’s 11-year, $77 billion package.

Users who sign up for Venu at $42.99 a month will have access to that entry pricing for 12 months, Venu noted Thursday — signaling there could be price increases ahead.

“Targeted at sports fans outside the traditional pay TV bundle, Venu is planning a launch in the U.S. in the fall and will offer thousands of live sports events from all the major professional sports leagues and top college conferences,” the company said in Thursday’s release.

The three media companies, which announced the joint venture in February, each own a one-third stake in Venu, which is run as its own company with its own management team. Former Apple and Hulu executive Pete Distad was appointed CEO. The subsidiary announced the name Venu in May.

The platform will include the entirety of the portfolio of live sports rights owned by its parent companies, including the NFL, NBA, NHL, MLB, college football and basketball, among others. Venu subscribers will also have access to 14 traditional TV sports networks of its parent companies, including ESPN, ABC, Fox, TNT and TBS, as well as the streaming service ESPN+.

“With an impressive portfolio of sports programming, Venu will provide sports fans in the U.S. with a single destination for watching many of the most sought-after games and events,” said Distad said in a news release. “We’re building Venu from the ground up for fans who want seamless access to watch the sports they love, and we will launch at a compelling price point that will appeal to the cord cutter and cord never fans currently not served by existing pay TV packages.”

Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery are also planning to bundle their streaming services, Max, Disney+ and Hulu. The upcoming bundle will be priced at $16.99 a month with ads, and $29.99 a month ad-free.

CarShield, a company that sells vehicle service contracts to automobile owners that it claims will cover the cost of certain repairs, has agreed to pay $10 million in a settlement with federal regulators over charges that its marketing tactics were deceptive and misleading.

In a statement Wednesday, the Federal Trade Commission said CarShield, which employs celebrity endorsers including rapper and actor Ice-T and sports commentator Chris Berman, had falsely lured customers with the promise of ‘peace of mind’ and ‘protection’ from the cost and inconvenience of vehicle breakdowns through its contracts.

The FTC also charged American Auto Shield, LLC (AAS), the administrator of CarShield’s vehicle service contracts, in the scheme.

The agency said that at least one ad, which ran 18,000 times on television, stated, ‘With CarShield’s administrators, they make sure you don’t get stuck with expensive car repair bills like this.’ It also touted CarShield contracts as ‘your best line of defense against expensive breakdowns.’

Yet many purchasers discovered that their repairs were not covered, despite making payments of up to $120 per month for CarShield’s product, the FTC said. 

‘Instead of delivering the ‘peace of mind’ promised by its advertisements, CarShield left many consumers with a financial headache,’ Samuel Levine, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, said in a statement.

‘Worse still, CarShield used trusted personalities to deliver its empty promises,’ Levine said. ‘The FTC will hold advertisers accountable for using false or deceptive claims to exploit consumers’ financial anxieties.”

In a statement, CarShield said that while it disagreed with ‘many’ of the FTC’s assertions, it shares the agency’s ‘commitment to helping customers fully understand exactly what we provide and the value we offer.’

It said that its marketing efforts now include additional details about the elements of typically covered car repair and that full plans are now ‘easily viewed prior to making a purchase decision.’

And it said it had expanded its Shield Repair Network ‘by adding more than 10,000 preferred car repair shops, and added a concierge system to help customers quickly locate a repair facility convenient for them.’

A representative for AAS did not respond to a request for comment.

CarShield, based in Missouri, has an A+ rating from the Better Business Bureau — but the company’s BBB listing features more than 300 pages of complaints and a 1.6 out of 5 customer rating. A recent report from WDAF-TV of Kansas City, Missouri, said CarShield had sued the BBB, with the case being settled out of court.

American Auto Shield, based in Colorado, likewise has a 2.9 customer rating despite an official A+ rating from the BBB.

Federal Reserve officials said Wednesday that while there are signs the economy is slowing, the Fed was not yet ready to cut its key interest rate.

Yet even as it held rates at their current level of about 5.5%, the Federal Open Market Committee’s latest statement included changes in language that acknowledged growing signs of economic weakness that suggest a greater willingness to consider lowering borrowing costs.

Notably, the FOMC observed some deterioration in labor-market conditions.

“Job gains have moderated, and the unemployment rate has moved up but remains low,” it said in the statement Wednesday.

At 4.1%, the unemployment rate is at its highest level since February 2018, though still below levels that would suggest a recession.

On Tuesday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that while layoff activity remained subdued in June, the hiring rate in the economy has slowed to a level not seen since 2014. The percentage of unemployed workers who have gone without roles for 27 weeks or more has recently begun to surge, with about 1.5 million total workers now in that category.

Yet the FOMC said Wednesday it would not budge “until it has gained greater confidence that inflation is moving sustainably toward 2 percent,” a line Fed officials have repeated previously. 

In a note to clients after the statement was released, Omair Sharif, founder and president of the Inflation Insights research group, said the Fed had taken a ‘baby step’ toward a cut that traders have bet will come in September.

‘I expect that further good news on the inflation front in July should set up the Chair to deliver a more meaningful signal that a rate cut in September is very likely,’ Sharif wrote.

Likewise, Seema Shah, chief global strategist at Principal Asset Management financial group, said the statement ‘cracks the door open to the September cut that everyone is expecting.’

In remarks following the statement’s release Fed Chair Jerome Powell acknowledged a rate cut ‘could be on the table for September’ but said monetary policymakers ‘just need to see more good data.’

In recent testimony to Congress, Powell acknowledged that central bank officials had started the clock on lowering rates, saying acting “too late or too little could unduly weaken economic activity and employment.”

The Federal Reserve helps set the interest rates that determine how much it costs consumers and businesses to borrow money for products and services.

For the past two years, it has sought to fight inflation by keeping interest rates elevated, in essence fighting fire with fire: By making borrowing more expensive, it has cooled demand in the economy and thus slowed the rate at which prices have increased.

Now, the Fed is signaling that the higher rates have done their job on the inflation front — and that keeping them aflame could lead to unnecessary damage to the rest of the economy.

Wall Street traders have signaled for weeks that a September rate cut is a virtual certainty, according to data from the financial services company CME Group.

But influential former Fed officials have begun calling for a more rapid timeline. Bill Dudley, a former New York Federal Reserve president, wrote this month that a rate cut should occur before September. In a Bloomberg News op-ed, Dudley said he had ‘changed his mind,’ with unemployment creeping higher and with all but the wealthiest households having depleted their immediate post-pandemic financial cushions.

‘Although it might already be too late to fend off a recession by cutting rates, dawdling now unnecessarily increases the risk,’ Dudley wrote.

This week, Alan Blinder, a Fed vice chair in the Clinton administration, said in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that the time to cut is now.

‘Why wait?’ Blinder asked, declaring the two-year fight against pandemic-induced inflation over as ‘the economy seems to be simmering down.’

Cutting rates would only be a matter of heading off a negative economic outcome: Companies have signaled that there’s upside, too.

Sectors whose success is especially sensitive to interest rates and consumer credit, like the housing and automotive markets, have shown particular weakness — including signals from companies in those industries that they expect sales to ramp up again once interest rates begin to fall.

“There is now a higher probability of interest rate relief beginning in September,” said Dave Foulkes, CEO of Brunswick Corp., a boat-making specialist. While new cuts would most likely have only a minor impact on 2024 results because peak season will have passed, they’d be “a potential tailwind for 2025.”

The Fed will announce the results of the Open Market Committee meeting at 2 p.m. Wednesday.

The United Auto Workers has endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris over Republican presidential nominee and former President Donald Trump.

The union’s endorsement shouldn’t be surprising. UAW President Shawn Fain has been outspoken against Trump. The Detroit union also has historically supported Democrats, including President Joe Biden.

It comes after Biden withdrew his re-election bid and endorsed Harris to become the Democratic nominee against Trump.

Fain and Trump have been at odds — publicly trading remarks — since the union leader was elected early last year. Trump called for Fain to be fired during a speech earlier this month at the Republican National Convention.

The union responded with a post calling Trump a “scab and a billionaire,” continuing “that’s who he represents. We know which side we’re on. Not his.”

Quickly after Biden dropped out of the election, the UAW praised him and showed support for Harris, who walked a picket line with union members during a strike in 2019.

“The path forward is clear: we will defeat Donald Trump and his billionaire agenda and elect a champion for the working class to the highest office in this country,” the union said in a statement July 21 after Biden had dropped out of the 2024 race. That statement stopped short of formally endorsing Harris.

The UAW’s endorsement is crucial for any candidate looking to secure the battleground state of Michigan, because of the UAW’s potential influence there. The Detroit-based union has roughly 370,000 active members and 580,000 retired members, many of which reside in the Midwest.

Michigan voters helped both Biden and Trump to win the White House during the past two presidential elections.

Online home goods company Wayfair saw sales decline in its fiscal second quarter as its CEO called the current slowdown in the home goods category “unprecedented” — and likened it to the 2008 financial crisis.

“Our credit card data suggests that the category correction now mirrors the magnitude of the peak to trough decline the home furnishing space experienced during the great financial crisis,” Wayfair CEO Niraj Shah said in a news release. “Customers remain cautious in their spending on the home.”

The e-tailer fell short of Wall Street’s expectations on both the top and bottom lines. Shares opened about 8% lower before paring some losses.

Here’s how Wayfair did in its second fiscal quarter compared with what Wall Street was anticipating, based on a survey of analysts by LSEG:

The company reported a loss of $42 million, or 34 cents per share, in the three-month period that ended June 30. That’s slightly better than the loss of $46 million, or 41 cents per share, that it posted during the same quarter a year earlier. 

Sales dropped to $3.12 billion, down about 2% from $3.17 billion a year earlier. The slowdown in sales came even as average order values rose in the quarter from $313 to $307 and after the company opened its first large format store.

For the current quarter, Wayfair expects revenue to be down in the low single digits, compared to estimates of 1.7% growth, according to LSEG.

For more than a year, home goods companies like Wayfair have seen sluggish demand for things like new couches and dining sets as the overall housing market turned stagnant against high interest rates. Consumers are buying fewer new homes, which means they have fewer reasons to buy new furniture. Plus, with stubborn inflation, they’ve been more choosy on where they’re spending their discretionary income, and with options like restaurants, new clothes and trips, home goods have not been a priority. 

Wayfair has needed to entice customers with discounts to bring them in and doesn’t expect to see a resurgence in the category until interest rates are cut and the housing market bounces back. 

“We see declines that are similar to the declines that we saw in that 2008 to 2010 period and I think what that speaks to is that the category has been going through just a massive correction, a correction that we’ve previously only seen during a GDP recession,” Wayfair finance chief Kate Gulliver told CNBC in an interview. 

“Obviously we’re not technically in a GDP recession as a country right now, and so this is somewhat a unique thing to this category… we’ve seen that kind of recession-like correction in the category over the last few years.” 

During a call with analysts, Shah called the slowdown in the home goods category “unprecedented” and said it’s similar to what the space saw during the great financial crisis.

“Our credit card data suggests that the category was down by nearly 25% from the peak we saw in the fourth quarter of 2021,” said Shah. “Importantly, this calculation is on nominal dollars, adjusting for inflation suggests we’re now in the midst of a correction in excess of 35%, an unprecedented level of pullback in our sector.”

Reprieve could soon be on the way after Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said interest rate cuts could come as soon as September as long as economic data continues on its current path.

“Given how deep we are into the cycle, it’s fair to expect a turnaround to come soon, and Wayfair is well positioned to benefit,” said Shah.

Wayfair, which has implemented a string of mass layoffs to get its cost structure in line with the current size of its business, has struggled to reach profitability, but the quarter was the best for free cash flow generation and adjusted EBITDA in three years, Shah said. 

The company saw adjusted EBITDA of $163 million during the quarter, still below the $168 million that Wall Street had expected, according to StreetAccount. 

“We are running the business with the goal of demonstrating substantial growth in profitability this year, even as the top line remains challenging. And that will be our mindset every year going forward as well,” said Shah.