There’s no room for price gouging in a ultra-competitive business like retail, Target CEO Brian Cornell said on Wednesday.

In an interview on CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” the retail chief disputed campaign talking points accusing grocers of inflating prices. He said retailers have to be responsive to customers or risk losing business.

He was asked by CNBC’s Joe Kernen, who referred to comments by Democratic presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris and asked if Target or its competitors ever benefit from price gouging. Harris last week proposed the first-ever federal ban on “corporate price-gouging in the food and grocery industries,” saying some companies are charging excessively and fueling household inflation.

“We’re in a penny business,” Cornell responded, noting the small profit margins in the retail industry. He described the many places that customers can turn to check for lower prices or to find merchandise elsewhere, from going to stores to browsing on their phones to compare the prices of a gallon of milk at different retailers.

Target’s retail chief made the comments after the discounter beat Wall Street’s expectations for earnings and revenue on Wednesday, but struck a cautious note with its full-year guidance. It said it expects comparable sales, which take out the impact of store openings and closures, to be on the lower side of its range of flat to up 2%. Yet it raised its profit guidance, saying it expects adjusted earnings per share to range from $9 to $9.70, up from the previous outlook of $8.60 and $9.60.Inflation and consumers’ outrage about high prices has continued to loom large for companies like Target. A wide range of retailers, including Home Depot, Walmart and Macy’s, have reported over the past two weeks that cautious consumers are being picky about where they’re spending.

Cornell said on “Squawk Box” that the retailer is trying to appeal to “a consumer who is managing their budget carefully” and said “value is in our DNA.”

Target is one of the consumer brands that has responded to shoppers’ concerns by lowering prices. It cut prices on about 5,000 everyday items, such as diapers and peanut butter, to try to drive higher traffic and sales. Others, such as McDonald’s, have debuted value meals.

So far, those discounts have shown signs of resonating at Target: In the quarter, customer traffic across Target’s stores and website rose 3% — even as shoppers put a little less in their shopping carts than they did a year ago.

Walmart CEO Doug McMillon said last week that prices have come down in many merchandise categories, but said that inflation “has been more stubborn” in the aisles that carry dry groceries and processed foods.

On an earnings call with investors, he said some brands “are still talking about cost increases, and we’re fighting back on that aggressively because we think prices need to come down.”

DETROIT — Ford Motor is delaying production of a next-generation all-electric pickup truck at a new plant in Tennessee and canceling plans for a three-row electric SUV, the company said Wednesday.

Instead, Ford said it will prioritize the development of hybrid models, as well as electric commercial vehicles such as a new electric commercial van in 2026, followed by two EV pickup trucks in 2027.

The pickups are expected to be a full-size truck, which will be produced at the Tennessee plant that’s currently under construction in 2027, and a new midsize truck being developed by a specialized “skunkworks” team in California.

“As we’ve learned in the marketplace, and we’ve seen where people have gravitated, we’re going to focus in where we have competitive advantage, and that’s on commercial land trucks and SUVs,” Ford CFO John Lawler said Wednesday.

The actions are meant to better deliver a capital-efficient, profitable electric vehicle business, said Lawler, who also serves as vice chair of the automaker. But, in the short-term, they will cost the company.

Ford said it will incur a special non-cash charge of about $400 million for the write-down of certain product-specific manufacturing assets, including the cancellation of the three-row SUV.

The company said the changes may also result in additional expenses and cash expenditures of up to $1.5 billion. Ford will reflect those in the quarter in which they are incurred, as a special item.

Lawler said the company’s future capital expenditure plans will shift from spending about 40% on all-electric vehicles to spending 30%. He did not give a timeline for the change.

Vehicle production at the new $5.6 billion Tennessee site was initially expected to begin next year. The company said it still expects to begin battery cell production at the site in 2025.

The changes are the latest for Ford and come amid slower-than-expected adoption of EVs as well as automakers not being able to profitably produce the vehicles.

The new plans come roughly five months after Ford said it would delay production of the three-row SUV and next-generation pickup, codenamed “T3.”

“This is really about us being nimble and listening to responses from our customers,” Lawler said during a call Wednesday morning. “We’ve been out in the [EV] market here for over two years, and we’ve learned a lot, and what we’re understanding is that customers want more electrification choices.”

The rollout of Ford’s next generation of EVs will begin with a commercial van that will be assembled at Ford’s Ohio Assembly Plant starting in 2026, according to the company.

The automaker previously said it would not launch a vehicle if there wasn’t a clear path to profitability within the first year. It was a change from selling EVs at a loss to grow share and assist in meeting fuel and emissions standards.

Ford said it will continue to produce and update its current all-electric vehicles such as the Ford Mustang Mach-E crossover and F-150 Lightning pickup truck.

The company said it plans to provide investors an “update on electrification, technology, profitability and capital requirements” in the first half of 2025.

Federal Reserve officials at their July meeting moved closer to a long-awaited interest rate reduction, but stopped short while indicating that a September cut had grown increasingly probable, minutes released Wednesday showed.

“The vast majority” of participants at the July 30-31 meeting “observed that, if the data continued to come in about as expected, it would likely be appropriate to ease policy at the next meeting,” the summary said.

Markets are fully pricing in a September cut, which would be the first since the emergency easing in the early days of the Covid crisis.

While all voters on the rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee voted to hold benchmark rates steady, there was an inclination among an unspecified number of officials to start easing at the July meeting rather than waiting until September.

The document stated that “several [meeting participants] observed that the recent progress on inflation and increases in the unemployment rate had provided a plausible case for reducing the target range 25 basis points at this meeting or that they could have supported such a decision.”

One basis point is 0.01 percentage point, so a 25 basis point reduction would be equivalent to a quarter percentage point.

In the parlance the Fed uses in its minutes, which do not mention names nor specify how many policymakers felt a certain way, “several” is a relatively small number.

However, the summary made clear that officials were confident about the direction of inflation and are ready to start easing policy if the data continues to cooperate.

The sentiment was twofold: Inflation markers had shown price pressures easing considerably, while some members noted concerns over the labor market as well as the struggles that households, particularly those at the lower end of the income spectrum, were having in the current environment.

“With regard to the outlook for inflation, participants judged that recent data had increased their confidence that inflation was moving sustainably toward 2 percent,” the minutes stated. “Almost all participants observed that the factors that had contributed to recent disinflation would likely continue to put downward pressure on inflation in coming months.”

On the labor market, “many” officials noted that “reported payroll gains might be overstated.”

Earlier Wednesday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported, in a preliminary revision of the nonfarm payroll numbers from April 2023 through March 2024, that gains may have been overstated by more than 800,000.

“A majority of participants remarked that the risks to the employment goal had increased, and many participants noted that the risks to the inflation goal had decreased,” the minutes said. “Some participants noted the risk that a further gradual easing in labor market conditions could transition to a more serious deterioration.”

In its post-meeting statement, the committee noted that job gains had moderated and that inflation also had “eased.” However, it chose to hold the line on its benchmark funds rate, which is currently targeted in a 5.25%-5.50% range, its highest in 23 years.

Markets rose the day of the Fed meeting but cratered in following sessions on worries that the central bank was moving too slowly in easing monetary policy.

The day after the meeting, the Labor Department reported an unexpected spike in unemployment claims, while a separate indicator showed the manufacturing sector contracted more than expected. Things got worse when the nonfarm payrolls report for July showed job creation of just 114,000 and another tick up in the unemployment rate to 4.3%.

Calls grew for the Fed to cut quickly, with some even suggesting that the central bank do an intermeeting move to head off worries that the economy was sinking fast.

However, the panic was short-lived. Subsequent data releases showed jobless claims drifting back down to normal historical levels while inflation indicators showed price pressures easing. Retail sales data also was better than expected, assuaging worries of consumer pressure.

More recent indicators, though, have pointed to stresses in the labor market, and traders largely expect the Fed to begin cutting rates in September.

U.S. job gains over the 12 months ending in March were revised downward Wednesday by 818,000 — a significant revision that adds to recent concerns that the economy has been slowing.

The change means that roughly 2.1 million jobs were created in the U.S. in the past year, compared with about 2.9 million prior to the revision. The new figures do not represent job losses — merely new estimates of how many jobs were actually created during the period in question.

‘Even after these large downward revisions, the labor market looks to have been on solid footing,’ Bank of America research analysts said after the report’s release.

The data serves as additional evidence that a more significant downturn in the U.S. economy may be afoot. While the economy has grown steadily in recent quarters, often outpacing expectations, the unemployment rate recently climbed to a new post-pandemic high of 4.3% (the data revisions today do not affect measures of the unemployment rate). The share of American workers both employed and unemployed looking for new work rose to its highest level in a decade in July — even as hiring has largely ground to a halt.

In a statement, White House Chief Economic Adviser Jared Bernstein said the preliminary estimate ‘doesn’t change the fact that the jobs recovery has been and remains historically strong, delivering solid job and wage gains, strong consumer spending, and record small business creation.”

Wednesday’s update from the Bureau of Labor Statistics was the largest negative revision since 2009. Still, it was slightly less than feared by forecasters, some of whom had warned it could have been as high as 1 million. Market reaction was largely muted.

In a note to clients following Wednesday’s release, Olivia Cross, economist with Capital Economics research group, said the report means that the jobs data covered by the period were ‘softer than first thought, but not worryingly so,’ and that it will likely lead the Federal Reserve to cut its key interest rate by 0.25% in September, as most analysts expected before Wednesday’s release.

On an absolute basis, employment in professional and business services saw the largest adjustment, down 358,000 jobs compared to what was previously reported. Leisure and hospitality was next, down 150,000.

On a percentage basis, information occupations saw the biggest adjustment, a decline of 2.3%.

Each year, the Bureau of Labor Statistics uses state unemployment insurance tax records to paint a more accurate picture of the jobs market compared with its regular monthly surveys.

The BLS revisions are preliminary, and the scale of the revisions will again be adjusted next February.

This year’s revision was highly anticipated as market observers debate whether the Federal Reserve has been too slow to cut rates amid signs of a slowing economy. The Fed is expected to cut interest rates by 0.25% at its next policy-setting meeting on Sept. 18.

Bank of America’s research analysts said the report will have ‘little impact’ on expectations for Fed policy, adding that the Fed already had concerns about the labor market before the revisions.

The former CEO of a small Kansas bank was sentenced to more than 24 years in prison for looting the bank of $47 million — which he sent to cryptocurrency wallets controlled by scammers who had duped him in a “pig butchering” scheme that appealed to his greed, federal prosecutors said.

The massive embezzlement by ex-CEO Shan Hanes in a series of wire transfers over just eight weeks last year led to the collapse and FDIC takeover of Heartland Tri-State Bank in Elkhart, one of only five U.S. banks that failed in 2023.

Hanes, 53, also swindled funds from a local church and investment club — and a daughter’s college savings account — to transfer money, purportedly to buy cryptocurrency as the scammers insisted they needed more funds to unlock the supposed returns on his investments, according to records from U.S. District Court in Wichita, Kansas.

But Hanes never realized any profit and lost all of the money he stole as a result of the scam.

Judge John Broomes on Monday sentenced Hanes to 293 months in prison — 29 months more than what prosecutors requested after he pleaded guilty in May to a single count of embezzlement by a bank officer.

During the sentencing hearing, “I called his actions ‘pure evil,’” said Brian Mitchell, who for years was Hanes’ next-door neighbor in Elkhart, a town of 2,000 or so people in southwestern Kansas, north of the Oklahoma panhandle.

Mitchell, whose farm and movie theater chain businesses banked at Heartland Tri-State, said there were around 30 shareholders in the bank who attended Hanes’ sentencing, more than a year after their stock value was wiped out in the failure.

“There were people who lost 70, 80% of their retirement” as a result of Hanes’ actions, Mitchell told CNBC on Wednesday in a phone interview.One local woman is “struggling to afford a nursing home” for her 93-year-old mother, while another woman “can’t retire” now because of the crime, Mitchell said.

Mitchell, who was not a shareholder but who belonged to the investment club victimized by the CEO, said Hanes showed little, if any, remorse for his actions, despite hearing victims tell the judge about the effects of his crime.

“Shan was facing the judge, and he just looked over his left shoulder for a second, and didn’t make eye contact, and said, ‘Sorry,’” Mitchell recalled, describing the scene in the courtroom. “And that was it.”

But Hanes had a look of “absolute shock” on his face when Broomes imposed the stiff sentence and ordered the former bank chief taken into custody immediately, Mitchell said.

Mitchell said that for years he considered Hanes a “good guy,” who like other people in Elkhart pitched in to help others in the small community when they needed help, and preached at his local church. Hanes also testified several times before Congress about community banking.

But prosecutors and bank regulators said that Hanes, who has three daughters with his school teacher wife, began stealing after being targeted in a pig-butchering scheme in late 2022.

That scheme was described in a court filing as “a scammer convincing a victim (a pig) to invest in supposedly legitimate virtual currency investment opportunities and then steals the victim’s money — butchering the pig.”

Hanes, who had served on the board of the American Bankers Association, and been chairman of the Kansas Bankers Association, in December 2022 began making transactions to buy cryptocurrency, which “appeared to be precipitated by communication with an unidentified co-conspirator on the electronic messaging app ‘WhatsApp,’” prosecutors wrote in a court filing.

“To date, the true identity of the co-conspirator, or conspirators, remain unknown,” the filing notes.

Hanes initially used personal funds to buy crypto, but in early 2023 he stole $40,000 from Elkhart Church of Christ and $10,000 from the Santa Fe Investment Club, according to prosecutors and a defense filing.

He also used $60,000 taken from a daughter’s college fund, and nearly $1 million in stock from the Elkhart Financial Corporation, his lawyer said in a filing.

In May 2023, he began to make wire transfers from Heartland Tri-State Bank to accounts controlled by scammers, at first with a $5,000 transfer.

Two weeks later, on May 30, Hanes wired $1.5 million and a day after that, he sent another transfer of the same amount the following day, filings show.

Three days later he directed two wire transfers totaling $6.7 million to be sent by the bank to the crypto wallet, and a whopping $10 million less than two weeks later, and another $3.3 million days afterward.

Hanes told bank employees to execute the wire transfers, and “made many misrepresentations to various people” to get access to the funds so they could be transferred, prosecutors wrote. Heartland Tri-State employees circumvented the bank’s own wire policy and daily limits to approve Hanes’ wire transfers, according to a report by the Office of the Inspector General of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System.

“We believe that the CEO’s dominant role in the bank and prominent role in the community contributed to a reluctance on the part of Heartland employees to question or report the alleged fraudulent activities earlier,” that report said.

Prosecutors wrote that the series of 11 wire transfers from Hanes to the scammer “illustrate a common pattern” in pig-butchering schemes.

“First, there is an initial ‘investment’ followed by another transaction required to secure or guarantee those funds,” prosecutors wrote. “Further ‘investments’ may be made, but always require another need for funds, to guarantee or unfreeze the earlier transfers. This pattern is clearly represented in the defendant’s embezzlement.”

Mitchell confirmed that to CNBC, saying that he got a call from Hanes at 7:40 a.m. on July 5, 2023.

“He said, ‘Brian, I need your help, and you’re the only guy who can help me,’” Mitchell recounted.

Mitchell, who had survived prostate cancer two decades ago, said he thought Hanes was calling him to say that he had the same type of cancer.

But when Mitchell showed up at Heartland Tri-State to meet Hanes, before the bank had officially opened to customers that morning, the CEO told him something much different — and stranger.

“The first thing he says is, ‘Brian, I need to borrow $12 million for ten days, and I’ll give you $1 million for loaning it to me,’” Mitchell recalled. “I’m sitting there and I said, am I in a bank in Elkhart, Kansas, or in an alley with a loan shark in Chicago.”

When he asked Hanes what he wanted the money for, Hanes “pulls out his phone and acts like he’s logging in and he shows me this account that has $40 million, $42 million,” Mitchell said. “He said, ‘Brian, I’ve got this money and it’s in cryptocurrency, and I need $12 million to help verify the funds.’”

Hanes then hold him he had been in touch with a banker in Denver named “Jim” and “another guy in Oklahoma” and they had invested in crypto held in Coinbase accounts, where they had made a lot of money, Mitchell said.

“I told him, ‘You’re in a scam, dude. You’re in a scam,’” Mitchell said. “I stopped him and said, ‘Is this bank money you’re playing with?’ And he said, ‘No, Brian.’”

Hanes kept telling him he needed the $12 million to “activate” the funds he had already transferred to the crypto account, which he said was in Hong Kong, Mitchell recalled.

“I said, ‘Get on a plane, go to Hong Kong, hire an interpreter, and go get a bank check’” for the funds supposedly held there, Mitchell said. “Then I said, ‘I’m not going to loan you the money.’ I said, ‘You’re in a scam, walk away.’”

But later that same day, after Mitchell rebuffed his entreaties, Hanes had bank employees wire $8 million to the scammers’ accounts, prosecutors said in a court filing.

Two days after that, Hanes had employees wire the scammers another $4.4 million.

In the meantime, Mitchell, who was unaware of those transfers during that period, said that after meeting with the CEO he was worried that Hanes would get access to customers’ deposits at the bank and transfer the $12 million that he had asked for.

“We kept checking our lines of credit,” Mitchell said.

“The next week, I was in the bank, and one of the employees caught me, she just looked so stressed,” Mitchell said. The woman told him that Hanes had wired money out of the bank.

“I said, ‘Don’t say another word to me… I’ve got to talk to a board member,’” Mitchell said.

“And I talked to a board member that night, and he went to talk to an attorney that night,” Mitchell recalled.

Hanes was fired within days.

About two weeks later, on July 28, 2023, Heartland Tri-State was closed by the Kansas Office of the State Bank Commissioner was taken over by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

Shareholders were wiped out, but depositors did not lose any money, as Dream First Bank, National Association, of Syracuse, Kansas, assumed all deposits.

Heartland Tri-State, had nearly $140 million in total assets and $130 million in total deposits as of the prior March.

Word quickly spread that a scam had led to the bank’s failure.

But Hanes remained uncharged until last February, when he was charged by federal prosecutors with embezzlement. He was separately charged in Morton County, Kansas, state court by the county attorney in a 28-count complaint related to looting the bank.

Hanes was under house arrest until his sentencing in federal court this week.

“I talked to him last month when he was out mowing his yard,” Mitchell said.

Hanes, who had traveled at one point to Perth, Australia while being scammed to try to recover the funds he transferred, told Mitchell that he believed there had been a way to recover the money up to the point he was arrested.

“He said … ‘If I just had another two months I could get the money back,’” Mitchell recalled.

Mitchell said that at Hanes’ sentencing, Judge Broomes asked Hanes several questions about his actions, but, “He didn’t really have any good answers.”

Broomes later looked at the victims in the courtroom’s gallery before announcing Hanes’ sentence.

“He said … ‘I want you to forgive Shan. I know that he’s hurt you, I know this, but I want you to move on, and I want you to find some joy in your life. Let me discipline him,’” Mitchell recalled.

Broomes also told Hanes that although several people had noted how intelligent the former CEO was, “If you were that intelligent you would have stopped this,” Mitchell recounted.

Hanes’ lawyer John Stang, who did not respond to a request for comment, in a sentencing submission wrote, “Mr. Hanes made some very bad choices after being caught up in an extremely well-run cryptocurrency scam.”

“He was the pig that was butchered,” Stang wrote. “Mr. Hanes’s vulnerability to the Pig Butcher scheme caused him to make some very bad decisions, for which he is truly sorry for causing damage to the bank and loss to the Stockholders.”

Kansas U.S. Attorney Kate Brubacher, in a statement, said, “Hanes’ greed knew no bounds. He trespassed his professional obligations, his personal relationships, and federal law.”

“Not only did Shan Hanes betray Heartland Bank and its investors, but his illegal schemes also jeopardized confidence in financial institutions,” Brubacher said.