U.S. monthly home sales fall to '15 level
WASHINGTON -- U.S. home sales fell for the sixth straight month in September, a sign that housing has increasingly become a weak spot for the economy.
The National Association of Realtors said Friday that sales declined 3.4 percent last month, the biggest drop in 2½ years, to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.15 million. That's the lowest sales pace since November 2015.
Hurricane Florence dragged on sales in North Carolina, but even excluding the storm's effects, sales would have fallen more than 2 percent, the association said. After reaching the highest level in a decade last year, sales of existing homes have declined steadily in 2018, a time of rapid price increases, higher mortgage rates and a tight supply of available houses.
Still, analysts are mostly optimistic about the broader economy. Most forecast growth will top 3 percent at an annual rate in the July-September quarter, after a robust expansion of 4.2 percent in the second quarter.
"Housing is no longer a tail wind for the economy, but the headwinds are blowing very gently," said Michelle Meyer, an economist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, before the report was released.
-- The Associated Press
Union urges U.S. to stay in postal treaty
GENEVA -- No international letters, no international packages: A top official with a 192-country postal union says that's what Americans can expect if President Donald Trump's administration goes through with plans to pull out of an international postal treaty over concerns about China.
Pascal Clivaz, deputy director-general of the Switzerland-based Universal Postal Union, says the agency reached out quickly to U.S. officials after receiving a letter from U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo this week announcing Washington's plan to pull out of the union in a year if the treaty isn't renegotiated.
"It will have dramatic consequences for American consumers. It will cost them enormously. They will be all alone against all the countries of the world," Clivaz told The Associated Press on Friday. "They won't even be able to send [a package] to a neighboring country. It's an accord that links everybody."
Word of the planned pullout is the latest facet of Washington's multi-level trade dispute with Beijing. The U.S. administration says the treaty allows China to ship packages to the U.S. at discounted rates at the expense of American businesses.
The Trump administration says current rules allow for foreign postal services to send packages to the United States at highly subsidized rates, and amount to an unfair system that hurts the U.S. Postal Service and U.S. consumers.
Clivaz acknowledged the U.S. concerns about China were at the root of the problem, but said agreements within the union since 2016 have moved toward "improving the issue with China."
-- The Associated Press
Maryland AG defends drug-pricing law
ANNAPOLIS, Md. -- Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday to uphold a first-in-the-nation law against pharmaceutical price gouging.
The Maryland law, which was struck down by a federal appeals court panel this year, enabled the state's attorney general to sue makers of off-patent or generic drugs for price increases that state officials considered "unconscionable." That was defined as an excessive increase, unjustified by the cost of producing or distributing the drugs. Frosh noted that prices of generic drugs have skyrocketed in recent years.
"For decades generic drugs have been one of the best bargains in health care. In recent years, however, the price of generic drugs has skyrocketed," Frosh said in a written statement. "In 2017, the General Assembly enacted the first-of-its-kind legislation to combat price gouging for generic medicines that have long been on the market and that are essential to the health of Marylanders. We are fighting to ensure Marylanders continue to have access to the essential generic medicines they need."
A panel of the Richmond, Va.-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 in April that the law is unconstitutional, because it forces manufacturers and wholesalers to act in accordance with Maryland law outside of Maryland, burdening interstate commerce.
-- The Associated Press
Ex-U.K. official joins Facebook as exec
LONDON -- Facebook has hired former U.K. Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg to head its global policy and communications teams, enlisting a veteran of European Union politics to help it with increased regulatory scrutiny in the region and snowballing challenges to its reputation.
Clegg, 51, will become a vice president of the social media giant, and report to Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg. He described the new job Friday as "an exciting new adventure" after 20 years in British politics.
Clegg will particularly be called upon to help Facebook grapple with a changing regulatory landscape globally. EU regulators are interested in reining in mostly American tech giants whom they blame for avoiding tax, stifling competition and encroaching on privacy rights.
-- The Associated Press
Farm weakness sends DowDuPont lower
MIDLAND, Mich. -- DowDuPont Inc. fell after cutting the asset value of its DuPont Co. agriculture business by $4.6 billion, less than nine months before a planned spinoff of the seed-and-pesticide unit.
The impairment charge reflects weaker markets for farm products since last year's merger with Dow Chemical Co., DuPont said in a regulatory filing. Reduced planting areas and delays in product registrations mean that sales will grow more slowly, while an unfavorable shift to soybeans from corn in Latin America will dent profits.
The financial hit, while not a drain on cash, underscores the struggles in agriculture that have buffeted the world's largest chemical maker. Farmers in Brazil are planting more soybeans and less corn, for example, to capitalize on China's retaliatory tariffs against U.S. soybeans. Currency weakness in the South American country, a key market, is also weighing on DowDuPont's farm business.
"In addition to the scale of the write-off, what's new here is DuPont confirming farmers want lower-tech products and that prices are under pressure," said Jason Miner, an analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence. "Large impairments are not driven off of transitory factors, like the few 2018-specific items that were already known."
The shares fell 1.9 percent to $57.49 in New York, the second-biggest drop on the Dow Jones industrial average.
-- Bloomberg News
Business on 10/20/2018