Retailers brace for empty shelves as U.S. imports decline

• In today’s CEO Daily: Diane Brady on how high housing costs can hold business back.
• The big story: American retailers brace for empty shelves as U.S. imports collapse.
• The markets: Surprisingly buoyant, despite everything.
• Analyst notes from Apollo on the China trade collapse, JPMorgan on “Trump exhaustion,” Goldman Sachs on the “flight of foreign investors out of US assets,” and UBS on Trump.
• Plus: All the news and watercooler chat from Fortune.

Good morning. Americans face a litany of economic woes at the moment, and while tariffs are dominating the headlines, housing costs are a constant strain for workers—and thus for bosses too. In my building on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, I’ve met several professionals in their thirties who have a roommate because they can’t afford to rent on their own. I know people who switched jobs or turned down transfers because of housing costs. It’s especially hard on younger or lower-income consumers: A starter home now costs $1 million in half the states, according to a new Zillow report, and California legislators are considering a bill that would let homeless students sleep in their vehicles. (So much for this traditionally being peak homebuying season.)

Business leaders are feeling the impact as high housing costs have curbed labor mobility, return-to-office plans and the ability for employers to recruit in places like Silicon Valley. One CEO recently told me that he held off on asking employees to come in every day because he knows how far some have to commute and how hard it would be for many to give up stable low-cost mortgages to buy a home closer to headquarters. 

Michael Lefenfeld, CEO of Hexion, which makes advanced materials used in construction, among other things, told me last week that he thinks “we’re talking too much about mortgage and housing costs, and not enough about permitting and the applications to build a house. That really is constraining builder sentiment … the regulatory challenges, whether it's state or federal, to get permits to build at a meaningful rate.

”I’m surprised Donald Trump hasn’t embraced housing policies to win public support—or put public pressure on cities as he has done with immigration. Instead, the Administration’s new tariffs on building materials could add costs of about $10,900 per home, according to a new NAHB/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index survey. And the immigration crackdown could make it harder to find workers to build new units. But housing policies are local, of course. It’s telling that Austin, which has issued about 10 times more permits per capita than San Francisco in recent years, has also outpaced its California rival in the growth of high-tech jobs.

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Contact CEO Daily via Diane Brady at diane.brady@fortune.com

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com