A soft landing from inflation may still be in sight, but when Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell speaks in New York on Friday he will be facing a tangled set of new risks to that long-sought goal.

U.S. consumer confidence plummeted in February, the biggest monthly decline in more than four years, a business research group said Tuesday.

U.S. President Donald Trump's trade war with China will give Brazilian agricultural exporters an opportunity to take an even bigger share of the Chinese market at the expense of American farmers, but it could also fuel already high food inflation in Brazil.

The law firm business generally follows the health of the broader economy, which is being threatened by a prolonged trade war. Longer term, the tariffs implemented this week could cut 1.3% from US GDP and lead to a rise in the Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation measure, according to Maeva Cousin and Rana Sajedi of Bloomberg Economics.

The country’s top leaders set an optimistic growth target but gave few hints of how to achieve it as their export-led strategy is challenged by rising tariffs on Chinese goods.

OTTAWA — The Bank of Canada's interest rate announcement arrives on Wednesday in a cloud of uncertainty thanks to a shifting trade war with the United States.

The 10% tariff that Trump placed on Chinese imports in February was doubled to 20%, and Beijing retaliated Tuesday with tariffs of up to 15% on a wide array of U.S. farm exports. It also expanded the number of U.S. companies subject to export controls and other restrictions by about two dozen.

The European Central Bank is cutting interest rates by a quarter percentage point, lowering credit costs for consumers and businesses to support an economy that is struggling to show solid growth.