Washington is pushing big decisions past the midterms while the last data before the vote lands. Here's what that crowded calendar means for rates, trade, and the companies still raising prices.

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The Big Picture

Agriculture

A New Threat Has Reached America’s Beef Supply

Federal agriculture officials have confirmed the first detection of New World screwworm in U.S. wildlife after finding the parasite in an elk in Pecos County, Texas. New Mexico authorities also reported a separate case involving a beef cow.

Screwworm larvae infest wounds in living animals and can cause severe injury or death without treatment. Wildlife infections create an additional challenge because affected animals are harder to locate and contain than livestock.

Cattle Supply Faces More Pressure

A wider outbreak could force ranchers to increase inspections, treatments, and animal-movement controls while raising operating costs. Restrictions can also make it harder to move cattle between regions or bring additional animals into the country.

USDA has been cautiously reopening southern border crossings for Mexican cattle, including another port scheduled to reopen on October 26.

Those imports can help increase livestock availability, but animal-health safeguards now matter even more.

Beef Prices Depend on Containment

Livestock disease can become an economic problem when it reduces available animals or makes raising cattle more expensive. Ranchers, meat processors, restaurants, grocery stores, and households can all feel the effects if supply tightens.

Federal and state officials are expanding surveillance around the affected areas. Preventing further spread will be critical because another disruption to cattle production could slow and make rebuilding beef supply more expensive.

Critical Materials

America Is Putting Public Money Into Critical Technology Supply Chains

The Commerce Department plans to award $389 million to four companies developing power semiconductors and critical materials used across advanced manufacturing, energy systems, data centers, and semiconductor production.

The government will receive minority, non-voting equity stakes in the companies as a condition of the funding.

The structure goes beyond traditional subsidies by giving taxpayers a direct financial interest in technologies Washington considers strategically important.

Supply Chains Become More Strategic

Projects include high-voltage semiconductors for fusion systems, gallium-nitride chips designed for AI data-center racks, and new methods for purifying ultra-high-purity quartz used in chip manufacturing.

Materials such as specialized quartz and advanced power chips sit deep inside industrial supply chains but can become major bottlenecks when production is concentrated among only a handful of suppliers.

Building more domestic capability can reduce exposure to overseas disruptions while supporting new manufacturing capacity.

Industrial Policy Is Changing

Commerce has already issued 19 research grants from a $10 billion semiconductor fund Congress approved in 2022.

The latest awards show federal industrial policy moving beyond large chip factories and deeper into the materials and components those factories depend on.

Public investment in early-stage technology carries financial risk, but it can also accelerate projects that private capital may consider too expensive or uncertain.

Washington is increasingly treating semiconductor materials, power electronics, and advanced energy technology as part of the country’s long-term economic security.

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Supply Chains

U.S. Steel Tariffs Are Rewiring a Key North American Supply Chain

U.S. steel tariffs are pushing one of America’s largest suppliers to reduce its dependence on American buyers. Canada historically sent roughly 90% of its steel exports to the United States, but shipments plunged after Washington raised tariffs on imported steel to 50%.

Canada is now investing billions to help steelmakers upgrade plants, increase domestic sales, and develop customers outside the U.S. market.

The latest support package reinforces a shift already underway across Canadian mills.

Supply Chains Start Moving

Canadian producers are increasingly supplying local infrastructure, mining, energy, and industrial projects instead of relying primarily on American demand. Domestic steel captured a larger share of Canada’s own market last year as imports declined.

A lasting shift matters for U.S. manufacturers because steel production across the two countries has been deeply connected for decades.

Construction companies, automakers, machinery producers, and other industrial users benefit from having large suppliers close to the border.

Protection Can Reshape Competition

Tariffs provide U.S. steelmakers with greater protection from foreign competition, potentially supporting domestic production and investment.

Longer-term effects become more complicated if major suppliers respond by building alternative markets and redirecting capacity elsewhere.

Canada’s latest investments show how trade barriers can change business decisions beyond the tariff itself.

A policy designed to strengthen domestic steel production is also encouraging a major trading partner to build a steel economy that depends less heavily on American customers.

Metrics to Watch

• 📊 September CPI
  3.7% year over year. Gasoline was up 34.2% and fuel oil 74.2% over the same 12 months, so energy and transportation remain the biggest pressure points in the index. If you own anything duration-sensitive, this is the number the Fed is weighing next week.
  

• ✈️ Airline Fares
  up 22.4% year over year. Fares are rising roughly six times faster than overall inflation, and carriers are guiding to even stronger fourth-quarter unit revenue. If you own consumer names, watch whether they show the same pricing power when they report.
  

• 💼 Initial Jobless Claims
  199,000. That was the total for the week ended October 10, with continuing claims near 1.71 million in the prior week. Layoffs remain rare, so the weak spot you should track is hiring, not firing. If claims push above 220,000, the slow-hiring story turns into a layoff story.
  

• 🚗 Auto Loan Delinquencies
  5.49%. That's the share of auto loan balances 90 or more days past due in the second quarter, just below the first quarter's 5.60%, the highest in New York Fed data going back to 2003. If you own consumer lenders, this is the stress gauge to track.
  

• 📈 10-Year Treasury Yield
  Around 5.15%. Wednesday's 20-year auction cleared at 5.469%, the highest yield for that maturity since 1986, with softer-than-expected demand. If 10s break 5.20% convincingly, equities get a problem.

Market Movers

🗳️ The November 3 Midterms
Big policy decisions are drifting past Election Day, from the stalled Mexico talks to an India trade deal that is close but still unsigned. Expect trade headlines to whip your industrial and auto holdings around until the vote, and treat any pre-election "breakthrough" with caution until terms are signed.

🏛️ The October 28 Fed Decision
Futures price about an 86% chance of a hold after September's hike. With layoffs low and inflation at 3.7%, the Fed has little reason to move either way, so the statement's language on December matters more to you than the decision itself.

💼 Jobs Data Lands After the Vote
The October payrolls report is due November 6, three days after the midterms. Until then, weekly jobless claims are your only fresh read on the labor market, and a jump would change the soft-landing story fast.

✈️ Pricing Power in Earnings
Airlines are proving they can push higher costs through to customers. Earnings over the next two weeks will show you which other consumer companies can do the same, and which ones are absorbing costs in their margins.

Market Impacts

📈 Equities: The S&P 500 closed Wednesday near 7,757, up 0.6%, with the Dow up 0.7% and the Nasdaq up 1.1% as tech bounced. Nasdaq futures fell more than 1% early Thursday as AI spending worries resurfaced, so leadership is still flipping day to day. If you're stock picking, earnings reactions matter more than the index right now.

🏦 Bonds: The 2-year sat near 4.78%, the 10-year at 5.15%, and the 30-year at 5.44% at Wednesday's close, and yields slipped early Thursday. The 20-year auction cleared at the highest yield since 1986, a warning about demand for duration. If you own long bonds, the long end is still the pressure point.

💱 Currencies: The dollar index is little changed near 101.7, and dollar-yen eased toward 157 from above 158. If you have unhedged international exposure, FX is adding noise but not direction right now.

🛢️Commodities: Brent is back above $110 and WTI near $99 early Thursday. Gold slipped to about $4,100, silver is near $56, and copper slipped about 2%. Higher real rates keep metals capped, so if you're long gold, don't chase spikes.

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Key Indicators to Watch

• 📅 Friday, October 23, S&P Global flash PMIs. The October manufacturing and services reads land at 9:45 a.m. ET. For you, a soft services number would strengthen the case for the Fed to sit tight next week, while a hot one keeps hike talk alive.
  

• 📅 Friday, October 23, UMich final October sentiment. Out at 10 a.m. ET. Watch the inflation-expectations line, because households that expect higher prices tend to pull spending forward and push wage demands up.
  

• 📅 Tuesday, October 27, Conference Board consumer confidence. September's index fell to 81.9, the lowest in more than 12 years. Another drop would tell you slow hiring and high prices are already hitting household spending plans.
  

• 📅 Wednesday, October 28, FOMC decision. The statement lands at 2 p.m. ET. Fed officials are in their pre-meeting blackout, so the data above is all you get before the call, and your rate-sensitive holdings will trade on every word of the statement.
  

• 📅 Thursday, October 29, Q3 GDP and September PCE. The advance GDP estimate and the Fed's preferred inflation gauge both hit at 8:30 a.m. ET, the morning after the decision. If you hold bonds, a hot PCE print would reopen the December hike debate immediately.

Everything Else

• 🏠 U.S. pending home sales fell to a record low in September, while housing starts dropped to pandemic-era levels as elevated mortgage rates continued to squeeze buyers.

• 💵 New loans funded 170 basis points above rolling assets and $988 million in undistributed income make one stock the standout on a free list of seven.

• 🏦 Australia's central bank warned of worsening inflation risks, strengthening expectations for further interest rate hikes despite softer employment growth.

• 💷 UK government debt surpassed £3 trillion for the first time as higher borrowing costs and September inflation of 3.5% intensified pressure on public finances.

• 💰 Japanese government bonds attracted renewed safe-haven demand, pushing yields lower as investors reduced risk ahead of next week's Bank of Japan policy meeting.