Daniel Schmidt 
John Lewis Partnership’s first-half loss before exceptionals more than doubled to £89m as department store sales fell 2% and costs climbed, while Waitrose grew 4%. The employee-owned group is spending £600m this year and says it is cautious on the second half.
Currys reported group like-for-like sales up 7% in the 17 weeks to 29 August 2026, its first update under chief executive Fredrik Tønnesen, and held full-year profit guidance at £199 million. The shares slipped as investors waited for the Christmas peak.
The Justice Department has expanded its beef antitrust investigation from meatpackers to eight of the largest US grocery retailers, seeking pricing, cost and margin data covering 2020 to 2026. No retailer has been accused of wrongdoing.
Canada’s counter-tariffs on United States goods take effect at 12:01 a.m. on September 8, applying 15%, 25% or 50% by tariff item across roughly CAD 27.6 billion of imports. The CAD 150 courier de minimis threshold offers no protection, because the surtax attaches to classification rather than shipment value.
Four US retail earnings reports in ten days of August 2026 booked a tariff refund and immediately named fuel and energy as the offset. The pattern suggests energy displaces tariffs as the quantified cost headwind in Q3 guidance issued November 17 to December 4, 2026.
The EU’s Union handling fee is likely to be set by delegated act in September or October and applied by November 1, 2026, landing inside peak season alongside mandatory Product Identifiers. Three signals point to the direct-from-China parcel lane shrinking through Q4 while EU-local fulfillment absorbs the volume by Q1 2027.
Three August 2026 deals point to payments M&A splitting into two price regimes: scarcity multiples for routing and orchestration, conventional premiums for processing books. The split is likely to hold through 31 March 2027.
Three challenges to the Section 301 forced-labor tariffs now share one briefing schedule at the US Court of International Trade, with the government’s consolidated response due September 15, 2026. The duties cover 60 economies and 99.4 percent of US imports.
Executive Order 14411’s 90-day tranche lands on Tuesday, September 1, forcing CBP to floor penalty mitigation at 50 percent and to speed up the seizure, abandonment and disposal of non-compliant imports. For retailers and marketplace sellers importing after the end of de minimis, the cost of a customs mistake changes shape.
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