United States in April 2026: the most important developments in economy
In April 2026, the United States economy was dominated by the war with Iran, while the most followed corporate story was Tim Cook's departure as Apple chief executive after 15 years, announced on 21 April, with John Ternus named as his successor the next day. With the Strait of Hormuz blocked, US crude reached $112 a barrel early in the month. After a two-week ceasefire was announced on 7 April, oil fell below $100 and stocks rose, but talks failed and President Donald Trump announced a US naval blockade of the strait on 12 April. The ceasefire was later extended, talks made no progress, and the strait remained shut at month end, with US gasoline at $4.23 a gallon. Inflation rose to 3.3% in March, a two-year high, consumer sentiment fell to a record low, and on 29 April the Federal Reserve held rates at 3.5% to 3.75% in its most divided vote since 1992.
Artificial intelligence dominated corporate news. Anthropic signed a chip deal with Google and Broadcom covering 3.5 gigawatts of computing power, and its Mythos model drew attention from regulators over cyber and banking risks. Meta announced cuts of 10% of its staff, about 8,000 jobs, citing AI investment. OpenAI agreed to spend over $20 billion on Cerebras chips, then reportedly missed internal revenue and user targets on 28 April, and tech shares fell; Elon Musk testified against OpenAI at trial the next day. Amazon agreed to buy Globalstar for $11.57 billion, SpaceX filed confidentially for a stock market listing, and Nvidia passed $5 trillion in market value.
Trade and fiscal policy also moved. The administration imposed 100% tariffs on certain patented pharmaceuticals, proposed a record $1.5 trillion defense budget with cuts to domestic programmes, and threatened 50% tariffs on countries supplying weapons to Iran and tariffs on Britain over its digital tax. The US extended until 16 May a waiver allowing purchases of Russian oil, and Venezuela negotiated with Siemens and GE to restore its power grid.
by WorldBrief & Maksim Micheliov | AI-generated summary
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