Biggest retail sales drop ever

U.S. monthly retail sales fell by 16.4% in April, a record. So-called core retail sales — which exclude auto, gas, food and building materials sales — dropped 15.3%. Meanwhile, The Trump administration moved to block semiconductor shipments to Chinese company Huawei. Hu Xijin, editor-in-chief of Chinese state-run publication Global Times, tweeted on Friday that China would “restrict or investigate” U.S. companies including Qualcomm, Cisco Systems and Apple if the U.S. takes further action to block Huawei’s supply chain. To be sure, a turnaround in retail stocks and gains in oil prices — along with better-than-expected consumer sentiment data — helped offset the concerns over consumer spending and trade.