Good morning, you're listening to Markets Desk.
In the commodity pits, lean hog futures gave back Tuesday's gains, sliding between thirty-five cents and a dollar seventeen on the session. The USDA's national base hog price came in at eighty-seven dollars and twenty-five cents, up ninety cents on the day, but the CME Lean Hog Index pulled back eighty-nine cents, keeping the overall tone cautious.
Shifting to Washington, President Trump is promising five-thousand-dollar checks to American households if Republicans hold their ground in the November midterms. The pledge landed at a party convention in Dallas, but analysts are already drawing comparisons to last year's tariff dividend promise, which never materialized. With approval ratings under pressure and voters frustrated by elevated prices, the political calculus here is a difficult one.
And in consumer technology, Apple has finally entered the foldable smartphone market with the launch of the iPhone Duo, priced starting at one thousand nine hundred ninety-nine dollars. The device, roughly passport-sized and opening like a book, features a five-point-four-inch exterior display. It goes on sale October twenty-third, and the premium price point will be a key test of consumer appetite in a slowing hardware cycle.
That's the tape. Markets Desk, signing off the floor.
