U.S. stocks opened higher Wednesday after President Donald Trump signaled a softer stance toward the eye-watering tariffs he had set for China, while also stating he would not make an immediate change in leadership at the Federal Reserve.

Investors were also cheered by Elon Musk's imminent return to a more full-time focus on Tesla, dialing back his controversial stint as a Trump White House adviser to one to two days a week.

Millions of Americans who are working full-time jobs still rely on federal health care and food assistance programs because of low wages, a bipartisan congressional watchdog says.

A report from the Government Accountability Office found that about 70% of adult workers participating in Medicaid, which provides health care to low-income Americans, and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as food stamps, are working full time. Most worked for private sector employers in places like restaurants, department stores and grocery stores, according to the report.

President Donald Trump’s significant policy changes, including on tariffs, are unlike anything seen in modern history, putting the Federal Reserve in uncharted waters, Chair Jerome Powell said Wednesday.

“These are very fundamental policy changes,” Powell said at an event hosted by the Economic Club of Chicago. “There isn’t a modern experience of how to think about this.”

President Trump's tariffs, and the foreign retaliation these have resulted in, could cost U.S. households nearly $5,000, according to a recent report.

In its latest trade policy update, released Tuesday, the Budget Lab at Yale estimated that the tariffs currently in place will result in three-percent price increases in the short-term, equivalent to a per-household cost of $4,900.

Most Americans are bracing for higher prices on a wide range of consumer goods following President Donald Trump's move to impose sweeping new tariffs on imports from most of the world, a new Reuters/Ipsos poll found.

The three-day poll, which concluded on Sunday, found that 73% of respondents said they thought prices in the next six months would increase for the items they buy every day after the new taxes on almost all imports took effect.

More than 625 California fast food restaurant owners are warning the state’s new Fast Food Council that hiking their industry’s minimum wage above the $20 hourly rate imposed last year would “cripple thousands of small business owners” already struggling to stay afloat.

“We simply cannot survive another wage increase,” the restaurant owners wrote in a late-December letter to the council and its chair, Nicholas Hardeman.

One of the fundamental principles of economics is that if the price of something goes up, people will buy less of it. Californians are now learning the hard way that this principle applies to labor just as much as it does to any other good or service.

Last September, Gavin Newsom hailed the passage of a law that increased the already high $16-per-hour minimum wage in California to $20 per hour for fast-food workers at chains with more than 60 locations nationwide (the minimum wage for health-care workers is also being increased).

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass announced Monday the city faces a $800 million deficit, plans on laying off 1,647 staff, is seeking a state bailout and has “identified new revenue.”

Bass blamed the Trump administration and the economy for falling revenue.

“Cities like ours are going through challenging economic times across the nation,” said Bass. “Turmoil and uncertainty from Washington and a slowing economy are causing lower revenue projections.”

A Washington, D.C.-based federal judge on Friday temporarily halted the Trump administration's planned mass layoffs at the Consumer Financial Protections Bureau (CFPB), shortly after an appeals court narrowed her earlier injunction.

U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson's order temporarily blocks the terminations, which would have slashed the bureau's workforce by roughly 90%, as she weighs whether the planned layoffs violate her earlier injunction. 

Gov. Gavin Newsom announced late Thursday that California will sue the Trump administration over the Department of Government Efficiency’s cuts to AmeriCorps.

It’s the Golden State’s second lawsuit against the White House in as many days.