A growing consumer income divide is on Corie Barry’s mind, the executive told an audience at the Fortune Most Powerful Women summit. There’s a dispersion between higher and lower income shoppers in the U.S., one that Best Buy CEO Corie Barry called out during a Tuesday panel at the Fortune Most Powerful Women summit in Washington, D.C. “That is probably what keeps me up at night most,” Barry told the audience. “That reliance on the high-income consumer, while it makes it feel like there is resiliency in the overall market, that’s an issue because your low-income consumers are really struggling.” While consumer resilience remains a complex topic, retailers are also trying to remain resilient in the face of ever-evolving tariff policies — an obstacle particularly impactful to electronics retailers such as Best Buy.

The tech industry group TechNet, U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other organizations are urging lawmakers to revise a proposed federal privacy law by more sweepingly overriding state privacy statutes. The proposed American Privacy Rights Act “falls short of creating a uniform national standard due to its inadequate federal preemption of the ever-growing patchwork of state privacy laws,” the groups say in a letter sent this week to leaders of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. As currently written, the proposed law appears to require businesses to allow consumers to opt out of online behavioral advertising -- meaning ads served based on cross-site and cross-app data. The current iteration also would require data brokers to let consumers opt out of data collection, and request deletion of their data. The measure additionally would allow consumers to sue over violations.

Consumers are continuing to spend so far this year despite ongoing financial pressures. New data from Circana shows that total U.S. retail sales revenue, across discretionary general merchandise, retail food and beverage, and non-edible consumer packaged goods, is up 2% year over year for the first 10 weeks of 2026. Circana noted that the data shows consumers are changing their behaviors instead of cutting back spending all together.