The discount grocery chain Aldi is expanding rapidly and plans to open more than 180 U.S. stores this year as more Americans skip nights out at restaurants and cook at home due to anxiety over the nation's economy.
The chain, with U.S. operations based outside of Chicago, went on an expansion tear soon after inflation began to spike in 2021 and opened a record number of new stores last year.
Food inflation has slowed, but it was still up 2.4% last year, according to U.S. data, and has soared about 25% since the pandemic. On Tuesday, the U.S. Labor Department said that grocery prices jumped 0.7% in December from the previous month, and that price hikes accelerated faster in 2025 than they had in the previous two years.
Last month beef and veal prices climbed 1% from November, and are up 16.4% from last year. Coffee prices increased 1.9% in a month and are up almost 20% over a year. Egg prices dropped 8.2% in December, continuing to fall after surging last year after a bird flu outbreak.
Trump's message on inflation during his presidential campaign and his promises to lower prices immediately if elected have rankled some Americans who feel it is not a priority for the administration after all.
The vast majority of U.S. adults say they’ve noticed higher than usual prices for groceries and electricity in recent months, according to a survey from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
Aldi has sought to snap up market share as more families trade down, meaning they are changing where they shop to cut costs.
Americans are dropping trusted name brands for cheaper store-brands and swapping out the places they've shopped for years in favor of discount or thrift stores. It's been a boon for national bargain stores chains like Dollar General and Dollar Tree.
That shift had begun before President Donald Trump’s trade war began, but appears to have accelerated over the past year.
Aldi said in 2024 that it planned to open 800 new stores by 2028 as inflation worries spread. It announced plans to open a record 225 locations last year in the U.S.
Aldi said Tuesday that it will add new distribution centers in Florida, Arizona, and Colorado and is still committed to investing $9 billion in the U.S. through 2028. The company is also looking to open more than 50 stores in Colorado within the next five years and plans to double its Las Vegas store count by 2030.
The expansion will give Aldi almost 2,800 stores by the end of the year, which gets its closer to its goal of 3,200 stores by 2028.
Traditional grocers are under pressure from bargain chains, massive retailers like Walmart, and also relatively new players like Amazon.com. In December, Amazon said same-day perishable grocery delivery had been expanded to more than 2,300 cities and towns, and the online giant said it has more expansion plans for this year.
FILE - An Aldi's Food Market in Salem, N.H on June 5, 2017. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola, File)
NEW YORK (AP) — Wall Street is slipping from its records on Tuesday following a mixed start to the latest profit reporting season for big U.S. companies.
An update on inflation, meanwhile, came in close to expectations and didn't have much of an initial impact on markets.
The S&P 500 fell 0.4% after drifting between small gains and losses during the morning. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 344 points, or 0.7%, as of 2:01 p.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was down 0.4%. Both the S&P 500 and Dow are coming off all-time highs.
U.S. companies are under pressure to deliver strong growth in profits for the last three months of 2025 to justify the record-breaking runs for their stock prices. Analysts expect companies in the S&P 500 to deliver overall earnings per share that are 8.3% higher than a year earlier, according to FactSet.
JPMorgan Chase helped kick off the latest reporting season by delivering weaker profit and revenue than analysts expected. Its stock fell 3.9% and was one of the heaviest weights on the market, but the shortfall may have been partly because some analysts hadn't updated their estimates to account for the earnings hit taken due to the bank's purchase of the Apple Card credit card portfolio.
CEO Jamie Dimon sounded relatively optimistic about the U.S. economy, saying “consumers continue to spend, and businesses generally remain healthy.”
Delta Air Lines lost 2.7% despite reporting a stronger profit for the end of 2025 than analysts expected. Its revenue came up short of Wall Street’s expectations, as did the midpoint of its forecasted range for profit in 2026.
Chipotle Mexican Grill fell 3.5% after saying it's looking for a new chief marketing officer, a move that analysts said was a surprise.
On the winning side of Wall Street were several health care companies after they raised their financial forecasts at an industry conference with analysts.
Moderna jumped 16.3% for the biggest gain in the S&P 500 after saying it expects to report revenue for 2025 that's above the midpoint of the range it had forecast in November. It also offered updates on several products, including a seasonal flu vaccine that could see potential approvals beginning later this year.
Revvity rose 5.1% after life sciences company said it expects to report profit for 2025 that's above the top end of the forecasted range it had earlier given. Its forecast for revenue in the fourth quarter also topped analysts' expectations.
Outside of health care, L3Harris Technologies gave up an early gain and slipped 0.6% after the defense company said it’s planning to break off its Missile Solutions business into a separate company through an initial public offering. As part of the plan, the U.S. government agreed to invest $1 billion in the business, which will convert into common stock in the IPO.
L3 Harris will keep a controlling interest in the Missile Solutions business following the IPO.
In the bond market, yields held relatively steady after Tuesday's inflation report strengthened expectations that the Federal Reserve may be able to cut its main interest rate at least twice in 2026 to shore up the job market.
Lower interest rates could make borrowing cheaper for U.S. households and boost prices for investments, but they could also worsen inflation at the same time. Tuesday’s report showed that U.S. consumers paid prices last month for gasoline, food and other costs of living that were 2.7% higher overall than a year earlier. That’s a touch worse than economists expected and above the Fed’s 2% target for inflation.
But, more encouragingly, an important underlying trend of inflation wasn’t as bad last month as economists expected. That could give the Fed more leeway to lower interest rates later.
“We’ve seen this movie before—inflation isn’t reheating, but it remains above target,” according to Ellen Zentner, chief economic strategist for Morgan Stanley Wealth Management.
The data helped the 10-year Treasury ease to 4.16% from 4.19% late Monday. The two-year Treasury yield, which more closely tracks expectations for what the Fed will do, inched down to 3.52% from 3.54%.
A day earlier, Treasury yields swung amid worries about the Federal Reserve's worsening feud with President Donald Trump. The concern is that the president's attacks on the Fed could result in a central bank that's less independent and more subservient to the White House. Experts say that in turn could lead to higher inflation over the long term.
In stock markets abroad, indexes were mixed in Europe and Asia.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 soared 3.1% for one of the world’s biggest moves and set a record, thanks in part to gains for technology-related stocks.
Investors expect Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, who took office in October, to try to capitalize on her relatively high popularity to call a snap election, hoping to strengthen her mandate for higher government spending.
AP Business Writers Chan Ho-him and Matt Ott contributed.
Trader Robert Finnerty Jr., foreground, works with colleagues on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Monday, Jan. 12, 2026. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
Trader Sal Suarino works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Monday, Jan. 12, 2026. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
Specialist Meric Greenbaum works at his post on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Monday, Jan. 12, 2026. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
A pair of traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Monday, Jan. 12, 2026. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
A dealer walks near the screens showing the foreign exchange rates at a dealing room of Hana Bank in Seoul, South Korea, Monday, Jan. 12, 2026. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)
A person walks in front of an electronic stock board showing Japan's Nikkei index at a securities firm Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2026, in Tokyo. (Kyodo News via AP)
