NEW YORK (AP) — Shoppers accelerated their spending in March from February, but they spent a good chunk of their money at the gas pump.
A spike in gas prices due to the Iran war, now in its eighth week, resulted in a hefty 1.7% gain in retail sales in March after a revised 0.7% increase in February, according to the Commerce Department’s report on Tuesday. The figure marked the fastest one-month increase in retail sales in more than three years.
The report marks the first read on spending to capture the effects of the Iran war.
Excluding gas prices, retail sales were up 0.6%, helped in part by government tax refunds and warm weather.
Business at gas stations rose 15.5% percent.
Elsewhere, shoppers were still willing to spend. Sales at department stores rose 4.2%, while sales at furniture and home furnishings stores were up 2.2%. Online retailers saw a 1% gain. Consumer electronics and appliance stores posted a 0.9% increase. The only area that saw a decline for March was miscellaneous retailers, according to the Commerce report.
The snapshot offers only a partial look at consumer spending and doesn’t include things like travel and hotel stays. The lone services category – restaurants – registered a more modest gain of 0.1%.
The so-called control group—which excludes food services, autos, building materials and gas station sales and is used to calculate economic growth—rose 0.7%. That offered a good sign of broad spending by consumers, economists said.
“It’s a blowout retail sales figure for March,“ Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union, wrote in a report.
She noted that the impact of tariffs is visible in the high spending on electronics and appliances due to higher prices. A small increase at restaurants may indicate some early signs of pullback as consumers have to spend more at the pump, she said.
“Overall, the American consumer is still healthy,” she added. "Extra income from tax refunds is helping many households weather this oil shock, but that extra money won’t last forever.”
The Iran war began Feb. 28 and has shut down the Strait of Hormuz, cutting off one-fifth of the world’s oil supply.
Late last month, U.S. gas prices jumped past an average of $4 a gallon for the first time since 2022.
Economists had believed that an unusually large jump in tax refunds would kick start spending at the start of the year. But spiking gas prices are taking a bite out of that money. And the Iran war is also further dampening shoppers' mood. Consumer sentiment plunged to a record low in April, according to a survey released earlier this month by the University of Michigan, largely because of the Iran war and concerns over higher gas prices.
Shoppers aren’t just feeling it at the gas pump, but are also starting to see unforeseen costs everywhere, including when they travel such as higher baggage fees. They will also likely see higher prices on different products ripple through the supply chain as companies start to pass on higher transportation costs to shoppers, analysts said.
The jump in gas prices caused a sharp spike in inflation last month, creating major challenges for the inflation-fighters at the Federal Reserve and increasing already significant political hurdles for the White House.
Consumer prices rose 3.3% in March from a year earlier. On a monthly basis, prices rose 0.9% in March from February, the largest such gain in nearly four years.
Heading into the war, shoppers were already cautious. But Bryan Eshelman, Americas leader of retail and a partner and managing director at consultancy AlixPartners, noted his retail clients see their customers pulling back even more now.
“Particularly in the low-end economy, people are shifting from wants to needs,” he said.
R.J. Hottovy, head of analytical research at Placer.ai, noted that for seven straight weeks, traffic at nondiscretionary retailers like grocers outpaced that of discretionary merchants. That trend was reversed the week of April 6, helped by the distribution of tax refunds and spending tied to spring break and Easter.
But after the data goes past Easter trends, future visits will largely depend on consumer sentiment regarding broader macroeconomic conditions and gas prices, Hottovy said. The firm tracks people’s movements based on cellphone usage.
FILE - Shoppers move amid items for outdoor cooking on display in a Costco warehouse Thursday, March 12, 2026, in east Denver. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski, File)
FILE - A woman carries reuable shopping bags to her car on Monday, March 16, 2026, in Portland, Ore. (AP Photo/Jenny Kane, File)
KINSHASA, Congo (AP) — An American doctor in Congo is among the newly confirmed cases in an outbreak of a rare variant of the Ebola virus with no approved vaccines or therapeutics, Congolese officials said Monday. Deaths have surpassed 100 in two provinces and details emerged about the government's delayed response to the outbreak.
The doctor is among the cases in Bunia, the capital of Ituri province, said Dr. Jean-Jacques Muyembe, medical director of the Congolese National Institute of Bio-Medical Research.
Seven Americans, including one who tested positive late Sunday, are being transported to Germany for monitoring, Dr. Satish Pillai of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a call with reporters. Pillai said the American developed symptoms over the weekend.
CDC officials did not immediately respond to follow-up questions about how the confirmed case or other people may have been exposed to Ebola, or to which facility or facilities in Germany they are being taken, or about what the case patient’s current condition is.
The World Health Organization on Sunday declared the outbreak a public health emergency of international concern. As of Monday, there were over 300 suspected cases and 118 deaths in Ituri and North Kivu provinces and two deaths in neighboring Uganda.
The Bundibugyo strain spread undetected for at least a few weeks, health experts and aid workers said. Cases have now been confirmed in Bunia, North Kivu's rebel-held capital of Goma, Mongbwalu, Butembo and Nyakunde.
“Because early tests looked for the wrong strain of Ebola, we got false negatives and lost weeks of response time,” said Matthew M. Kavanagh, director of the Georgetown University Center for Global Health Policy and Politics. “We are playing catch-up against a very dangerous pathogen.”
He criticized the Trump administration's earlier decision to withdraw from the WHO and make deep cuts in foreign aid. “When you pull billions out of the WHO and dismantle front line USAID programs, you gut the exact surveillance system meant to catch these viruses early,” he said.
Congo's health minister, Samuel Roger Kamba, said the government was opening three treatment centers. The WHO said it sent a team of experts and supplies.
Congo has said the first person died from the virus on April 24 in Bunia, and the body was repatriated to the Mongbwalu health zone, a mining area with a large population.
“That caused the Ebola outbreak to escalate,” Kamba has said.
When another person fell ill on April 26, samples were sent to Kinshasa for testing, according to the Africa Centers for Disease Control. On May 5, the WHO was alerted of about 50 deaths in Mongbwalu, including four health workers. The first case was confirmed on May 14.
Samples from Bunia were initially tested for the more common Ebola strain, Zaire, Congolese officials said. They came back negative, said Dr. Richard Kitenge, the Health Ministry Incident Manager for Ebola.
The first confirmation of Ebola came on May 14, and the Bundibugyo strain was confirmed the next day. Now more resources are being rushed to the region.
“The situation is quite worrying and is evolving pretty quickly,” Esther Sterk with the Medecins Sans Frontieres aid group told the AP. “It was detected quite late.” But she said that was often the case with outbreaks of Ebola, which has similar symptoms to other tropical diseases.
On Sunday CBS News reported at least six Americans have been exposed to Ebola in Congo, citing anonymous sources in international aid organizations. The AP has not been able to independently verify the others.
U.S. health officials on Sunday said the risk to Americans was low.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has issued travel advisories urging Americans traveling in Congo and Uganda to avoid people with symptoms like fever, muscle pain and rash. The CDC also said it was imposing "appropriate measures for identifying individuals with any symptoms” at ports of entry.
Ebola is highly contagious and can be contracted via bodily fluids such as vomit, blood or semen. The disease it causes is rare but severe and often fatal.
The Bundibugyo virus is a rare variant. Although more than 20 Ebola outbreaks have taken place in Congo and Uganda since 1976, this is only the third time that the Bundibugyo virus has been detected.
The U.S. CDC says it causes fever, headache, muscle pain, weakness, diarrhea, vomiting, stomach pain and unexplained bleeding or bruising.
Dr. Gabriel Nsakala, a professor of public health who has been involved in past Ebola responses, said Congo has extensive experience managing the outbreaks, but response efforts could be complicated by the rare strain.
The Bundibugyo virus was first detected in Uganda’s Bundibugyo district during a 2007-2008 outbreak that infected 149 people and killed 37. The second time was in 2012, in an outbreak in Isiro, Congo, where 57 cases and 29 deaths were reported.
The Africa CDC chief, Dr. Jean Kaseya, told Sky News on Sunday he is in “panic mode” due to a lack of medicines and vaccines, but some candidate treatments are anticipated in the coming weeks.
Ituri's Mongbwalu is in remote eastern Congo, with poor road networks more than 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) from the capital, Kinshasa.
Eastern Congo long has grappled with a humanitarian crisis and the threat of armed groups that have killed dozens and displaced thousands in Ituri in the past year.
“No one really has a full understanding of how serious this crisis is,” said a Bunia-based U.N. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly on the subject.
Staff have been asked to work from home and avoid physical contact and crowded areas, the official said, adding they were concerned about halting activities in a region that relies on humanitarian aid.
Ituri has over 273,00 displaced people, according to the U.N.
Rwanda closed its land border with Congo on Sunday. AP reporters tried to cross the border on Sunday and Monday morning but were told it was closed except for holders of international flight tickets. Rwandan authorities did not reply to a request for comment.
Pronczuk and McMakin reported from Dakar, Senegal. Associated Press writers Evelyne Musambi in Nairobi, Caitlin Kelly in Dakar, and Mike Stobbe in New York, contributed to this report.
For more on Africa and development: https://apnews.com/hub/africa-pulse
The Associated Press receives financial support for global health and development coverage in Africa from the Gates Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.
Medical supplies are stacked inside a World Health Organization (WHO) warehouse in Nairobi, Kenya, Monday, May 18, 2026. (AP Photo/Jackson Njehia)
People wait to have their temperature taken in front of Kibuli Muslim Hospital in Kampala, Uganda, Saturday, May 16, 2026. (AP Photo/ Hajarah Nalwadda)
A woman wearing a protective mask sells fruit from a roadside stall in Bunia, Congo, Sunday, May 17, 2026. (AP Photo/Dirole Lotsima Dieudonne)
People wash their hands at the entrance to a hospital in Bunia, Congo, Sunday, May 17, 2026. (AP Photo/ Dirole Lotsima Dieudonne)
A general view is seen of Bunia where ebola outbreaks have been confirmed in Ituri province, Congo, Sunday, May 17, 2026. (AP Photo/ Dirole Lotsima Dieudonne)
A woman wearing a protective mask stands in the corridor of a hospital in Bunia, Congo, Sunday, May 17, 2026. (AP Photo/ Dirole Lotsima Dieudonne)
