For the first two months of the year, American retailers were enjoying a boom, with retail and food service sales up 6.5% year-over-year.
Come March, the boom went bust as the coronavirus took root here, resulting in massive mall and store closures all across the country with only essential retailers, like grocery stores and pharmacies, open in many places.
On March 16 President Trump asked Americans to call a halt to their lives as usual for the next 15 days, promising that, “by making shared sacrifices and temporary changes, we can protect the health of our people and we can protect our economy, because I think our economy will come back very rapidly.”
