Detroit’s Big Three largely abandoned budget cars years ago, and no new car offered in the U.S. today has a sticker price below $20,000. Chinese automakers have vehicles ready to fill that market hole. That threat of affordable, high-tech Chinese cars is unlike anything the U.S. car industry has faced in decades, the WSJ’s Ryan Felton writes.

So far, the many Chinese car companies that want to expand into the U.S. have been kept at bay. Lawmakers are urging the Trump administration to ban Chinese vehicles sold and registered in Mexico and Canada from entering the country.

But Mexican residents and dual citizens are allowed to drive their cars into the U.S., giving Americans a peek at the Chinese competition. They are warming to what they see. About 30% of American car buyers would be open to buying a vehicle from China, up by 15 percentage points from a decade prior, according to a survey by Strategic Vision.

• Geely Automobile, China’s No. 2 EV maker, said its core profit grew thanks to record sales and higher revenue. (WSJ)
• Ford Motor is selling more large SUVs and other lucrative vehicles, increasing profitability even though sales didn’t grow in the first quarter. (WSJ)
• Chinese-owned Automotive Energy Supply Corp. sold a majority stake in its only U.S. manufacturing facility to Fixx Energy, which agreed to supply cells to Fluence Energy. (Nikkei Asia)

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Orders for durable goods grew in March, breaking a streak of three straight months of declines, the Journal’s Matt Grossman writes. New orders for long-lasting goods like TVs, appliances and cars were up by 0.8% in March to $318.9 billion, after a 1.2% decline in February, the Commerce Department reported.

Trends in durables orders are often driven by big swings in categories like airplane orders, because small volumes can come with big dollar figures. But even excluding transportation equipment, durable-goods orders were up by 0.9% last month.

• U.S. housing starts rose 10.8% in March to 1.502 million. (WSJ)

The Trump administration is asking other countries to join a new international coalition that would enable ships to navigate the Strait of Hormuz, just weeks after the president declared the waterway open, only to see ship traffic stall.

The WSJ’s Alexander Ward and Robbie Gramer report that the effort, called the “Maritime Freedom Construct,” was spelled out in an internal State Department cable sent to U.S. embassies on Tuesday. It called on U.S. diplomats to press foreign governments into signing up. The U.S.-led coalition would share information, coordinate diplomatically and enforce sanctions, according to the cable.

• U.S. crude oil inventories posted a large drop last week amid record exports and a decline in imports, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. (WSJ)
• China’s factory activity held up in April, suggesting limited pressure from surging energy prices. (WSJ)
• Beijing said it was seeking to tighten controls on production of rare-earth minerals. (WSJ)
• DHL parent Deutsche Post is working on improving efficiency, managing capacity and cutting costs, and still expects earnings to rise this year, despite geopolitical uncertainty. (WSJ)
• Amazon said its edge in cloud computing and aggressive investment in new data centers is translating into a surge in its AI business. (WSJ)
• GE HealthCare Technologies cut its profit outlook after prices for memory chips, oil and freight jumped, and said it was combining its two largest segments. (WSJ)
• Finland’s Kone agreed to buy German rival TK Elevator for almost $24 billion in a deal that would create the world’s biggest elevator maker by sales. (WSJ)
• Paccar's first-quarter net income rose as constrained freight capacity in the U.S. and Canada boosted demand for its heavy-duty trucks. (Dow Jones Newswires)
• The U.S. Maritime Administration awarded $774 million in funding to support 37 projects across coastal and Great Lakes ports, and inland river systems. (WorkBoat)
• Target is testing a 1.2 million-square-foot “Receive Center” in Houston, to take in products from global vendors and hold them until they are needed elsewhere in its network. (SupplyChain24/7)
• Chinese state-owned Cosco Shipping said its first-quarter profit fell 50% on lower freight rates. (Bloomberg)

Mark R. Long is editor of WSJ Logistics Report. Reach him at mark.long@wsj.com. Follow the WSJ Logistics Report team on LinkedIn: Mark R. Long, Liz Young and Paul Berger.