Camila Domonoske

The coronavirus pandemic has caused a global scramble for essential medical supplies like masks, gloves, gowns and ventilators. In the panic, governments have imposed or considered new barriers to trade, trying to protect their own access to scarce supplies.

Japanese car giants Nissan and Honda are furloughing thousands of workers as North American auto plants continue to be shuttered because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Honda has extended closures through the start of May, covering auto plants in Alabama, Indiana, Ohio, Canada and Mexico, as well as other plants assembling engines and ATVs.

Updated at 6 p.m. ET Tuesday

The pandemic has emptied out U.S. streets as Americans stay home to avoid spreading the coronavirus. Less driving means fewer car crashes. Fewer car crashes means big savings for auto insurers.

And at least three companies have decided to pass those savings along to their customers.

Yeast, baking powder and spiral hams were big hits in America's shopping carts last week.

As the country settles in — possibly for the long haul — under stay-at-home orders, baking projects appear to be a common distraction, while panic purchasing of some products seems to be subsiding.

Sales are still up significantly compared to a normal week. And shelf-stable foods, meats, produce and snacks are all flying off shelves at unusual rates.

But for many products, the remarkable sales spikes from early March have started to subside.

Not all Americans can stay home during the pandemic.

Millions of essential workers are showing up for their jobs at warehouses, food processing plants, delivery trucks and grocery checkout lines. Work that is often low-paid, and comes with few protections, is now suddenly much more dangerous.

America has a new appreciation for these workers. Bill Osborn, a dairy clerk at a Giant in La Plata, Md., says he never used to be thanked for his job. Ever.

But now that has changed.

By the middle of March, the problem was undeniable: America didn't have enough ventilators for the coronavirus pandemic.

Over the next two weeks, U.S. manufacturers worked frantically to boost output in an effort that has been compared to the mobilization of industry during World War II. Medical companies paired up with automakers to increase their production to previously unthinkable levels.

Gas prices are dropping — to less than $1 per gallon in a few locations — but most Americans aren't supposed to go anywhere. That's the irony of the coronavirus lockdown.

The national average price for a gallon of gas is now $1.997, according to AAA, and it's expected to drop further in the next few weeks — to $1.75 or even lower.

America is stocking up on food, thermometers — and hair dye.

The latest sales data from Nielsen shows how our lives have been affected by widespread social distancing and, in some areas, mandatory lockdowns, as the world tries to slow the spread of the coronavirus.

Medical device manufacturers are asking the Trump administration to step in and centralize the distribution of ventilators, life-saving devices that are in desperately short supply because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Hospitals and medical workers across the country are issuing desperate pleas for donations of respirators, to protect the doctors and nurses who are exposed to the coronavirus as they fight to save lives. The country faces an alarming shortage of the protective equipment.

The medical community is sounding increasingly urgent alarms about shortages of masks, gloves and ventilators — essential supplies in the fight against the coronavirus.

Meanwhile, President Trump has issued contradictory statements about whether his administration is ordering private companies to ramp up production of those items.

As shutdowns and cancellations became more widespread last week, buyers continued stocking up on disinfectants and canned goods (and so much oat milk!). As anyone who went shopping can attest, there was also a run on toilet paper.

But according to Nielsen, Americans also increasingly bought snacks for stress-eating — like potato chips and chocolate. And they were filling the fridge with fresh produce and perishables like meat and eggs.

Some parts of the economy are grappling with pandemic-driven shortages. The oil industry has the opposite problem: so much extra oil that it's not clear where to put it all.

With millions of people not taking trips, commuting or flying, the world's appetite for oil has come crashing down, thanks to the coronavirus.

Tesla is planning to suspend operations at its Fremont, Calif., auto plant beginning Monday because of the coronavirus pandemic.

The electric automaker had continued to operate its production line, defying a shelter-in-place order from local authorities despite a public rebuke from the Alameda County sheriff.

Updated at 3:32 p.m. ET

U.S. automakers are assessing whether they can convert their plants to manufacture critical medical equipment, like ventilators, that will be in short supply as the coronavirus pandemic spreads.

At a Safeway in Washington, D.C., this week, 19-year-old Tala Jordan was having trouble checking items off her shopping list.

Fresh meat: Nope. Milk: Nope. Eggs?

"I got liquid eggs instead," she said. "Had to compromise somehow."

Jordan was shopping for a family of four — her sister, mom and grandmother. And like families across America, they saw others making a rush to buy goods and figured they should stock up as well.

Updated at 8:51 p.m. ET

Ford, General Motors and Fiat Chrysler are suspending production at their North American plants at least through March 30, to help slow the spread of the coronavirus.

The United Auto Workers, the autoworkers union, had been pushing for a two-week shutdown because of worker safety concerns.

The coronavirus pandemic has already started to hit American pocketbooks, with nearly 1 in 5 households experiencing a layoff or a reduction in work hours, according to a new NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll.

As people stay home, avoid crowds and cancel plans to avoid spreading the disease, it's rapidly causing a contraction in economic activity that is hurting a wide range of businesses.

Updated at 3:04 p.m. ET

We've seen pictures of people lining up at grocery stores, Costco and other retailers looking for essential supplies as the coronavirus crisis deepens. Sure, hand sanitizer, spray disinfectant and cleaners are among the most popular items sought out by panicked shoppers. But they're also buying a lot more oat milk and canned goods.

Gasoline prices are falling fast, driven by the coronavirus pandemic and a price war between Saudi Arabia and Russia.

That means savings for drivers, but benefits might be out-shadowed by the economic costs of both the viral outbreak and the collapse of crude prices.

Updated at 10:52 p.m. ET

Oil prices and stock indexes were in freefall Sunday after Saudi Arabia announced a stunning discount in oil prices — of $6 to $8 per barrel — to its customers in Asia, the United States and Europe.

Jet fuel-guzzling Delta Air Lines and fossil fuel-pumping BP are vowing to go carbon neutral.

Irresponsibility — by carmaker Tesla and by a Tesla driver — contributed to a deadly crash in California in 2018, federal investigators say.

The driver appears to have been playing a game on a smartphone immediately before his semi-autonomous 2017 Model X accelerated into a concrete barrier. Distracted by his phone, he did not intervene to steer his car back toward safety and was killed in the fiery wreck.

But Tesla should have anticipated that drivers would misuse its "autopilot" feature like this and should build in more safeguards to prevent deadly crashes.

As electric cars grow in popularity and visibility, experts say a revolution is coming in a place most people overlook: corporate and municipal fleets.

The scooter company Lime is the latest firm to announce that it plans to completely remove gas- and diesel-powered vehicles from its fleet and power its new electric work vehicles with renewable energy.

Around the turn of the millennium, General Motors made a decision: Electric cars were out. Giant trucks were a hit.

So the company abandoned its pioneering electric vehicle — not just stopping production but pulling cars off the road and crushing them. And it went all-in on the gas-guzzling military-style behemoth called the Hummer.

For the vast majority of Americans, helicopters are hardly a routine form of transportation. But a high-profile helicopter disaster — like the crash in Calabasas, Calif., that killed Kobe Bryant and eight other people on Sunday — can draw widespread attention to helicopter safety.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has always had ambitious goals. Make electric cars cool, save the world, all while making money as a brand new car manufacturer.

And from the start some people have been confident that he would fail. So they shorted Tesla stock — placing a bet that the company's stock value would collapse.

So far, that has been a phenomenally bad bet.

In the first two weeks of 2020 alone, short sellers were down some $2.6 billion, according to Ihor Dusaniwsky, the head of predictive analytics at S3 Partners.

Microsoft has announced an ambitious plan to not just reduce its carbon emissions, but to actively remove carbon from the atmosphere — going "carbon negative" by 2030.

And by 2050, the tech giant pledges it will "remove from the environment all the carbon the company has emitted either directly or by electrical consumption since it was founded in 1975."