WeightWatchers, a 62-year-old health and wellness company that has faced stiff competition from new weight-loss drugs and programs, filed for bankruptcy on Tuesday in an effort to reduce its debt by more than $1 billion while it expands its telehealth business.

In its heyday, WeightWatchers shaped how millions of people in the United States and beyond ate and exercised. Oprah Winfrey was once a spokeswoman and board member.

But the company has struggled to keep its customers as people turn to weight-loss medications, fitness apps and social media influencers.

Under a bankruptcy plan filed in Delaware, WeightWatchers will be taken over by a group of investors, the filing said. Existing shareholders will retain a 9 percent stake once the process is completed in about 45 days, and the company will continue operating.

The changes “will give us the flexibility to accelerate innovation, reinvest in our members, and lead with authority in a rapidly evolving weight management landscape,” Tara Comonte, the chief executive of WeightWatchers, said in a statement.

WeightWatchers was founded in New York City by Jean Nidetch, an entrepreneur who had shed 72 pounds by adhering to a strict diet with the support of her friends. She charged dieters a fee to attend periodic meetings, where they were encouraged to keep track of what they ate and to motivate one another.

The company evolved by adding an exercise regimen and a point system that quantified appropriate food portions. Now it offers weight-loss programs and fitness coaching on its mobile app and website.

In 2022, the company paid a $1.5 million penalty as part of a settlement after the Federal Trade Commission said that its weight-loss app for children had illegally collected personal information from minors. Pediatricians criticized the app, warning that weight-loss programs for children could lead to eating disorders.

The company has also faced headwinds in recent years from rising demand for Ozempic, Wegovy, Zepbound and other drugs that help people lose weight in part by suppressing appetite.

WeightWatchers rebranded as WW International in 2018 as part of an effort to broaden its focus beyond weight loss. In 2023, it acquired Sequence, a subscription-based telehealth platform, and began offering weight-loss medications.

The company’s latest earnings report on Tuesday showed that its revenue from its clinical business, including prescription drugs, had grown 57 percent year-on-year. But its first-quarter revenue had declined by 10 percent.

The coronavirus pandemic resulted in a significant drop in people who attended in-person WeightWatchers meetings, prompting the company to reduce the number of meetings it offered.

WeightWatchers has also lost one of its most prominent spokeswomen, Ms. Winfrey.

She joined its board in 2015, and credited WeightWatchers with helping her lose 40 pounds. But last year, months after she announced that she was taking a weight-loss medication, the company said that she was leaving.

Months later, WeightWatchers’ shares, which had soared to about $100 in 2018, became a penny stock. They closed at 79 cents on Tuesday.

The Federal Reserve is set to extend its pause on interest rate cuts on Wednesday amid concerns that President Trump’s tariffs will unleash fresh inflationary pressures while also hurting growth, a tricky combination that could lead to painful trade-offs for the central bank.

A decision to stand pat would keep interest rates at 4.25 percent to 4.5 percent, a level reached in December after a series of cuts in the second half of 2024.

Fed officials are in wait-and-see mode for now. They are closely tracking the incoming data for signs that consumer prices are rising again after a multiyear battle to keep them at bay, or that an otherwise solid labor market is starting to weaken. What they need is greater clarity on what, exactly, Mr. Trump has in store for the economy after a whirlwind of tariff announcements, government spending cuts and deportations.

The Fed will release its latest policy statement on Wednesday at 2 p.m. in Washington. Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chair, will hold a news conference right after.

Here is what to watch for on Wednesday.

Temporary or Persistent?

Mr. Trump’s tariffs are widely expected to raise consumer prices, but the question is whether this will be a one-off increase or feed into a more persistent inflation problem. The answer will determine how carefully the Fed will proceed in terms of lowering interest rates.

At the last meeting in March, Mr. Powell told reporters that the Fed’s base case was for tariff-induced inflation to be “transitory,” reviving a term that gained notoriety after the Fed and other forecasters used it to initially describe price pressures during the pandemic. Those ended up causing the worst inflation spike in decades.

But that was before Mr. Trump shocked the world with far steeper tariffs than many had expected. The levies were temporarily scaled back as Mr. Trump gave countries time to reach trade deals ahead of a July deadline. Still, a 10 percent universal tariff remains in place, along with additional levies on steel, aluminum and cars. The president has also imposed a minimum tariff of 145 percent on Chinese goods.

Mr. Powell has since shifted his tone, sounding much more attentive to the risks that the inflationary effects will not fade quickly.

“Our obligation is to keep longer-term inflation expectations well anchored and to make certain that a one-time increase in the price level does not become an ongoing inflation problem,” he said in a speech last month.

On Wednesday, he is likely to face questions about the Fed’s latest thinking on inflation, which eased more than expected in March.

So far, market-based measures of inflation expectations, which the Fed pays closest attention to, suggest that inflation will indeed remain contained after an initial jump. That aligns with the forecast from Christopher J. Waller, a Fed governor who has been among the most vocal supporters of the view that tariffs will cause just a temporary pop in inflation.

Yet even he has conceded that it will not be easy to look past surging prices when they finally materialize.

“It’s going to take some courage to stare down these tariff increases in prices with the belief that they are transitory,” he said in an interview last month.

High Bar to Cut

With Mr. Trump’s tariffs potentially stoking inflation, the bar for the central bank to lower interest rates is higher than would otherwise be the case.

Officials have signaled that they will not proactively restart interest rate cuts, in a departure from how they handled the prospects of an economic downturn in the past.

Back in September, the Fed, in effect, took out insurance against the labor market’s excessively weakening by lowering interest rates half a percentage point. And in 2019, it lowered interest rates three times as Mr. Trump’s global trade war with China in his first presidential term began to chill business activity and weigh on sentiment.

In both instances, inflation was at much lower risk of flaring up. The Fed does not have that luxury this time around.

“I would rather be slow and move in the right direction than move quickly in the wrong direction,” said Beth Hammack, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.

What exactly will tip the Fed into cutting again is not yet clear. In general terms, officials will most likely need to see tangible evidence that the labor market is beginning to crack. If monthly jobs growth grinds to a halt and layoffs rise, that would bolster the central bank’s conviction that it could lower interest rates without risking a resurgence in inflation.

Waiting to see that show up in the data may mean the Fed has moved too late, potentially prompting the need for officials to cut more aggressively later on.

Mr. Powell may provide more specificity about what exactly the Fed needs to see in order to lower interest rates again and how the central bank will avoid making a policy error.

Tricky Trade-Offs

Compared with the current circumstances, past policy decisions have seemed relatively straightforward.

When inflation surged and the labor market overheated after the pandemic, there was little hand-wringing over the decision to sharply raise interest rates once the process had started. Back in September, when inflation was in retreat and the labor market was cooling off, officials all recognized the need to lower interest rates. While there was debate over the size of the cut, the direction of travel was clear.

But Mr. Trump’s economic agenda of sweeping tariffs, spending cuts and mass deportations risks stoking inflation while also denting growth, a dreadful combination for the central bank, which essentially has one blunt tool to steer the economy, lowering or raising interest rates.

Mr. Powell warned about the possibility that the Fed’s goals for low and stable inflation as well as a healthy labor market could come in tension with each other. Such an outcome, he said, would prompt a “very difficult judgment” for the central bank.

“If that were to occur, we would consider how far the economy is from each goal, and the potentially different time horizons over which those respective gaps would be anticipated to close,” he said. What he did not specify was how the Fed would go about making that assessment, something that is likely to come up at the news conference.

Volatile Financial Markets

Since the Fed’s last meeting, financial markets have violently whipped around as Wall Street has struggled to digest the various twists and turns associated with Mr. Trump’s trade policy.

At several points last month, typical correlations started to break down, signaling that financial markets had come under strain. The most worrying development was a surge in U.S. government bond yields as the dollar weakened and stocks sold off. Typically Treasuries and the dollar act as safe havens during times of financial turmoil.

Markets have stabilized in recent weeks, but the severity of the earlier moves has kept investors on edge. Fed officials at the time signaled that the central bank was monitoring the situation closely and broadly concluded that financial markets were still functioning. At the peak of the volatility, Susan Collins, president of the Boston Fed, said the central bank was “absolutely” ready to intervene if necessary.

Mr. Powell is likely to be asked about the recent gyrations and the conditions under which the Fed would intervene if that volatility resurfaced.

China’s central bank cut interest rates and made it easier on Wednesday for banks to increase lending and pump more money into the economy, in the most significant policy steps taken by Chinese officials to limit the impact of the trade war with the United States.

The central bank, the People’s Bank of China, cut short-term interest rates and the amount of funds banks have to hold in reserve in a series of 10 measures. In a series of steps intended to keep the economy moving and people spending, Chinese officials removed restrictions on auto financing firms and freed up more money for banks to lend for various government priorities, including scientific and technological innovation.

At a briefing of top financial officials, Pan Gongsheng, the governor of the central bank, said it was carrying out a “moderately loose” monetary policy in the face of a global economy “full of uncertainties, with intensified economic fragmentation and trade tensions disrupting global industry and supply chains.”

The announcement, billed as policies to stabilize markets, came shortly after Washington and Beijing announced that top officials from the Trump administration will meet with Chinese counterparts this week during a trip to Geneva. This will mark the first formal meeting about trade between the two countries since President Trump raised tariffs on Chinese imports to 145 percent almost a month ago.

The move sparked a retaliatory response from Beijing, which lifted its own tariffs on American imports to 125 percent. The standoff between the two countries has brought global trade to its knees, jeopardizing the outlook for the world’s two largest economies and many other countries.

Last week, China reported a sharp monthly slowdown in manufacturing activity, dragged down by a plunge in new orders of goods for export.

The CSI 300, an index of large companies traded in Shanghai and Shenzhen, inched 0.5 percent higher after the announcement, while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index gained 1.4 percent.

The central bank reduced its so-called reserve requirement ratio — the amount of money that the country’s commercial banks are required to hold as reserves — by half a percentage point, freeing up money that can be used for loans. Beijing cut the ratio by half a percentage point in September as part of a package of measures to revive economic growth.

Mr. Pan, who had signaled in March that the central bank would take this step at some point during the year, said reducing the reserve ratio is expected to provide about $139 billion in long-term liquidity to the market.

The Chinese central bank also cut its benchmark seven-day interest rate to 1.4 percent from 1.5 percent.

Zixu Wang contributed reporting.

When Xi Jinping, China’s top leader, returned from the Group of 20 summit in Brazil last November, he made a stopover in Casablanca, where he was greeted with dates and milk, the traditional welcome for honored guests, and a meeting with Crown Prince Moulay Hassan of Morocco.

The brief visit was a sign of the growing economic ties between China and Morocco, the largest automotive manufacturing hub in Africa and an increasingly crucial conduit for Chinese companies looking to get around tariffs for exports headed to Europe.

In the last couple of years, investment in Morocco from Chinese energy and electric vehicle and battery producers has exploded, with $10 billion directed to that industry, according to one estimate. Dozens of Chinese companies involved in automobile manufacturing are setting up shop in Morocco, including the battery maker Gotion High-tech.

The boom is a sign of the growing importance of countries like Morocco, which has a free-trade agreement with the European Union, that serve as connective nodes in a global trading system that is remaking itself around an obstacle course of high tariffs, trade restrictions and geopolitical rivalries.

Using their status as low- or no-tariff zones has required connector countries to thread a narrow path, exploiting opportunities for trade while minimizing the risk of alienating the West or China. But now that the Trump administration has kicked the legs out from under the global trading system, that road has become much more precarious.

Chinese carmakers, which have surged ahead of many rivals in battery technology, automated driving and entertainment software, have grand ambitions to expand across the globe in Latin America, Asia, Europe and Africa.

Even before President Trump’s election, the United States and Europe were growing more concerned about how their own electric vehicle industries would ever compete with Chinese companies selling cars at discounted prices. Last year, the Biden administration effectively blocked Chinese E.V.s by putting a 100 percent tariff on them, and the European Union increased its tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles to as much as 45 percent.

These types of trade sand traps have been a boon for countries like Mexico, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, India, Indonesia, Turkey and Morocco, allowing companies to sidestep import duties. In the case of China’s manufacturers, Morocco is a prime connector country to the European Union.

Beijing “wants to leverage Morocco’s key advantages,” said Alexandre Kateb, an economist and founder of the Multipolarity Report, a strategic advisory platform.

At the doorstep of Europe and Africa, Morocco has been building an “automotive industry ecosystem” for 20 years, Mr. Kateb said. The country has a sophisticated transportation network that includes ports like Tangier-Med and large reserves of phosphates, which are used in producing car batteries. The country also has been moving swiftly to transition to clean energy.

Morocco became the leading car exporter to the European Union in 2023, surpassing China, Japan and India, according to Auto World Journal.

The French carmaker Renault, drawn by lower labor and energy costs than in Europe, has been manufacturing in the country for more than 20 years. The auto group Stellantis, which owns Chrysler and Jeep, has been expanding its footprint in Morocco since 2019.

“For Chinese automakers, Morocco could now play that same role for Europe” that Mexico did for manufacturers that sought to sidestep U.S. tariffs, said Ahmed Aboudouh, an associate fellow at the Middle East and North Africa program at Chatham House.

But sharpening tensions between China and the United States as well as China and Europe have created a difficult balancing act for Morocco, where economic and geopolitical concerns do not always align. Washington has raised tariffs on China to as high as 145 percent.

The Trump administration could decide to pressure Morocco — possibly by threatening higher tariffs — to take a for-or-against-us stance.

Morocco “sees China as a major partner,” Mr. Aboudouh said, but it is “aware of the risk” that Mr. Trump could clamp down on countries that trade with China.

Chinese loans and investments through its Belt and Road Initiative have helped power Morocco’s economic development, helping to build the kingdom’s infrastructure with projects like a high-speed rail line, solar power plants and a $10 billion tech hub in Tangier. This year, a Chinese company was chosen to provide steel for a planned $26 billion gas pipeline between Nigeria and Morocco.

At the same time, the U.S. strategic partnership is also a priority for Morocco, Mr. Aboudouh said. Morocco engages in military exercises with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and collaborates with the United States on counterterrorism. Morocco would also like to procure American F-35 stealth fighter jets. Morocco won’t welcome China “at the expense of the E.U. and the United States,” he said.

For Morocco, a priority is Western Sahara, where it has been fighting an independence movement for control for the past 50 years. Mr. Trump recognized Moroccan sovereignty over the region in 2020 in exchange for Morocco’s normalizing relations with Israel, and the government would not want to do anything to endanger that.

Morocco has had a free-trade agreement with the United States for two decades. Mr. Trump has, nonetheless, subjected it to a 10 percent across-the-board tariff that he imposed on virtually all imports. But Morocco has not been threatened with the additional punishing tariff levels directed at nations like Mexico, Vietnam and Thailand.

Meanwhile, Chinese production continues to ramp up, something that could draw the attention of the Trump administration. In January, a Chinese battery parts manufacturer started pumping out components at a new joint venture in Jorf Lasfar, near Morocco’s deepwater commercial port, part of a $2 billion deal signed in 2023.

In October, the Chinese tire maker Sentury began production in a new factory in Tangier Tech City, a zone planned to eventually house 200 Chinese companies.

And last summer, Gotion, the Chinese battery maker, announced plans to build a $1.3 billion “gigafactory,” the first in Africa. That investment could rise to $6.5 billion, according to Moroccan government.

“Morocco has been following a hedging strategy for a long time” between the United States and China, said Mr. Aboudouh at Chatham House. “The Biden administration showed them some tolerance” when it came to Chinese investments. But if this maneuvering space is tightened under the Trump administration, “I think they will show more caution.”