Trump's tariff turnaround

0:00We've all done it. Stock our fridge with leafy greens and good intentions, only to have our future self sacrifice quality nutrition for the convenience of takeout. Keep your body and mind nourished all day with a whole-body meal shake from Cachava. It's got 25 grams of protein, 6 grams of fiber, greens, and so much more. But the best part? It actually tastes delicious. With six indulgent flavors to choose from, it's easy to make a superfood-packed shake. From chocolate, vanilla, and chai, to matcha, coconut acai, and strawberry, you've got endless ways to personalize your Cachava. Whether you prefer it straight up or enjoy adding fruit, peanut butter, nut milk, or even iced coffee, with every two scoops of cachava, you're getting 85-plus superfoods, nutrients, and plant-based ingredients.

0:47Shop now through December 2nd to get 30 % off your first purchase of two or more bags with code NEWS at cachava.com. That's 30 % off for a limited time at kachava.com, code NEWS. Life is unpredictable, but how you prepare for the unexpected shouldn't be. Take ownership of your life planning with PolicyGenius to help your loved ones have a financial safety net in case something happens to you. Whether to cover debts and routine expenses or even invest the money and earn interest over time. With PolicyGenius, finding and buying life insurance is simple. You can compare quotes from top insurers and could find coverage that fits your needs and your budget.

1:29Plus, they offer life insurance policies starting at just$276 a year for$1 million in coverage. It's an easy way to feel good about and plan for the future. No wonder PolicyGenius is the country's leading online insurance marketplace. Don't wait for life to make other plans. Protect your family today. Head to PolicyGenius.com to compare top-rated life insurance policies, get your lowest quote, and make a smart move in under 10 minutes. That's PolicyGenius.com.

2:27Friday. Today, this one is the 14th of November. Good as always to have you along, everybody. Hey, the shutdown's over. Everything economic is back to normal, right? Okay, no, I know that. But that is where we're going to start. Kate Davidson is at Bloomberg. Courtney Brown is at Axios. Hey, you too. Hey, Kai. So, Kate, I'm going to start with you. The BLS, the Bureau of Labor Statistics came out today and said next Thursday, the 20th, will be September Jobs Day. So six, seven-ish weeks late. While that is, of course, good news, what's your sense of where we are with knowing where this economy is going?

3:08Yeah, well, I think that we've obviously been paying very close attention to all the private sector data that we've still been getting. It's not a replacement for the sort of gold standard government data. but what we've seen and we've heard Fed officials talk about is that a lot of that data suggests the labor market has continued to cool. Now, how worried should we be about that? How bad is it? It kind of depends on how you look at it. I mean, we have continued to get layoff data, that is filings for jobless claims from the states each week. And that gives us a sense that those claims, the continuing claims, so people that are staying on uninsurance, they're trending higher, but they haven't spiked.

3:45New claims haven't spiked, even though we've seen all of these big layoff announcements from companies that are reporting earnings. So I think that the labor market is, you know, not great, but hasn't drastically deteriorated since the last time that we saw a snapshot of it. Courtney, if you could reach into the guts of the federal statistical system, what piece of data would you most like to see right about now? Oh, don't make me pick, Kai. Don't make me pick. like picking and asking a parent which of their children is their favorite okay if i had to pick i think i would go with um i'm gonna go with the jobs data just because there is this schism on the fed committee right now about yes the labor market is flowing but is it due to factors that the Fed can't really solve for, like, you know, the immigration crackdown that's causing perhaps the shortage of workers, AI-related developments.

4:49It's not that the jobs report would totally answer that question, but I think I just want to know what's been going on with the labor market in September and October. And as Kate says, we've had this private sector data, but I don't know. It doesn't hit the same. It just doesn't hit the same. I hear you, Kate. Same question, but put yourself in Jay Powell's shoes. What piece of data do you think he most wants to see? well i mean i probably i thought about this question kai and i i probably would would also say jobs for jay powell but since courtney said jobs let me talk about inflation for a minute cpi i mean i think clearly the other side of the coin here for the fed is what's happening with inflation and you are hearing increasingly a bigger contingent of fed officials who are worried about price pressures hey it's not just the fed right i mean we saw this in in all the conversation about the results of some big elections last week and this affordability conversation about how are voters feeling.

5:48They're still feeling like the prices are still high. They have been for a few years and price pressures are prevalent. So the thing here is though, the CPI data that we would have been collected in October, the government was shut down. So the folks who would be the government workers who typically are out collecting that, they haven't been doing it. And Trump administration officials have indicated We might not even have a CPI report to look at. So I think that for, you know, for policymakers who are worried about defending against inflation, even absent any new data, they're just going to say, look, let's not cut rates until we know more.

6:25So I think Jay Powell wants to have a good and updated look at that, but they might not get that for quite some time. Courtney, how worried are you about this thing that Caroline Levitt, the White House press secretary, said yesterday, which is that we may just not do October CPI, deal with it? Right. There's a question about whether there's going to be this just huge hole in our understanding of what happened with the economy in October. um kevin hassett one of trump's top economists seemed to suggest that maybe we get half the jobs report maybe we get the payroll number but we don't get the we don't get the uh data that actually the private sector data is not great at accounting for which is the unemployment rate that's based on the household survey uh as kate said and suggested with respect to cpi it's kind of similar with the jobs report this is hard to kind of backtrack and fill in the gap and it's it's almost impossible for the BLS to do that.

7:23So maybe with the jobs report, we only get half. And that's not that's not very satisfying if you want a complete picture of how the labor market has been performing in recent months. Yeah. OK, I want to do I want to do a little criminal criminology on the on the Fed for a second. And here's the premise. You two are both longtime Fed watchers. You've you've been studying and reporting on the central bank for a long time. There is, as the three of us know, a growing amount of dissent within the central bank. And this is a central bank that really prides itself and has for years on having a unified, easy to understand message for the markets and to the consumers.

8:02Kate, you get to go first. How much does this new-ish revelation of disagreement among Fed governors and central bank presidents, the regional presidents, how much does that really matter? You got like 30 seconds. I mean, I think it matters because it's the big challenge for Jay Powell as the chair. I mean, his job is to forge consensus. Now, does it matter if you have disagreement? No. I mean, there are certainly people who would argue it's healthy, but you made an important point, Kai, that it's kind of about helping markets and the broader public understand where the Fed is headed, what is likely to happen.

8:38So much of what they depend on is this forward guidance of signaling what they're going to do. And I think for the first time, you're really seeing not just people disagreeing, but disagreeing in different directions. Some people think that they shouldn't cut at all. Some people think they need to cut even more than they have been. So it's unusually divergent right now. Courtney, over to you with an emphasis on that diverging in different directions thing that Kate said. That's important. One of my sources said that this might be a preview of what the post-Powell era looks like. With Trump getting to put a leader in place, you might see more divisions at the Fed than we've been used to seeing under Powell.

9:24And that's just a different era. And it comes at a very complicated time for the economy where there's concern about both the labor market and inflation. So maybe this becomes the new normal. Courtney Brown at Axios and Kate Davidson at Bloomberg. Great stuff on this Friday. Thanks, you two. Thanks, Kai. Wall Street, it was a relatively calm end to a not-so-calm week. We will have the details when we do the numbers.

10:17Here's some old news for regular listeners to this program. Despite what President Trump has been saying for forever, tariffs are indeed taxes, the costs of which are being passed down to American consumers and businesses. I point that out because there is some new news from the White House on tariffs today. Because grocery bills are, in fact, going up, President Trump is going to carve out some exemptions from his tariffs. Details are scarce, but there's been talk from some in the administration that relief might come to coffee and bananas, other foodstuffs as well, from Ecuador, Argentina, El Salvador and Guatemala.

10:51Marketplace's Kristen Schwab made some calls to see what that might mean. Another day, another potential tariff change. And Noah Namowitz, COO of Cafe Imports in Minneapolis, has a lot of tariffs to keep tabs on. Each country has its own unique rate. From Indonesia to Ethiopia to Peru, the company imports coffee from something like 30 different countries, including some on the exemption list. Open our computers every day and just figure out how we bring nice coffees to market. He says any tariff relief helps, but it's likely not going to have a huge impact on prices. The U.S. imports about a third of its beans from Brazil, a country not on the exemption list.

11:34The tax rate for imports from Brazil is 50 percent. Meanwhile, coffee costs have been rising because of extreme weather. So, yeah, there needs to be a couple other things that probably happen for the coffee market to actually come down. Ricky Volpe, a professor of agribusiness at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, says a tariff exemption is welcome news because it could help slow inflation. But it's not likely to bring food prices down. There are so many other factors that influence the price of food, like cost of labor, transportation and warehousing. Plus, there are other tariffs. Pretty much every piece of capital that is necessary to get food from the fields to the supermarket is incredibly steel intensive.

12:25Farm equipment, processing machines, storage shelves, the list goes on. Luis Rivera, an agriculture economist at Texas A &M University, says there's also the issue of policy perception, whether businesses think the exemptions will stick. Policy can change from one hour to the next. Uncertainty comes with costs for importers here, also for exporters abroad. Namowitz, the coffee importer, says his growers are worried. Will my product be bought? Do I have a home for my coffee? If growers of coffee or bananas or other imports shrink their crop or shut down, it could squeeze supply. I'm Kristen Schwab for Marketplace.

13:16Consumers, of course, aren't the only ones looking for details on what those tariff exemptions might be. There are also all the people in the trade trenches, so to speak, customs brokers among them. We gave Gretchen Blau a call this morning. She's our customs brokerage manager at Logistics Plus. They're in Erie, Pennsylvania. It's busy and it's confusing. It continues to be confusing with all these changes. So when I heard the news today, I went immediately to all the articles, you know, to Google to get all the articles on it. I went to see if there's anything official posted. So I went to the White House website and found the fact sheet.

13:52It states that there will be benefits to them importing into the United States, that they, you know, that they will receive better rates. But there's nothing specific on that. So I'm sure we'll be getting a lot of questions on that. And we can't give any details as of yet. But that's kind of how things have been going. We kind of are used to that, and the importers are getting used to that as well. Moving forward, we'll be watching for the details of how this shakes out with the Latin American countries. We're also going to be watching the Supreme Court case regarding whether or not there will be refunds issued for the IEPA tariffs.

14:32If that's the way the court case is settled, it's going to mean a lot of work on our part.

14:40It's going to be a big deal at IEPA case. Gretchen Blau, customs brokerage manager at Logistics Plus. Erie P.A. is where they are.

15:01Coming up. He is one of the most in-demand people in Hollywood these days. Honestly, whoever you're guessing it is, it almost certainly isn't. But first, let's do the numbers. Dow Industrial is off 3.9 points today. That is six-tenths of 1%, closed at 47 ,147. The NASDAQ rose 30 points, 10th of 1%, 22 ,900. The S &P 500 off three points. We'll call that flat 6734 there. For the five days gone by, the week that was, the Dow gained three-tenths of one percent. The Nasdaq lost about a half percent. The S &P 500 notched up one-tenth of one percent on the day. Walmart ticked down about a tenth of one percent.

15:46That on news that Doug McMillan is going to announce, has announced, rather, his retirement. New guy from inside the company taking his place. Bonds down yield on the 10-year T-note, 4.15 percent. You're listening to Marketplace. Life is unpredictable, but how you prepare for the unexpected shouldn't be. Take ownership of your life planning with PolicyGenius to help your loved ones have a financial safety net in case something happens to you. Whether to cover debts and routine expenses or even invest the money and earn interest over time. With PolicyGenius, finding and buying life insurance is simple.

16:19You can compare quotes from top insurers and could find coverage that fits your needs and your budget. Plus, they offer life insurance policies starting at just$276 a year for$1 million in coverage. It's an easy way to feel good about and plan for the future. No wonder PolicyGenius is the country's leading online insurance marketplace. Don't wait for life to make other plans. Protect your family today. Head to PolicyGenius.com to compare top-rated life insurance policies, get your lowest quote, and make a smart move in under 10 minutes. That's PolicyGenius.com.

17:23Texas, southern New Mexico and northern Louisiana. 20 percent of the companies there say the Trump administration's immigration crackdown has hampered or they expect it to hamper their ability to hire and retain foreign born workers this year. In this first story from an occasional series we're going to call Help Not Wanted, Marketplace's Elizabeth Troval looks at one slice of that workforce that relies heavily on those immigrants. It's evening rush hour in Houston. Most workers here on the west side of town are headed home, but not Maria. Her cleaning shift at a nearby office high-rise starts soon, where she goes cubicle by cubicle cleaning up trash.

18:08Maria is in her 70s. We're not using her real name because she's afraid she could be targeted by immigration. She earns about $13 an hour at her cleaning job, which she enjoys. You know, she gets her steps in. But she does come home tired and she's been working extra lately. That's because roughly a third of her co-workers have had to quit since the Trump administration started rolling back work permits.

18:46It's a shame they've left, she says. She's still able to work because the administration hasn't yet removed temporary protected status, or TPS, from Salvadorans. She and her colleagues keep showing up to work, but they're afraid. She's been a professional cleaner for about 30 years in Houston. But if she loses her TPS, even though her kids and grandkids are here, she'll have to go back to El Salvador. Even though immigration raids are getting a lot of attention, economist Pia Arrhenius with the Dallas Fed says there's something bigger going on. Hundreds of thousands, in some cases, maybe even millions of work permits are being canceled.

19:33And And so that's really what's affecting employers most directly. Not just people with TPS are losing their work permits, but other humanitarian migrants, too. Many who came in post-pandemic. And now border crossings, which usually offer a steady inflow of labor, have also been reduced to a trickle. So for employers who rely on foreign-born workers, they're kind of getting squeezed on all sides. At Houston City Hall, dozens of people are becoming U.S. citizens at a naturalization ceremony as they're serenaded by a barbershop quartet. These are people who don't have to worry about work permits or green cards anymore.

20:15I ask Alexandra, who came here from El Salvador as a teen, how she feels becoming a citizen. Feliz. Muy feliz. She's excited about voting, taking college classes, getting a better job. She's a supervisor of a team of around 50 professional cleaners.

20:42Her team recently lost about 20 workers, many from Cuba. They hadn't found replacements, so she's picked up some of the slack, she says. She actually studied for the citizenship exam while picking up trash.

20:59The next day, I catch up with Alexandra's mom, Yanet, at a park near her house. She also cleans office buildings. She's seen good workers and good friends leave because they lost their work permits.

21:18She estimates about 20 % of her team have left, and her company, which pays her$12.50 an hour, hasn't found replacements either.

21:34The new hires last for maybe one, two weeks, she says, because it's a lot of work, and the pay is bad. In Houston, I'm Elizabeth Troval for Marketplace.

22:02This time of year, Thanksgiving-ish onward, is typically when we got a lot of new movies, films that the studios are banking on to be their big holiday hits. And whether you're itching to see the new Wicked movie or whichever number Avatar sequel this next one is going to be, you're going to have a decision to make. To IMAX or not to IMAX? They are just a fraction of the screens in this country, but movies shown in IMAX are a growing share of box office sales, and thus those screens are something of a hot commodity in Hollywood. Ben Fritz wrote about the big appeal of the very big screen in the Wall Street Journal the other day.

22:38Ben, thanks for being here. Thanks for having me. Tell me, would you, first of all, what it is that makes IMAX so special, such a big deal? Yeah, well, the IMAX screens are bigger. They're specifically vertically bigger than most movie screens. And typically, they also have higher quality digital sound. And overall, it's just sort of a better, more premium experience in the theater than you get in your typical movie theater. And yet they are a vanishingly small fraction of the movie theater screens in this country, right? Yeah, they're less than 1%. Which makes it treasured real estate that directors like Christopher Nolan, who we'll get to in a second, really want.

23:17The company, though, is really interesting because it didn't used to be this way for IMAX. Yeah. IMAX used to be basically just in museums. You'd see a documentary in a museum. That's what IMAX was until the late 2000s, really. Because you used to have to shoot everything on a special IMAX film camera and you had to have a theater specially built to show it. And then over time, as things went digital, they were able to convert movies shot digitally into their IMAX format, and they were able to convert auditoriums to show IMAX movies. All they had to do was build a digital screen. They didn't have to rebuild everything from scratch.

23:53That's what made it much easier to produce IMAX movies and to show IMAX movies, and that's kind of how they started to go Hollywood. Interesting. So speaking of going to Hollywood, Christopher Nolan, Dark Knight, right, was a biggie for him. They shot some of that in IMAX. And then most recently, people will, of course, remember Oppenheimer shot an IMAX and there were, you know, fights over screen time for that. It's, as I said, a rare piece of real estate that directors really want. Yeah, they really want it because, you know, the box office has been struggling ever since the pandemic. And when people do go to the theaters, though, they tend to want this premium experience that's really different than what you can get at home.

24:29It really feels like this is worth leaving my house for. And I don't mind spending a few extra bucks for it. So movies that are on IMAX are really consistently overperforming and making more money. That's why studios and filmmakers really want to get those screens. So how do they do it? I mean, not everybody is Christopher Nolan. So do you call IMAX and say, hey, can we have a screen? How does that work? Sort of, yeah. I mean, the CEO of IMAX is a guy named Rich Gelfond, and he is one of the most in-demand people in Hollywood these days because he controls what goes on these screens. And usually it's just one movie at a time.

25:01And he's planning out two, three years in advance now. So people are going to Rich. They're showing him the early ideas for their movie. It could be concept art. It could be pre-biz. It could be the first footage they've shot. And they're saying, this movie's going to be awesome. It's going to be so great in IMAX. People are going to flock to your screens for it. Will you please reserve me a time in May of 2027 or whatever on your screens? You know, it's interesting in this piece, you quote him as saying, basically, once we make a deal, we're not going to break it. So, you know, studios and directors can do all the finagling they want, but once he's put it in the calendar, that's what's going to happen.

25:35That's exactly right. That's also why they want to get these screens far in advance, because if you wait until the last minute, they're usually booked. And IMAX does not break the word. Just to take one example, the Taylor Swift music movie that came out just a couple of months ago that was only in AMC theaters, and they asked IMAX if they could get those screens. and AMC said, sorry, we're already booked for a re-release of Avatar and we're not going to screw over Jim Cameron, so sorry, Taylor Swift. That's a clash of titans right there, pal. I'll tell you what. So it's going to cost me one, an extra like three, four, five bucks on top of an$18 movie ticket, right?