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Grainger, for the ones who get it done. You know what words you never want to hear when somebody's talking about the global economy? Major negative shock to growth.
Those are the words you never want to hear. From American Public Media, this is Marketplace.
In Los Angeles, I'm Kyle Rizdahl. It is Tuesday today, the 22nd of April.
Good as always to have you along, everybody.

Those words in question, a major negative shock to growth, come to us courtesy of the International Monetary Fund, which released its semi-annual World Economic Outlook this morning. The shock in question, of course, is the tariffs on which President Trump is betting this economy.

And what happens in the United States definitely does not stay in the United States.

The IMF says the global economy is going to grow almost a full percentage point slower this year.

Two point eight percent would be global growth than it guessed just this past January.

The tariffs, the IMF says, add complexity and fluidity. Those are their words to the current moment.
So there is that. On the other hand, and from the marketplace desk of that which cannot continue won't, Treasury Secretary Scott Besant is being widely reported as having said to a private gathering of Wall Street types.
Speaking of the U.S.-China impasse, no one thinks the current status quo is sustainable, the Treasury sector is reported to have said, and he predicted de-escalation. Pudding.
Proof will be in. Of course, tariffs aren't the only thing weighing on this economy.
The Trump administration's rapid unscheduled disassembly of the federal workforce is now showing up on corporate balance sheets. Verizon announced earnings this morning, and it said it lost 289,000 monthly phone subscribers in the first quarter.
That is more than double the decline from the same period a year ago. And Verizon attributed the drop in part to a loss of business from the federal government.
Marketplace's Stephanie Hughes has that one. If you don't have a government job, you don't have a government-issued phone.
Doge has had its impact, right? They have laid off a lot of government employees. They have canceled contracts.
Roger Entner is with Recon Analytics, which counts Verizon as a customer. He says the federal government is a substantial client for the telecom.
And since there are fewer government workers now, Verizon will feel the pinch, along with other telecoms with federal contracts, he says. And it might not just be the federal government that's paring back.
Craig Moffitt, senior analyst and founder at the research firm Moffitt Nathanson, says if the stock market continues to falter and the economy slows, that could mean fewer new businesses and fewer new business telephone lines. Also, families could hold off on getting the kids' phones.
Instead of getting a child a phone when they're 10 years old, they'll wait until the child is 11 or something like that. Moffitt's also watching to see how a tightening in immigration policy will affect the industry.
He says if fewer people are allowed into the country or more are deported,

it's inevitably going to have an impact on subscriptions. Moffitt says an immigration crackdown could also lead more customers to choose prepaid subscriptions as opposed to postpaid, which are billed at the end of each month.
He says postpaid customers generally pay more, but they have to provide more information. If individuals are afraid to apply for postpaid service because they don't want to give their social security number, for example, they're more likely to use prepaid service that can be to a much greater extent anonymous.
Despite these possible hits to subscription numbers, the telecom industry overall is fairly recession proof, according to Recon Analytics' Roger Etner. That's because Americans rely on good communications.
All these telecom providers are super tankers. When they go in rough seas, they will be fine.
He says there are other companies that get all their revenue from the federal government, like some consulting firms. He says they are not super tankers and the waves hitting

them are a lot bigger. I'm Stephanie Hughes from Marketplace.
Wall Street today. Traders chose to

believe what the Treasury Secretary said over what the IMF said. We will have the details when we do

the numbers. Planes, trains, and trucks get all the supply chain glory, but spare a thought here, would you? For river traffic, humble barges, which the Maritime Administration says transport better than 600 million tons of cargo throughout this economy every year, rampant uncertainty or not.
We know a guy who does river transport for a living. Austin Golding is the president and CEO of Golding Barge Line in Vicksburg, Mississippi.
Austin, it's good to talk to you again. Hey, thanks for having me, Kai.
I got two variations on my standard house business question. I want to know how business is now and how you think it's going to be in like three months.
So business right now is still pretty strong. Lots of demand for us, lots of product to move, and a pretty steady supply of it.
Three months from now, you know, I'm, of course, less sure, but I am still optimistic that volumes will still be trading and still be moving at the same or close to the same clip. But there's a lot.
I mean, this could change, as we know, after any press conference any day now. So we're bracing for instability.
But right now, things are pretty stable. We should say here, just in terms of volume of stuff you guys carry, it's a lot of petroleum products and ag stuff as well.
And so you're through all those sectors. You're feeling okay? Right now we are.
Really, right now we're not touching any ag products, but when I talk to those competitors, they're definitely the ones with the most uncertainty in their world. As far as oil and gas and as far as domestic rock and construction and paving material, still pretty strong.
We are in a flood stage right now, which has limited a little bit of the transit and made a complicated situation even more complicated. But as far as oil and gas goes and rock and aggregate and paving material, demand still is pretty strong.
Sorry, flood stage. So the water's high, right? Layman's terms here? Water's very high.
We're a few feet above flood stage. It's still manageable.
But we're not expecting a crest until the 28th. And it's going to be about a foot higher than it currently is here in Vicksburg.
And this is the highest water we've had in half a decade or so. Oh, wow.
Let's talk input costs like equipment, repairs, those kinds of things. You seeing price rises yet or no? Now, that is where the impact has hit us for sure.
All of our suppliers tell us that parts not only are going up, but the next level of inventory is going to be more expensive. We're seeing all of our construction, all of our repair and maintenance, and all of our shipyard time only go up as our vendors protect themselves from their costs going up on their end.
Well, so look, on the theory that maybe some of your clients and customers are actually listening to this, I'll appreciate it if you want to be discreet, but you're going to pass those costs along too, right? Well, we certainly have to not do this for free. So somebody's got to help us cover this cost or nobody's going to do it.
So, yeah, I mean, it's definitely going to come out down the line. You know, I do think that as we progress through this, that we'll have somewhat of a settling of these numbers or somehow we'll come out to a top game where it's just at some point it's not worth it for people to pay it these these increases will stop but we're seeing it across the board i mean it's not just in material costs i mean insurance costs have gone up uh human costs have gone up uh and you know as you go across your cost increase you look at what's which ones are providing you good return and which ones aren't and um right now and i'm getting the same gizmo but i'm'm paying a lot more for it, it doesn't feel like that rate of return is very good.
Yeah, let's talk human costs. How's the labor force for you? Are you getting people? Are they sticking with you? We're getting more people, more people that are willing to stick around longer.
And I'll tell you what I attribute that to, much along the lines of this conversation, people are looking for stability. People are looking for a steady paycheck with good health benefits that if they stick around, they'll be rewarded with pay raises and more responsibility.
And we take a lot of the uncertainty off the table for people that may have gone into business for themselves. They can come into our organization and enjoy a lot of our stability.
What's your day-to-day like, right? I mean, you're running a not small family

business. You have boatloads of uncertainty.
How much time are you spending managing the uncertainty

versus like scheduling crews and making sure you got the inventory for repairs and all that jazz?

Well, most of my day-to-day, you know, I've always put it like this to people, Kai, in our business

are the really good tow boaters and the really good customers want to know who they're working

with. And so I spend a lot of my time in front of our captains and our top line personnel and a lot of time in front of our customers.
And so a lot of times that's my job is to try to go out there and let them meet me, get to know me, get to know my family, get to know what we stand for. We'll take care of the tow boat later.
They have lots of options to tow boat. To tow boat.
Is that what you call it? Yeah, man. We towboat now.

That's kind of a saying we have whenever things get complicated or get scary.

Yeah, we're towboating now.

So that's kind of our nomenclature.

Austin Golding, his family towboating business is called Golding Bars Line down in Vicksburg, Mississippi.

Austin, thanks a lot.

I appreciate your time as always.

Thank you, God. Let's go back to the beginning of the year here for a second, if we could.
And I do hear you and your 401k eerily nodding yes to that. So as recently as early February, all the big tech companies, Meta and Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft, they were still planning to spend unfathomable gobs of money on artificial intelligence, specifically unfathomable gobs of money on AI data centers.
Now, how big is an unfathomable gob of money, you ask? $320 billion, thank you very much, and that's just this year alone. You fast forward to now, and all the uncertainty we're seeing that's touching just about every slice of this economy is touching AI data centers too.
Marketplace's Matt Levin has the story. Back in 2023, Jeff Brown at the real estate investment firm T2 Capital Management invested in the construction of four Midwest data centers, three in Iowa, one in Illinois.
These weren't data centers built specifically for AI, but they use a lot of the same materials, materials that often come from overseas. I mean, on the outside, they're just concrete shells, right? And so even concrete, we import so much from Canada, even China.
Not to mention all the imported steel structures and cooling systems and computer chips you may find on the inside. Brown says because of tariffs and other rising construction costs, it would be significantly more expensive to build those same data centers now.
I think it's very safe to say 20% or more.

Microsoft has said it's pausing some of its data center construction,

including a billion-dollar project in Ohio.

Amazon has reportedly slowed some of its data center leasing as well.

Neither company has publicly blamed higher costs or tariffs.

Angelo Zeno at the investment research firm CFRA says

he expects big tech companies to still spend big on AI data centers

I'm sorry. higher costs or tariffs.
Angelo Zeno at the investment research firm CFRA says he expects big tech companies to still spend big on AI data centers this year. But if we were to see significant deterioration within the macro economy, we think there could be a re-evaluation or scaled back.
If a recession does come, tech companies may have less revenue to steer towards AI. And billion-dollar data centers may be a tougher sell if adopting AI technology comes slower than what investors expect.
Brent Thill is at Jefferies. It doesn't turn on like a light switch overnight.
It's going to be gradual. And companies are trying to figure out what AI projects they use.

Phil says right now most non-tech companies are still in the experimental phase with AI.

And they're dealing with their own uncertainties, too.

I'm Matt Levin for Marketplace. Coming up.
There's a whole beautiful world of gemstones out there that just don't grow in the U.S. Hey, what's the tariff on precious gems? Do you know? First, though, let's do the numbers.
Dow Industrial is up 1,016 today, 2 and 2 thirds of 1%, 39,186.

The Nasdaq up 429 points, 2.7%, 16,300 on the nose.

The S&P 500 gained 129 points, 2.5%, 5,287.

GE Aerospace up 6 and a 10% today on better than expected first quarter earnings.

Northrop Grumman sank more than 12% after cutting its full year guidance.

We'll be right back. $52.87.
GE Aerospace up 6.10% today on better-than-expected first-quarter earnings. Northrop Grumman sank more than 12% after cutting its full-year guidance.
Bond prices were up. The yield on the 10-year T-note thus fell 4.40%.
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This is Marketplace. I'm Kyle Bresdal.
We need more electricity. We being the United States, of course, but also the entire planet.
We've turned to lower cost natural gas and we've subsidized wind and solar to supply a lot of our new power. Nuclear, on the other hand, it's expensive.
And let's face it, it's still got a PR problem. But it does check two big boxes.
It's low carbon and it's firm. That is, it's a constant provider of power, unlike solar or wind.
And it's part of why China, to meet its own rising demand, has been cranking out new power plants and will within a decade or so have more than the United States has. Marketplace's Elizabeth Troval has more now on where the U.S.
does stand in the world of nuclear power. Things are percolating in the nuclear power industry.

Dow Chemical is building new small reactors to help with its energy needs. And Microsoft is behind a plan to reopen the infamous three-mile island to power its data centers.
William Freeburn with

S&P Global says this is after decades of not much happening. Our reactors in the U.S.
were almost

Thank you. power its data centers.
William Freeburn with S&P Global says this is after decades of not much happening. Our reactors in the U.S.
were almost exclusively built in the 60s, 70s and early 80s. And so we stopped building new nuclear reactors at that time.
And so our supply chain atrophied. Compare that to China, where the country has ramped up nuclear production with public sector support.
Now China is really showing the world how it's done by building all these reactors at a time. Half the reactors under construction right now in the world are in China.
And Todd Moss with the Energy for Growth Hub says for the private sector to compete, the U.S. government has to invest in our companies too.
Not exactly like the Russians and Chinese, but they're certainly going to need some help to make sure that American firms are facing a level playing field. The Trump administration has expressed support for the nuclear energy industry, but a lot is up in the air.
John Kotek of the Nuclear Energy Institute says incentives like what we saw

in wind and solar would go a long way. There are a lot of state and federal policymakers considering what sorts of policies could be put in place that really unleash that demand and lead to multiple new orders in the U.S.
He says stepping up production to bring down costs is what the U.S. nuclear industry needs.

I'm Elizabeth Troval for Marketplace. the U.S.
He says stepping up production to bring down costs is what the U.S. nuclear industry

needs. I'm Elizabeth Troval for Marketplace.

This economy, while still solid for most, is difficult for a lot of older Americans. Four out of five people over the age of 60 in this country are financially insecure.
That's according to the National Council on Aging. And as happens when you dig into things, the details show it's even worse for some.
In our case today, the aging women religious of the Catholic Church, the nuns and cloisters, and the sisters who teach in schools or work in hospitals. These women take a vow of poverty, so they don't have robust 401ks.
They also don't have spouses or children that they can rely on. And with very few younger women joining their ranks, the threat of financial insecurity is bigger than ever.
Marketplace's Kaylee Wells explains how they're making do. A handful of gray-haired Catholic sisters is gathered for lunch at a retreat center and assisted living facility in Los Angeles.
They first lived here decades ago when it housed them as novices. Over those decades, they kept aging, but young women stopped joining, so part of the property got remodeled as an assisted living facility.
Everything has grab bars and all the doors are wide enough for wheelchairs and the showers are wheelchair accessible. Sister Mary Beth Larkin is the general director for the order that runs this place, the Sisters of Social Service.
Since sisters don't typically have kids or spouses to lean on, they've leaned on younger sisters instead, the way you'd lean on a niece to help you climb the stairs or go to the bathroom. She says that made health care less expensive.
We didn't have 24-7 care and, you know, a nurse on the staff. But that model doesn't work anymore, so now there is a nurse on staff.
The population of nuns and sisters peaked 60 years ago. Since then, it's declined by 78 percent.
The remaining population has aged significantly. None of them gets a monthly pension check from Rome, and the kind of financial support they get varies from order to order.
The United States has systems in place that can help older Americans out, Medicare, Social Security, but your Social Security payments are based on how much money you made when you were working. And sisters don't get paid like everyone else.
Some of the sisters compensation is often in kind. So it will be free housing or the use of a car, things like that, which don't get counted as income.
Susan Raymond is senior advisor for the Antitrust Foundation, which funds elder care for Catholic sisters. So when it comes to Social Security calculations, the base salary of sisters is often very, very low.
There isn't a surefire solution. The Sisters of Social Service rent out part of their property as a retreat center.
They're also applying for grants and asking local churches for help. Another order, one that anthropologist Anna I.
Corwin studies, has sold some of its property and moved in with another religious group. But she says there is one thing they all have in common.
Their commitment to, it's essentially mutual aid, is the key. And those decisions that they're making together are better and more calm than what they could do if they were each individual's.
And that actually makes them healthier. While the World Health Organization declared loneliness a global health concern in 2023, sisters typically live in group settings.
And it's working. Corwin says the data is clear.
Sisters live longer than the average person. They're not just living long.
They're like, they're working until they're in their 80s and 90s. These are hardy women.
She gives two reasons for that. One is they're a really pragmatic bunch.
They're doing what they need to do, but they're also doing all this, how do I, okay, so my body's declining. How do I live with that? And that makes a huge difference in well-being, both psychologically and physiologically.
And two, their optimism is unshakable. The God who led us this far is not going to abandon us now.
Sister Judith Dieterle is one of the youngest members of the Sisters of St. Louis.
She's in her mid-70s. There's,

I think, that deep sense of faith and that deep sense of trust in the vocation that we have that

says, we'll get through this. I never anticipated when I entered that I would be one of the young

ones still at my age, but the fact is, that's the way it is.

And so we figure out what's next.

The problem the sisters face, says Susan Raymond of the Antitrust Foundation,

isn't that different from the country as a whole.

Fewer young people are paying into Social Security,

while the population that gets benefits is growing.

In Los Angeles, I'm Kaylee Wells for Marketplace. A turn now to precious metals and gemstones.

Gold, which has been rising for weeks now, hit a new record high today, $3,506 an ounce at one point.

And we know why. In times of economic uncertainty, investors put their money into the old reliables,

and ain't nothing historically more reliable than gold.

But for industries that rely on gold and other precious metals and gemstones from outside the United States, these times are especially rocky. Here's today's installment of our series, My Economy.
My name is Isabel Dennis, and I'm a fine jeweler based in Oakland, California. And I'm the owner of Kima Jewelry.
I love making fine jewelry. It is a very special thing for someone to buy.
And often people come to me when they're in times of transition. So that's often a wedding.
Sometimes it's a birth. Sometimes it's a funeral or a memorial piece.
And sometimes someone just wants to give someone they love a really nice gift or buy a really nice gift for themselves. Business has been great at KEMA, but there's been a lot of volatility in the last few weeks that have made for kind of an unpredictable business environment.
There's a whole beautiful world of gemstones out there that just don't grow in the U.S. So when the tariff news came down, it really felt like a fundamental reordering of how we were going to have to do business.
Because they specifically hit very hard in countries that are big gemstone trading markets. so as the news whipsawed back and forth last week,

I had bought pretty sizable orders of sapphires

that are sitting in Sri Lanka, and they're being recut.

And we expected them to come into the U.S. with minimal tariffs,

and now it looks like maybe they'll be 10% more expensive,

which is not great, but we'll figure it out.

It just means that I take a smaller margin

and that I wait and see.

And I don't know how that's going to play out for me

over the long term in my career

in terms of paying myself enough to continue to do this.

But it feels like the right thing to do. As materials costs balloon the way they have in the last couple of weeks, like if my sapphire prices go up 44%, I can't continue to sell them at the prices that I was before.
but I'm going to push that as far as I can because I am still pretty new and I really love what I do and I really want to keep doing it. And so I will make sure that the work is as available as possible to as many people as possible for as long as possible before I price things so high that it becomes unattainable.
Isabel Dennis at Kima Jewelry in Oakland, California. You can tell us about your economy, how things are going at marketplace.org.
All right, we got to go. Too much news, not enough time.

Our digital and on-demand team includes Carrie Barber, Jordan Mangy, Dylan Miettinen, Janet Wynn, Olga Oxman, Ellen Rolfes, Edward Silver, Virginia K. Smith, and Tony Wagner.

Francesca Levy is the executive director of digital and on-demand.

And I'm Kai Rizdahl.

We will see you tomorrow, everybody. This is APM.
For decades, China's economic rise has been symbolized by the unstoppable force of low-cost manufacturing. But today, a new and far more disruptive wave of competition is unfolding, one that threatens not just Western manufacturing, but also the West's geopolitical dominance.
I'm journalist James King, and in my new audiobook, Global Tech Wars, from Pushkin Industries and the Financial Times, I'm unpacking what China's rapid technological ascent across cutting-edge industries like artificial intelligence, electric vehicles, and surveillance technology means for the future. Find Global Tech Wars at pushkin.fm slash audiobooks,

Audible, Spotify, and wherever audiobooks are sold.