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Speaker 4 In which we have a look at our economic future from American public media. This is Marketplace.

Speaker 4 In Los Angeles, I'm Kyrisdahl. Wednesday, today, the 25th of June.
Good as always to have you along, everybody.

Speaker 4 We are going to begin today with an eye toward the calendar because it's going to be a busy couple of days to end the week.

Speaker 4 Tomorrow is going to bring us an update on gross domestic product, an early peak at the trade gap as well, also May orders for durable goods.

Speaker 4 And then Friday, consumer sentiment and this week's featured economic attraction, the Personal Consumption Expenditures Index, which is, as we all know, the Federal Reserve's favorite way to measure inflation.

Speaker 4 I am also obliged to point out here, calendar-wise, that we are right now just two short weeks.

Speaker 4 from when President Trump's pause on those global tariffs of his is set to expire and when we are supposed to be getting a whole bunch of new trade deals, 90 in 90 days was the promise.

Speaker 4 Marketplace Sabri Benishworth takes it from there.

Speaker 5 Beth Pride is in the business of helping other businesses manage international trade.

Speaker 6 We are knee-deep in the tariff.

Speaker 5 She's president of consulting from BPE Global. Two weeks from now, we could get a bunch of trade deals.
We could also see super high tariffs come roaring back. We could get an extension.

Speaker 5 We could get all of the above.

Speaker 6 I can't predict anything because I would have never predicted what has already happened.

Speaker 5 So Pride is focused on bracing for all possibilities a business might face.

Speaker 6 What are we preparing? It's information so that they understand if they continue with their existing supply chain, what the financial impact is going to be.

Speaker 5 Managing uncertainty, not reducing it. So far, only one trade deal has been signed, and that's been with the UK.

Speaker 8 I would say it's 80% aspirational and 20% substantive.

Speaker 5 Bill Reinch is a senior advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. The U.S.
and U.K.

Speaker 5 both made some concessions on making it easier to trade things like steel, beef, ethanol, but most of it is agreements to talk in the future about specific topics.

Speaker 5 Reinch says this is probably a preview of what to expect with all the other countries.

Speaker 5 There are active negotiations with major trading partners, including Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Canada, Mexico, the EU, and China, he says.

Speaker 8 Expect agreements where there's a lot of commitments, a lot of kicking of the can, but also expect agreements where there are a couple substantive concessions which will allow the United States to declare victory.

Speaker 5 As the world watches, there's one spectator in particular that may affect the outcome. Alan Wolfe is a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

Speaker 9 The stock market gets very antsy if the United States moves to put high tariffs on others.

Speaker 9 So I think that the president will try to be more selective in easing in the amount of tariffs that are imposed.

Speaker 5 So Wolf Wolf sees the 10% baseline tariffs sticking around for a while.

Speaker 5 In an emailed statement, a White House spokesperson told Marketplace that President Trump's strategy of leveraging access to the American economy is paying off, and the administration expects to announce more custom-made deals in short order.

Speaker 5 In New York, I'm Sabri Benishore for Marketplace.

Speaker 4 Wall Street today, everything's still

Speaker 2 fine.

Speaker 4 We'll have the details when we do the numbers.

Speaker 4 We heard yesterday, Daniel Ackerman did the story for us, that consumers just aren't feeling all that great.

Speaker 4 Not about right now, and not, according to the conference board, about the economy yet to come.

Speaker 4 Along those lines, General Mills reported quarterly earnings today, the maker of Lucky Charms and Cheerios and Hagen-Daz, among many, many others, made less money than it had been expecting and said it's going to make less money in the year to come than it had been expecting.

Speaker 4 Said CEO Jeff Harmoning, consumers are, and this is a quote, pressured by widespread uncertainty, and that we, that is to say, the company, expect consumers to remain cautious and continue seeking value.

Speaker 4 How, though, exactly does one seek value? Marketplace's Henry Epp explains.

Speaker 10 When retailers say consumers are value-seeking, what they mostly mean is people are trying to save some money because they're worried about their economic future.

Speaker 10 Mike Daher is with the consulting firm Deloitte.

Speaker 11 They're looking at purchasing alternative ingredients, store brands. For travel, they're booking alternative lodging.
They're booking lower-cost airline fares. They're buying used cars.

Speaker 10 A lot more consumers have been looking for those lower costs for a while now, ever since the big bout of post-pandemic inflation.

Speaker 10 Mark Cohen, the former director of retail studies at Columbia Business School, says the prospect of tariffs hitting consumer prices soon could keep the trend going.

Speaker 12 We're in for a bumpy ride, and the consumer is going to have to cut back and trade down. That's going to leave winners and losers in the economy with regard to retailers and brands.

Speaker 10 Because he says a lot of brands won't be able to keep a lid on prices as they face higher costs. They also can't necessarily use the same tactics now that they did a few years ago.

Speaker 10 Wendy Liebman, CEO of WSL Strategic Retail, says, for example, shrinkflation.

Speaker 7 You know, same size package, but less in the package. That raised a lot of issues for people around, you know, do I trust you? I know what you're doing.
I'm not stupid.

Speaker 10 Because value seeking, she says, isn't just about saving money. It's also about consumers getting better quality and convenience out of the money they do spend.

Speaker 10 Liebman says that's why a lot of price conscious consumers are still opting for Amazon Prime or Walmart Plus subscriptions.

Speaker 7 So they see the value proposition of I'll pay the whatever it is, $80, $90 a year. So I'm paying more, but actually I'm saving on the transportation to get to the store to save money.

Speaker 10 In times of chaos, Liebman says, consumers take control any way they can. Retailers just have to respond.
I'm Henry App for Marketplace.

Speaker 4 Time to check in, as we periodically do, on an economic indicator of the less traditional sort. And it comes to us from Winnebago, the company practically synonymous with American-made motor homes.

Speaker 4 The OG RV maker gave investors a downbeat snapshot of its business today, lower profits last quarter, and it adjusted full-year revenue expectations down as well.

Speaker 4 RV sales may seem a bit more, oh, I don't know, peripheral. than inflation or unemployment data, but that is exactly the point.
These are big, non-essential purchases.

Speaker 4 So whether they're going up or down can be a leading indicator of which way the economy is steering. Marketplaces Megan McCarty Carino has more now and what the RV index is saying.

Speaker 14 RV sales hit an all-time high in the pandemic as Americans hit the road to escape isolation outdoors.

Speaker 14 Purchasers pumped the air brakes in 2023, and the market has kind of been puttering along ever since, says Morningstar analyst David Wiston.

Speaker 13 It's gotten to be a broken record. They keep saying, you know, we expect this recovery to happen, and then it, and then it just keeps getting pushed out.

Speaker 14 First, by inflation, then rising interest rates, and this year.

Speaker 13 For most of 2025, it's been a lot of tariff headline news.

Speaker 14 Consumers who are still buying are more often looking for value, opting for lower-priced and lower-margin towables over pricey motorhomes.

Speaker 14 And tariffs eat into profits even more, says Michael Hicks, an economist at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana. Most of the industry is based just 150 miles away in Elkhart, Indiana.

Speaker 15 There are huge cost increases on what are probably somewhere between a third and a half of the component parts to a recreational vehicle. So the price is skyrocketing.

Speaker 14 Elevated interest rates have kept borrowing costs high for what can be a six-figure purchase. So there's not a lot of wiggle room for dealers to raise prices.

Speaker 14 And the peak peak buying season of the year is almost over.

Speaker 15 And so I think what you're likely to see is a cascade of layoffs in the coming weeks.

Speaker 14 The softened demand doesn't reflect a lack of enthusiasm for the RV lifestyle, argues James Ashurst at the RV Industry Association.

Speaker 16 Long term, we still feel very positive about the RV industry.

Speaker 14 He says surveys of consumers show high intention to buy over the next five years, and attendance at RV expos remains strong.

Speaker 16 There's a lot of people that are interested. They're just hoping to have some of the headwinds removed.

Speaker 14 No one likes to drive an RV through a gusty storm. I'm Megan McCarty-Carino for Marketplace.

Speaker 4 The list of safe havens in economic days like these is pretty familiar. The U.S.
Treasury bonds, that's historically right, less so of late as we've talked about.

Speaker 4 The dollar, pretty much the same thing. Gold has been trading at record highs this month.
But don't sleep on silver. It's up about 75% over the past year and a half.

Speaker 4 It hit a 13-year high last week on the news out of the Middle East. Analysts are guessing it could hit $50 an ounce by the end of the year.
It's $37 today, if you're curious.

Speaker 4 And that'll trickle down to all of us because silver is used in countless industrial applications. But it's also the raw material for artisans and craftsmen all over this economy.

Speaker 4 Marketplace of Savannah Peters brings us this story of indigenous silversmiths dealing with those higher input costs.

Speaker 17 At Thunderbird Supply Company's Midtown Albuquerque warehouse, you'll find hanks of glass beads, turquoise and malachite stones by the pound, and behind the sales counter, the company's bread and butter, sheets, loops, and wire spools of silver ready for artists to stock up.

Speaker 18 You know, they come in and they buy this kind of stuff and then when they show you what's made out of it.

Speaker 17 Bracelets and belt buckles and squash blossom necklaces.

Speaker 18 You're just like, wow, how do you even do that, right? It's like magic.

Speaker 17 Store manager Mike Chavez says most of Thunderbird's customers are indigenous, Navajo and Pueblo Pueblo and Apache artists. Some who drive hundreds of miles to buy silver here.

Speaker 18 From Laguna, from Santo Domingo, from Santa Fe, some from Taos.

Speaker 17 But maybe not today.

Speaker 17 There's a little whiteboard by the cash register that updates the base price of silver.

Speaker 18 A lot of people probably stayed home today and say, okay, I'll wait till tomorrow and see what happens. And if it stays up, they're like, oh.

Speaker 18 Crap, I'm going to have to go buy it anyway because I got to finish this order.

Speaker 17 For Thunderbird's customers, silversmithing is a traditional art form and a livelihood. One that can feel hyper-local to the American Southwest, but is tied to a global market.

Speaker 17 Chavez has worked here since the 80s and has seen artists weather silver price swings before.

Speaker 18 I think all this political angst that's in the air is not helping things. And I think this time we're going to find out where the threshold is.

Speaker 17 In a bull market for precious metals, gold prices tend to heat up first. Then, as as investors get priced out and seek a cheaper, safe haven, silver starts to catch up.

Speaker 17 George Francis, a master Navajo silversmith, remembers the last time prices surged like this, around 2011.

Speaker 19 That happened. A lot of people quit silversmithing because it was just too high.
They couldn't sell the products.

Speaker 17 Francis mentors up-and-coming artists on the craft and the business of silversmithing out of his studio in Waterflow, New Mexico.

Speaker 17 Silver is mandated by what is happening in the world that causes the prices to go up and down and it's tough it's tough i always just tell other silversmiths just charge more but francis says lots of native jewelry on the market is already undervalued and when silver prices are rising on economic uncertainty customers are often tightening their belts for the same reason In fact, I had a gentleman that really wanted a certain ring, and I told him the price.

Speaker 20 He said it was not within his budget.

Speaker 17 Navajo and Hopi artist JJ Otero recently raised the price of his high-end silver rings and bolo ties by about 10%.

Speaker 17 He can do that because he's been at it for a decade or so, and he's curated a loyal following on social media where he markets his work to wealthy clients all over the country.

Speaker 20 The folks that have the means, they're not bothered by the increase in price.

Speaker 17 For now, anyway. But Otero says artists who serve more price-sensitive customers and those who sell roadside or via middlemen like trading posts and galleries have less pricing flexibility.

Speaker 20 I'm always reminded of what my dad told me that first year I started making jewelry. He would say it in Navajo and that my tools and the things I make with my tools are going to take care of you.

Speaker 17 Today, Otero's mostly online jewelry business takes care of him and his aging parents.

Speaker 17 It allowed him to leave Albuquerque and his career in IT and move home with them to Torreon on the eastern edge of the Navajo Nation.

Speaker 17 But for Indigenous artists just now getting their start, he worries that path to a rural livelihood is slipping out of reach. In New Mexico, I'm Savannah Peters for Marketplace.

Speaker 4 Coming up.

Speaker 22 If you are willing to stay and clean, I will split my tips with you.

Speaker 4 Sometimes you got to get your hands dirty, you know? First, though, let's do the numbers.

Speaker 4 Dow Industrial is off 106 points today, about a quarter percent, 42,982.

Speaker 4 The NASDAQ, 61 points to the good, three tenths percent 19 973 the s p 500 essentially unchanged 6 092 henry up was talking about value-seeking consumers dollar general down about a half percent today dollar tree grew eight tenths percent ross stores fell eight tenths percent samanda peters was talking about rising silver prices pan american silver that's a mining company shined up one percent wheat and precious metals discovered eight tenths percent fortuna mining dug out about a tenth percent the rv index came to us courtesy of Megan McCarty-Carino today.

Speaker 4 Minnesota-based Winnebago slowed nearly 10%.

Speaker 4 Indiana-based Thor Industries, whose subsidiaries include Airstream and Cruiser RV, down 1.3%. Bonds were up yield on the tenure.
Tino down 4.28%.

Speaker 4 You're listening to Marketplace.

Speaker 25 You've finally broken loose from work.

Speaker 17 Three friends, one tea time,

Speaker 21 and then the text.

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Speaker 4 This is Marketplace. I'm Kai Rizdahl.
The idea that technology can change this economy faster than regulators and lawmakers can keep up isn't new.

Speaker 4 The catch is that technology keeps on changing ever faster. And right now, the technology that's changing the fastest and causing the most disruption is artificial intelligence.

Speaker 4 As AI has gotten better, some of the images and the videos that it can create have gotten much, much worse. worse.

Speaker 4 Texas has just put a new law on the books that'll outlaw AI-generated child pornography. Now, here's where I tell you this next story is going to talk about that a little bit.

Speaker 4 And Marketplace's Kimberly Adams is going to tell you about the reaction to that law from some Texas businesses.

Speaker 21 Texas Senate Bill 20, which the governor signed into law over the weekend, makes it a felony to create or have obscene depictions of children.

Speaker 21 Stephen Collis teaches First Amendment law at the University of Texas.

Speaker 26 SB 20 prohibits the possession or access or creation of essentially child pornography, but that also includes images created by AI or computers or even cartoon images.

Speaker 11 That reference to a cartoon or animation is what got a lot of people in the comics community concerned.

Speaker 21 Specifically, the anime and manga communities, says Jeff Trexler of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. Those are Japanese or Japanese-inspired cartoons and comics.

Speaker 11 They've often been targeted for some mangas and some anime's representations of characters that appear to be minors, often not minors, but have that appearance of minors.

Speaker 21 Think adult characters that maybe have petite bodies and big childlike eyes, or fantasy stories featuring a thousand-year-old demon lord in the body of a ten-year-old.

Speaker 27 One of the things that's really tricky about manga and anime is that it comes from a different cultural context.

Speaker 21 Manga editor, researcher, and journalist Deborah Aoki says, in Japan, for example, there's a tradition of communal bathing, and that's often represented in anime and manga.

Speaker 27 It's no big deal. But in America, as soon as you show any kind of nudity, collective gasps of horror.

Speaker 21 But supporters of the law say some of the more adult-themed anime and manga can cross the line. The vast majority doesn't, but some books and shows do include sexualized depictions of preteens.

Speaker 21 And, like any other medium, some content is straight-up pornographic. And that's why the law worries comic book legal defense funds Jeff Trexler.

Speaker 11 It's the very definition of a chilling chilling effect where people are saying, well, you know what, this stuff is too risky to stock.

Speaker 21 It's a risk bookstore owners are already weighing. Benjamin Napier owns and operates a brick-and-mortar comic store in Mansfield, Texas, and gets about 15 to 20% of his sales through manga.

Speaker 28 He says when he first heard about the bill while the legislature was considering it, I was pretty immediately alarmed, but I kind of dismissed it at first as just being kind of ridiculous and kind of frivolous, you know, just kind of another sort of misguided puritanical onslaught.

Speaker 21 Now it's the law set to kick in September 1st.

Speaker 28 We're basically just waiting for the impact of it at this point.

Speaker 21 But Napier doesn't plan to change any of his inventory.

Speaker 28 And I don't think that I should cow to the puritanical regime and just say, uh-oh, I better change my whole business and better change my whole, you know, all my inventory for this.

Speaker 21 Neither the bill's sponsor nor the Texas governor's office responded to my request for comment. Law professor Stephen Collis at the University of Texas says the industry's concerns are valid.

Speaker 26 But I also think that it's entirely plausible that this law could get rolled out and applied in a way that will find their fears unfounded at the end of the day.

Speaker 21 Collis says the law has been carefully drafted to pass muster under the First Amendment, and he thinks Texas authorities will want to avoid overreach, such as by going after all manga and anime, and run the risk that a judge rules the law doesn't pass muster.

Speaker 21 I'm Kimberly Adams for Marketplace.

Speaker 4 What does it take to start a small business? Well, a business plan, yes, of course. First, though, an idea, right?

Speaker 4 And sometimes the best ideas come from just looking around and seeing what mess you can help clean up. Here's today's installment of our series, My Economy.

Speaker 22 My name is Nadia Porter. My business is Club Clean, and we are a high-traffic bathroom cleaning company based in Durham, North Carolina.

Speaker 22 This business was actually inspired by dirty nightlife bathrooms because why aren't people cleaning this has been a reoccurring thought literally every time I go into a public bathroom and it's just an important need for the community.

Speaker 22 I will go in before the party starts or the event starts and I will do a full comprehensive clean of the bathroom.

Speaker 22 And that's really helpful because what I'll do is I'll come back in periodically throughout the night and do a quick clean and sanitation.

Speaker 22 And so, I love what I do because I get to go hang out and party with the crowd and then go back and check on the bathrooms and go back to the fun.

Speaker 22 The pricing varies. My first client that I have, she has three individual bathrooms, and I charge her $200 a night for about a four-hour service.
And then I have a non-profit client.

Speaker 22 They also have three bathrooms, and I deep clean their bathrooms twice a month for about $500 even.

Speaker 22 When I do a consultation, I like to ask the establishment to actually reflect and rate their own bathrooms. And so I have like just a little scale that I came up with.

Speaker 22 The very first time that I cleaned, I have a really good friend of mine who's a DJ. He had an event coming up and I told him about it, this business idea.

Speaker 22 And he said, well, we don't have a budget for it, but you're welcome to clean.

Speaker 22 And although I volunteered, There was a bartender that said, hey, if you are willing to stay until the end of the night and clean, I will split my tips with you.

Speaker 22 And that really helped to show me the value of the business, not just for the folks who are using the bathrooms, but for the people who need to clean them as well.

Speaker 22 I love the entertainment world. I love people and places where we socialize, and I just want to help make them safe.

Speaker 4 Nadia Porter, she's the owner of Club Clean in Durham, North Carolina. We cannot do this series without you.

Speaker 2 Wherever you are, whatever you do, write to us.

Speaker 4 Let us know what's going on. Marketplace.org/slash my economy.

Speaker 4 As final note on the way out today, in which clearly I am way behind the times, which is not in and of itself news, but apparently the hot new thing in footwear is something called, and I am not making this up, something called a snofer, S-N-O-A-F-E-R, a portmanteau of sneaker and loafer.

Speaker 4 Nike was late to the party too, it seems, saw this on a hype beast that the company is finally making one. A snofer, that is, a sneaker sole paired with a regular loafer upper.

Speaker 4 Price TBD, but I'm just going to say they're just really funny looking.

Speaker 4 Our media production team includes Brian Allison, Jig Cherry, Justin Dooley, Drew Jostat, Gary O'Keefe, Charlton Thorpe, One Colors Torado, and Becca Weinman.

Speaker 4 Jeff Peters is the manager of media production, and I'm Kyle Risdall. We will see you tomorrow, everybody.

Speaker 4 This is APM.

Speaker 25 You've finally broken loose from work.

Speaker 17 Three friends, one tea time,

Speaker 21 and then the text.

Speaker 25 Honey, there's water in the basement. Not exactly how you pictured your Saturday.
That's when you call us, Cincinnati Insurance.

Speaker 25 We always answer the call because real protection means showing up, even when things are in the rough. Cincinnati Insurance, let us make your bad day better.
Find an agent at CINFIN.com.