The U.S. and China reach 90-day tariff truce
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U.S.-China tariffs are coming down for now. From Marketplace, I'm Sari Beneshour, in for David Brancaccio. The U.S. and China have agreed to a 90-day tariff truce while they figure out a more permanent trade deal. The U.S.'s 145% taxes on Chinese imports would come down to 30%. China's 125% taxes on U.S. goods would come down to 10%. Julia Coronado is founder of Macro Policy Perspectives and a professor at UT Austin. Hi, Julia.

Good morning. So 145% tariffs would have basically all but ended trade with China, unraveled business models, sent inflation soaring. What do 30% tariffs do? It still means that we will see higher tariffs. This is higher than was in place before. And we still have 10% tariffs on every other country. So the combination does mean that we're still going to see tariffs on

on all imported goods, and that will result in some combination of higher consumer prices and lower profits for the companies selling those goods. So we're still looking at a trade shock, just not a catastrophic trade shock. The Consumer Price Index is coming out later this week.

Do you think we will see prices rise? And how much more do you think they'll go with the current tariff setup? Yeah, so this will be data for April. And we think that we'll start to see early indications of tariff pass-through. The tariffs were just being implemented through the month of April, so it still isn't going to be the full effect. We think it's going to be two, three, four months before we see the full impact of

of these new higher tariffs on consumer prices. But we'll see maybe some early indications in things like furniture in the April data. Now, you know, this whole period of tariffs on, tariffs off, tariffs higher, tariffs lower, the unpredictability of it all had a lot of business putting off investment plans.

Do you think that this period of uncertainty is like resolving? Is it over? It's definitely not over. There are multiple elements of policy uncertainty. It's definitely good news and the markets are taking it as good news that we get some reduction in the maximalist approach.

But this is still a 90-day truce in this trade negotiation. What happens at the end of the 90 days is still up in the air. And so it's sort of an ongoing process with China and every other country that we're negotiating with. These are also temporary tentative agreements and lots of details still need to be worked out. Julia Coronado, founder and president of Macro Policy Perspectives. Thank you so much. My pleasure. Thank you.

In honor of Military Appreciation Month, Verizon thought of a lot of different ways we could show our appreciation, like rolling out the red carpet, giving you your own personal marching band, or throwing a bumping shindig.

At Verizon, we're doing all that in the form of special military offers. That's why this month only, we're giving military and veteran families a $200 Verizon gift card and a phone on us with a select trade-in and a new line on select unlimited plans. Think of it as our way of flying a squadron of jets overhead while launching fireworks. Now that's what we call a celebration because we're proud to serve you. Visit your local Verizon store to learn more.

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Student loan debt is not just a young people problem. It is a burden that can follow some borrowers into their older years. Marketplace's senior economics contributor, Chris Farrell, has the latest installment of our series, Buy Now, Pay Later. The ranks of student loan borrowers, 62 years and over, rose by 59% to 2.7 million in the six years ending in 2023.

Nearly one in three of older borrowers were in default in 2019. Older borrowers are twice as likely to have a loan in default than their younger peers.

That's according to data collected by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. And the assumption is that student debt is like an issue for younger people, but it's increasingly become an issue for older people. Usually we think of student loans as younger people's burdens, but it also weighs heavily on older adults. That's economist Kartik Manikim of the New School for Social Research and Mingling Zong of the Urban Institute, respectively.

A majority of older borrowers went to college later in life. Most borrowed to pay for their own education. These graduates didn't get a return on their investment or life intervened.

Abby Shafroth is director of the Student Loan Borrower Assistant Project at the National Consumer Law Center. Lots of people with student loan debt are not college graduates. They're people who might have started school and then something happened. And what we see is that the people who are older adults who still have student loan debt are actually in a financially worse place than those who never attended college at all. That's a depressing result.

The debt held by older borrowers is mostly federal student loans. Nearly six in 10 enter repayment 15 years ago or more. Abby Shafroth. Among borrowers who are 55 or older and who still have their own student loans, a third of them make less than $25,000 a year.

30% of them say that they can't pay all of their monthly bills as is. So they certainly can't afford these student loan payments when they're struggling to pay for their medication, for their heat, their rent. The financial hardship is worsening for many. The Trump administration has resumed collections on defaulted student loans for the first time in five years. If older borrowers don't start repaying their loans, the government can garnish their Social Security checks.

Yes, you heard me right. Legislation passed in 1996 allows the government to garnish Social Security payments for outstanding student loan debts. The government must leave Social Security beneficiaries with at least $750 a month in benefits.

The figure at the time represented about 110 percent of the federal poverty level. The protection was meant to ensure that the government wasn't pushing older or disabled adults who rely on Social Security into poverty just to just to collect on, you know, a loan debt. A big problem is that Congress didn't index this this protection to inflation yet.

So, you know, $750 a month in the late 90s is very different from $750 a month now. Student loan debts among older adults rarely stand alone. Older adults may also be carrying credit card balances, medical debts, and consumer loans. I'm Chris Farrell for Marketplace.

Our Buy Now, Pay Later project is in partnership with Next Avenue, a nonprofit news platform for older adults produced by Twin Cities PBS. In New York, I'm Sabree Beneshour with the Marketplace Morning Report. From APM American Public Media.

Claudette Powell spent a decade in Hollywood building her career before making a radical change. She quit her job, gave away her belongings, and drove across the country to become a nun. I had nothing left. I had turned over my car to the community. I had no more savings, closed my savings account, my checking account, shut down my cards. And that's really scary.

I'm Rima Grace, and this week on This is Uncomfortable, is it possible to find financial security and eval poverty? Listen to This is Uncomfortable wherever you get your podcasts.