Food banks tackle summer break hunger
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On the program today, the American dollar and American retail. We're going to do macro and micro. From American Public Media, this is Market Flags.

In Los Angeles, I'm Kyle Rizdahl. Tuesday, today, 17 June. Good as always to have you along, everybody. On the theory that not too many people actually carry cold, hard cash on them these days, rather than ask you to take a dollar bill out of your wallet, do me a favor and just picture it in your mind's eye, would you? Washington on the front, that pyramid thing on the back. Also,

The greenback is having a very rough 2025, down almost 10% year-to-date against the euro, down more than 8% against the Mexican peso, same versus the yen.

For all of its recent troubles, though, and for the past 80 years, the U.S. dollar has been the global reserve currency. Whether your company was based in Italy or Japan or Mexico, and whether you were selling or buying oil or crops or machinery across borders, businesses want to pay and be paid in dollars. It's more stable and more liquid than every other currency out there. And it still is, to be clear.

But as Marketplace's Matt Levin reports to get us going today, since the Trump administration's trade wars have come upon us, businesses are reconsidering their options. Paula Cummings has been getting more calls from American importers lately. She's the head of foreign exchange sales at U.S. Bank.

First, there was the Midwest Timber Company, an Eastern European machinery supplier wanted to be paid in euros. And then came the California buyer who sources produce from south of the border. This Mexican supplier, a farming conglomerate, had always preferred to receive dollars and now had said, go ahead and pay us in peso instead.

Both of those U.S. companies were game. They could basically negotiate cheaper prices if they agreed to ditch the dollar. But they were also pretty surprised. For

For so long, dollar was king, and particularly within these emerging market suppliers, they were more than happy to receive dollars because it was considered their safe haven. The dollar has dropped this year probably because foreign investors don't like President Trump's trade policies. If investors don't want American assets like Treasury bonds, they don't need U.S. dollars, especially if those dollars ain't buying what they used to.

Carl Shimada is chief market strategist at the cross-border payment company Corpay. Businesses are looking at that decline since the beginning of the year, and they're thinking, if this continues, I don't want to be paid in dollars because that'll mean that I have less purchasing power domestically. Now, most of the evidence of international transactions ditching the dollar is anecdotal. The real data lags on this type of stuff.

Economist Ishwar Prasad at Cornell doesn't believe the greenback's global status is going away overnight, mostly because there aren't great alternatives. But he says if there is a major shift away from dollar dominance, it will likely be abrupt and painful. That would mean turmoil in U.S. government bond markets, which in turn would mean turmoil in U.S. financial markets more broadly. And this could spill over into global financial turmoil.

Again, very few experts see that happening like tomorrow. But those anecdotes are raising some eyebrows. I'm Matt Levin for Marketplace. On Wall Street today, traders looked at the geopolitical headlines. Got a little queasy, it seems. Oil traders the same. Crude up three plus percent on the day. We will have the details when we do the numbers.

American consumers were spending fewer of the dollars they have in May. Retail sales is the economic metric du jour. They were down nine tenths percent from April. So said the Census Bureau this morning. That was a bigger drop than anybody had been guessing. Any guesses amongst you all as to why? Daniel Ackerman is on the retail beat for us today.

No matter how much of a planner you might be, some purchases just don't require months of shopping around and budgeting. You want bananas, you have to buy bananas in the moment. Haniban Basu is CEO of Sage Policy Group. He says for big ticket items, consumers are more strategic. In March and April, for example, people bought new cars and stocked up on building materials.

Consumers bought earlier in the year to try to avoid tariff pricing. But all of that pull-forward purchasing seems to be over. By May, sales of cars and building materials were way down. And as for everything else, Rick Miller of Big Chalk Analytics says if you bought big things ahead of tariffs... That may leave you a little bit less money to go spend on other retail items.

But Miller says because this stems from a one-off race to beat the import taxes. The downtick in the data this morning doesn't necessarily frighten me. But a lot of folks in this economy are still feeling cautious, says Jessica Ramirez, co-founder of the Consumer Collective, a retail consultancy. Consumers are starting to save more. They're not necessarily spending more.

Ramirez says that with companies from Walmart to Ford to Adidas to Best Buy all announcing they will raise prices because of tariffs. I don't think that the consumer is going to go on a shopping spree. They will probably laser focus on what they need.

Ramirez says that could leave them with less discretionary spending for, say, meals and restaurants. I'm Daniel Ackerman for Marketplace. Regular listeners know that when we've got a ton of macro data to wade through, we like to do a little micro too. So we got a bunch of our retail regulars on the phone to hear what they are seeing in their stores. First up, Kristen Thalheimer-Bingham, the co-owner of Dean's Sweets in Portland, Maine.

Sales are a little bit more sluggish, even than what we're used to. Our foot traffic since before Mother's Day has been down by about 10%. And at the moment, we're

You know, we're not overly worried about this sluggish feeling. We really kind of expect things to be a bit slower this time of year. What would ultimately worry us is if fewer visitors come to Maine this summer and fall. That would be hard for us. Our business is certainly tied to the state's economy.

We feel very fortunate in terms of the chocolate we have on hand. We stocked up last fall ahead of some price increases, and this year so far, we've purchased chocolate again twice. We feel comfortable that we'll at least get through this calendar year with enough chocolate and hopefully through the first few months of 2026.

And as always, we just push the uncertainty off a little ways into the future. But that's okay. It's uncertain for us and for everyone else. And we're doing our best just to live with that. A little chocolate makes the uncertainty better. Kristen Thalheimer Bingham making chocolate in Portland, Maine. Chocolate shops, if you are following along with retail sales data at home, fall under the heading food and beverage stores. They had a slight uptick in May.

Two more dispatches from different slices of the retail economy coming up a little later in the show. We are still kind of betwixt and between on the tariff economy. Consumers and businesses are feeling the chaos of the president's trade policy, but the hard data on tariff-driven price increases isn't really there yet.

Mostly. A minority report from the Congressional Joint Economic Committee found that the cost of at least one category of goods is already up since the beginning of April. The cost of the five most common things that new parents buy, car seats, bassinets, strollers, high chairs and baby monitors, all of that's gone up nearly 25 percent. Any guesses where most of that stuff is made? Here's Marketplace's Samantha Fields.

Everything Sarah Wells sells is made in China. She owns Sarah Wells Bags in Fairfax, Virginia. A 13-year-old small business that makes both breastfeeding apparel and bags to transport your breast pump. She's been working with the same factory in China to make those bags the whole time she's been in business. The last time she placed an order was right after the holidays. It made it onto a container ship in February.

And cleared customs in March, and we were hit with that very first 20 percent additional tariff from 2025, which amounted to over $15,000 of surprise tariff at the port. Wells couldn't absorb that unexpected cost. She's had to raise her prices 10 to 15 percent. And that was before the president announced he was raising tariffs on Chinese imports even more.

Since then, David Jacobs, who owns a baby store in Brooklyn called Mini Jake, says most manufacturers he works with have raised prices. Between 10 and 20 percent. Or more. So he has two.

So far, customers are still buying. But I think people are less inclined to buy the highest priced items and are looking at alternatives that are lower priced. But with certain things, Lisa Genetian at Duke University says parents only have so much choice. A lot of these items are not preferences per se, right? They're not want-to-haves, they're must-haves. You can't leave a hospital with a baby without proof of a car seat, right?

Even before tariffs, she says baby gear was pricey. Now it's even more of a stretch. Sarah Wells in Virginia hears that every day from parents who buy her breast pump bags. I think some families will be forced to make decisions like using a car seat that's past its expiration date. Instead of buying a new, safer one. I'm Samantha Fields for Marketplace.

Our next retail regular is in the general merchandise stores category, where spending was pretty much flat for May. That is according, again, to today's data. It's a big category, that one, department stores and variety shops in there. And it leads us to our next dispatch, courtesy of Annie Lang Hartman, owner of the gift and variety store Wild Letty up in Leelanau County, Michigan.

Year to date, we're up over 40%. It just, it feels really, really good. And we're not even truly into busy season yet. It's definitely, it feels like it's picking up every day. Every year for Wild Luddy, I design new products. I design all the patterns. And some things are just no brainers for us. Like I know that a product is going to do really well.

And then sometimes I get really excited about something and it flops and I just have to move on. So I think my biggest challenge is trying to figure out what is going to do really well and how to manage inventory. When the tariffs did happen, we...

kind of changed the order in which we manufacture things or push things into production. Kind of staggering launches. That is not a big deal, I think, in comparison to costs going up. Really, over the next few months, I really just hope Wild Bloody has more great sales. Like that's all I can hope for as a small business. I hope the trend of us being ahead stays that way.

Annie Lang Hartman running Wild Letty up in Leelanau County, Michigan. Coming up... Once again, there is construction happening in front of my store. There's no parking spaces. Open during construction, gang. But first, let's do the numbers. ♪

Dow Industrial is down 299 points today, 0.7%, 42,215. The Nasdaq subtracted 180 points, 0.9%, 19,521. The S&P 500 slipped about 50 points, 0.8%.

59 and 82. Oil I mentioned a minute ago. Brent, North Sea Crew, the global benchmark, bumping up around $78 a barrel. Bond prices were up. Yield on the 10-year T-note down 4.38%. You're listening to Marketplace. This is Marketplace. I'm Kai Risdahl.

With school out for summer, which means no free or reduced-price cafeteria meals, and with food banks already stressed by federal budget cuts, more kids are becoming food insecure. In Texas, this is according to Feeding America, that comes to nearly one out of every four children. And those families and the food banks they rely on are facing an uncertain economy and more cuts to federal supplemental nutrition programs in the GOP's tax bill. Marketplace's Elizabeth Troval has that story.

The food pantry here at West Houston Assistance Ministries doesn't look much different than a small grocery store. People walk down aisles and fill their carts with fruit, veggies, meats, dairy. They feel like they're in a supermarket atmosphere getting the product. So it's a lot more dignity. Verita Duncan runs this food pantry that's been doing more with less since their partner, the Houston Food Bank, lost some federal funding. Their stuff is cut.

And if their stuff is cut, our stuff is cut. So we have to find other ways to get additional product, which our clients are used to in order to feed their family. It's a squeeze as the summer season begins.

We've got more kids home, so we will definitely see more people registering. Here at the pantry, Julieta Gama says she's got six mouths to feed at home this summer, who will be asking her for more food. Today, she says she's taking home some meat and vegetables.

She makes around $800 to $2,000 a month cleaning houses. I ask her what she'd do if she didn't get food from the pantry. She'd go to sleep hungry, she says.

She's one of millions who depend on Texas food banks. Brian Green is CEO of the Houston Food Bank. We're already distributing less than we were because of the federal cutbacks. And so it's really netting out to less per household that we're able to do. And looking ahead to the future, Celia Cole worries about proposed cuts to SNAP food assistance in the House spending bill.

She heads up Feeding Texas, the state association of food banks. SNAP is operating at a scale that's almost 10 times as great as what food banks can do. So any cut to SNAP, even a smaller cut than the ones that are being contemplated here, leads to more people needing help from food banks. The Senate is now considering the House bill, which would shift more funding responsibilities from the federal government to the states.

Cole says that's problematic for states like Texas because... They can't deficit spend. So when our economy is the worst and we have the least amount of revenue to spend...

That's when more people are going to be needing SNAP and state legislatures are going to be even more hard pressed to find the money. But there is another side to the SNAP story happening now, something food banks were reluctant to talk about. The thousands of U.S. born children in Texas who are legally eligible to receive food assistance, but whose parents could be targeted by federal immigration enforcement. Maricela Delsid is with Houston nonprofit Echoes.

We want to help, but how can we help when a lot of the funding is getting cut? When a lot of things are happening immigration-wise, money-wise. The organization works with immigrant families whose earnings average around $1,300 a month.

Delsid helps them get on benefits they or their children legally qualify for, but some are opting out of any way. They just don't want to receive any benefits anymore.

especially when it comes to the documentation that's required. It's very hard and it's just getting harder for everybody. Her group has seen food assistance applications drop 30% this year and not because the need is less. It's very difficult to hear the stories from clients not being able to buy diapers for their babies, not being able to buy milk, etc.

You know, not having gas money. Snap cuts, an unpredictable economy. The future is uncertain, but plenty of families are struggling to keep food on the table for their kids today. In Houston, I'm Elizabeth Troval for Marketplace. Consider the American housing market right now. High mortgage rates, 6.9-ish percent this week. High home prices, median's about $415,000 or so. Tight supply of homes for sale.

It is tricky out there. And there's another wrinkle you might have missed in the news fire hose of late. President Trump's making noises about privatizing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the giant housing finance corporations that were put into government conservatorship during the financial crisis. Remember that? All of the above is by way of setting up this next piece from Marketplace's Mitchell Hartman about the mainstay of the American housing market. The affordable, the stable, the predictable, dare one say boring, 30-year fixed rate mortgage. Here's Mitchell.

Put simply, the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage is the engine that drives homeownership in the United States. Vanessa Perry is interim dean of the business school at George Washington University. Not only does the math work for homebuyers, the math also works for investors. Buyer's benefit, says Mike Fredentoni at the Mortgage Bankers Association, because...

It locks in the principal and interest portion of the payment over a long period of time.

If rates fall, you can refinance and pay even less. The math also works for the financial markets, because Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac buy up 30-year mortgages, bundle them into securities that they guarantee, and then sell to investors, reducing long-term risk. Which is why Fred and Tony says... More than 90% of home purchases are financed with 30-year fixed rate loans. It

And it really differentiates the U.S. market from other countries around the world. So how did U.S. homeowners come to have this great economic boon? The ability to get a really long-term bank loan to buy a house with essentially no inflation or interest rate risk, where the monthly payment doesn't change for 30 years, no matter what else happens in the economy? Well, it didn't used to be like this. The mortgage system prior to the Great Depression changed.

was very dangerous. Susan Wachter at the Wharton School says back then there were no long-term fixed-rate home loans. You borrowed to buy a house, paid interest for a few years, then the loan came due and you had to pay it off in full with a new loan, which became impossible when the banks failed and there wasn't any money to borrow. You were going to be foreclosed and out of a home.

So as part of the New Deal, Wachter says, the Roosevelt administration established the Homeowners Loan Corporation, ultimately leading to the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage we have today. Even if mortgage rates increased, if there was a depression or recession, you could go on paying your mortgage because the rate would not increase.

But here's the thing. For all that our 30-year fixed-rate mortgage is stable and flexible, optimized for buyers and investors, it hasn't resulted in a particularly high home ownership rate. About 65% of households own in the U.S. U.S. home ownership is lower than in Singapore, Mexico, and a long list of European countries.

Could our mortgages in part be holding us back? Ed Pinto, co-director of the American Enterprise Institute's Housing Center, thinks so. The problem with the 30-year mortgage is it amortizes the debt extremely slowly, much, much more slowly than, say, 20-year debt. True, the buyer gets a lower monthly payment with a 30-year mortgage, but they pay more interest over the life of the loan, making home ownership more expensive in the long run.

And, Pinto says, without Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and ultimately U.S. taxpayers backing those mortgages, investors wouldn't take on the long-term risk of buying them. He argues we'd be better off fully privatizing Fannie and Freddie, weaning the mortgage market off government guarantees and relying on the private sector instead, which would probably kill off the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage.

GWU's Vanessa Perry also favors reprivatizing Fannie and Freddie, but with strong government controls and guarantees.

I don't see any reason to rock the boat. The 30-year fixed rate mortgage has a very, very strong federal government and private investor supported structure. As she says, over time, that mainstay of American housing has made home ownership more affordable and available. I'm Mitchell Hartman for Marketplace.

Last stop on our retail survey is in the sporting goods, hobby, musical instrument and bookstores category, where overall spending in May was up a bit. Philip Rollins runs Offbeat. That's a comic and record store in downtown Jackson, Mississippi. In terms of business, things have been steadily growing. We've had big success on the comic book side.

The record side is kind of slumped a bit, but it's about even in sales. I sell mostly like used records. You know, I have a dollar bin section, so people are going through those and buying up a lot of those. I've had a couple of people come through and just buy like a full box or two. And it's the summer and this is when normally a lot of people would try to bring me in stuff to sell.

So I've told people, no, like we're not buying right now. It's too slow. That's where I'm at right now. I'm just trying to get rid of overstock and also steadily trying to keep like traffic coming in. Once again, there is construction happening in front of my store. There's no parking spaces up front anymore. So people are going to have to park around the corner. It's not too bad walks, but for people that have never been or UPS and FedEx, this is kind of a detriment to them.

I hope to see this construction done, for one. I want to be able to continue to keep the store growing. We started having artists showcasing the art gallery portion of our shop, so I want to continue to do that. But I hope, you know, to continue to grow and be better as a business. Philip Rollins, Offbeat is a store Jackson, Mississippi, open during construction, gang.

This final note on the way out today, working from home if you can. Yay! Flexibility, no wasted commute time, all of that. But also working from home,

Saw this in the Wall Street Journal data from Microsoft that shows that in the 12 months through this past February, the number of meetings people were logging into after 8 p.m. was up 16 percent from a year earlier. Also, by 10 o'clock after a pause, presumably for dinner or for kids, nearly a third of those people were back in their emails. Me? Lights out 1015. Forget about it.

Our digital and on-demand team, don't know what hours they work. Jordan Mangy, Dylan Mietten, Janet Wynn, Olga Oxman, Virginia K. Smith, and Tony Wagner. Francesca Levy is in charge. I'm Kyle Risdell. We will see you tomorrow, everybody. This is APM.