Tariff anxiety turns fun splurges into stress purchases
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Paid for by Public Investing, Inc., member FINRA, and SIPC. Full disclosures at public.com slash disclosures. Never a dull moment in this economy, is there? From American Public Media, this is Marketplace. In Los Angeles, I'm Kai Risdahl. It is Wednesday today, the 16th of April. Good as always to have you along, everybody.

First of all, stocks. I'm sure you've seen or heard by now another day of tariff and trade policy-induced malaise. We will get there when we get there, as we always do. Second, though, and more substantively, which means it probably should have been first, the big thing that happened in this economy today was Fed Chair Jay Powell doing a Q&A at the Economic Club of Chicago. He said, among other things...

that it may well come to pass that the Fed's really going to get stuck between a rock and a hard place. Rising unemployment, the policy prescription for which is cutting interest rates, and rising prices, the policy prescription for which is raising interest rates. A challenging scenario, the Fed chair called it. Now, why is this what Powell's worried about? These are very fundamental changes in long-held, in some cases, policies in the United States and policy.

There's not any real experience. I mean, the Smoot-Hawley tariffs were actually not this large and they were 95 years ago. So there isn't a modern experience of how to think about this. Anyone? Anyone? Powell? Anyone? Jay Powell did say that the central bank is happy to stay where it is on interest rates for now.

Monetary policy, of course, does get all the headlines when it comes to the Fed, but it also does a ton of economic research. All the Ph.D. economists there do reports, analysis, data of all kinds, of which we got some today. Their March report on industrial production. The data is a little noisy, but the bottom line is that the industrial sector does seem to be slowing. Here's Marketplace's Mitchell Hartman.

Industrial production in decline, not a promising sign for economic growth. Except, says analyst Jonathan Secreta at CFRA Research. There certainly is a bit of noise here. The decline is really driven by utilities just due to a warmer period of weather.

Manufacturing, a subset of industrial production, was actually positive, led by durable goods like autos and business equipment. We're seeing this as really being driven by tariff-led pre-buying activity. Manufacturers trying to get ahead of any kind of punitive levies.

Aerospace manufacturing was up, driven by strong demand for commercial and military aircraft, says Richard Abulafia at Aerodynamic Advisory, which helps Boeing after quality problems and a strike hampered production. But just when we were getting back on track, people were pulling back because of the uncertainty associated with tariffs.

So here's the central theme from economists today. Yeah, the manufacturing data from last month looks pretty good, but it's already in the rearview mirror, explains Oren Klatchken at Nationwide. Once that front-loading impact eventually fades, we're not in for a particularly encouraging environment when it comes to industrial activity. Meanwhile, the burgeoning trade war poses a rising risk to major U.S. exporters, says CFRA's Jonathan Secreta.

Think about heavy machinery coming from companies like Caterpillar, Deere & Co., as far as large-scale harvesters. Also, a lot of components that go into commercial aviation. Production of all that could slow, says Socrata, if European and Asian countries escalate retaliatory tariffs or just stop buying American. I'm Mitchell Hartman for Marketplace. Wall Street midweek? Well, no.

We'll have the details when we do the numbers. President Trump's tariffs are changing how we consume. We are racing to buy stuff to get ahead of the price hikes that do seem to be in the offing. Essentials for sure, but discretionary purchases too. Marketplace's Savannah Peters talked with some people about the nice-to-haves that they are stocking up on. Aaron Weber is the cook in his family of six.

He says he keeps things simple, which is sort of hard to believe when you hear about the seasonings in his rotation. This is going to sound so pretentious, I'm sorry. Albanian sage, Turkish oregano, Mexican vanilla, Vietnamese cinnamon. Lots of fancy imported stuff that used to be hard to find in Kansas City, where he lives. Turkish bay leaves. It's nice to be able to pick from the world's menu, right? And I do not want to go back.

After the first and steepest April tariff announcements from the White House, Weber, who works in marketing and sales, decided to stock up. I asked him to share how much he spent. Oh, God. Yeah. As long as my wife doesn't hear this. Yeah, it was probably around, I think it was about $160,000.

Normally, Weber looks forward to perusing the aisles of his local Penzi's spice store. But this time, he was shopping under pressure. It's very easy to feel resentful. Consumers right now really may feel kind of helpless against the economic forces. Says Christine Whelan, an expert on consumer well-being at Emory University. And so when we feel that way, we try to solve it.

Whelan says even she feels the impulse to spend as a way to claw back some control, especially on the treats that make her family comfortable. One of the ones that I'm really wrestling with as a mom of five children is toys. Some 80% of which are manufactured in China. But she says there's a crucial distinction. Between buying a birthday gift and

that you would need for your kid anyway, versus filling your basement with random toys just in case. Whelan says you really have to know yourself and your spending habits to resist the urge to panic shop. If you, like, forgo buying something, prices might shoot up the following day.

That's Raymond Olgado, and his tariff-induced FOMO buy was a fancy new road bicycle. He says the upgrade will help him get outside his L.A. neighborhood on longer rides. My original plan was to buy it around May or June. But instead, he moved the purchase up to early April. Olgado, who works in e-commerce marketing, cashed out some stocks to afford the $5,000 expense.

Sort of a last hurrah splurge before he foresees reigning in his discretionary buying. But that word, discretionary, means different things to different consumers. I work in education, so I don't make money, so this is not good. Regina Krause in Austin, Texas, keeps a pretty tight budget, but she likes to treat herself to skincare from Korean and Japanese retailers, especially sunscreen. It's sunny here in Texas, so I use a lot.

In early April, Krause bulk bought about 10 bottles, plus some face wash and moisturizer online. The total was about $130, which hurt, especially after the tariff outlook changed. At first I felt like really angry that I did the buy. But then at the same time, I was like, you know what, I'm not going to risk it because clearly nothing stays.

The back and forth on tariffs is giving Krause some whiplash and turning purchases that used to be about self-care into a new source of stress. I'm Savannah Peters for Marketplace. We were in the business district of Altadena, California yesterday talking to business owners as they start the long road to rebuilding after the Eaton fire. I've never had to deal with anything that was a total loss.

So it's kind of a learning curve for me. We're looking for a temporary place. You know, there's not a lot of commercial buildings left. Today, we're about a mile east of there at one of the biggest employers in town. Altadena Town and Country Club is a five-minute drive from the business district. Driving there, you pass full neighborhoods burned to the ground, people in hazmat suits cleaning up debris, and burned-out cars, just metal frames is all that's left.

We pulled into the small parking lot at the back of the club's entrance. We're going to be good. It's not going to rain. It's not going to rain. Hey, I'm Kai. Nice to see you, Craig. How are you?

Tell me who you are and where we are. Craig Sloan. I'm the general manager of the Altadena Town and Country Club here in beautiful Altadena, California, or what used to be beautiful Altadena, California. Well, it is still beautiful. I mean, it's a tough day today, raining cold, but it's still a beautiful place. Can we walk in the gate there and just, you can sort of describe for me what we're seeing? Sure. This is our, what we consider our member entrance with close access to the tennis courts and the pool area. I'm just going to say it here that

I know we're talking about a country club. And with everything that Altadena lost, rebuilding a place like this might not seem like a top priority.

But what you have to know is the Altadena Town and Country Club was central to the local economy. It had about 120 employees the day the fire started, most of them from the area. Local teenagers would get their first jobs here working after school and on the weekends as lifeguards and kids club staff and food bussers. Now only six employees are left, Craig included.

We did our best to try and place as many of the employees as possible with other clubs and other locations. A lot of them have found jobs on their own. Some of them have decided to go back to school. Many of them have said, you know, let us know in three years when the clubhouse is rebuilt. We want to come back. So we've got a lot of really dedicated, loyal employees. Craig's been the general manager for the last 20 of the 27 years that he's worked here.

Before the fires, the club had about 640 members when you count partners and kids. The total number of people who were part of this club was closer to 2,000. Tennis courts, swimming pool to the left, and then the remains of... What was it? 28,000 square foot clubhouse. Wow. Wow. So what are you going to do?

We are going to rebuild. Are you? Yeah, absolutely committed to rebuilding and continuing to support the community in Altadena. 17% of members lost their homes in the Eaton fire. Craig has been displaced as well. His home in Altadena was damaged. He hasn't been able to move back in yet. Down some steps, we went into the patio.

I'm just coming around the corner here. This place was huge. I hadn't really been able to get a sense of the scale. Yeah, this is what we're seeing here. The fitness center in front of us was our lowest level, kind of our pool level. To our right is the main building, the clubhouse, or what's left of it, really. The fire ripped through the two top floors and left behind a jumble of melted and twisted metal, now rusty from the rain.

The bottom level is still standing, but when you look in through the windows, all you can see are piles of crumbled drywall. So the pool's intact, the courts are intact. I mean, the water's all green and gross, but that shouldn't be too tough, right? No, I think... Resurfacing probably and whatever? We will drain, replaster, do a cleanup of the tennis courts, the pickleball courts. We also have a spa and a toddler pool off on the right there that will get cleaned up and playground beyond that.

So we'll be able to come back somewhat operational over the course of however many months it'll take us to clean up. Could be four months, six months, eight months. The golf course is now a debris staging area, so we'll have to determine how safe it is to bring members back. L.A. County owns the golf course, and they've been letting the Army Corps of Engineers use it as a staging area for debris removal.

It's not just me, but I can't imagine somebody wanting to come to the toddler pool with their kid with a bunch of fire zone debris on the golf course right next door. Well, word came out this week, earlier this week, that they're only going to be placing clean debris there, clean concrete. That makes me feel much better as a parent, I've got to tell you that. They will be doing some demolition of that concrete so they can place it into larger trucks and haul it away. So it will be a staging area for that. Catch is...

The Army Corps isn't doing free cleanup for everybody. We found out a couple weeks ago, even though we opted in originally to the Army Corps debris removal, we found out that they were not going to be doing any debris removal for commercial businesses. So we pivoted and we've actually contacted a lot of private debris companies and we hope that...

Within the next couple of weeks, we'll have landed on a company and we'll start the cleanup process. As they start to bid on contractors, this club's going to be in competition with other commercial properties, like Joey's from yesterday, that need their debris removed as well. Let's go up the stairs, see what's going on. Oh man, here's a Christmas decoration. Yeah, we still have a few Christmas decorations that we were actually... The club had been planning to reopen on Wednesday, January the 8th,

But now all you see is a place stuck in time. There's a brick chimney with a pair of fireplaces, one somehow above the other. The floor that used to sit between them no longer exists. Situate this club for me in the Altadena ecosystem, right? I mean, it's, you know, not everybody in town belonged here and it's sort of up and away from the business district. Where do you fit? Where did you fit and where do you hope to fit?

Well, we were a pretty integral part of the club. We had organizations that met here on a regular basis. For example, Rotary Club had been meeting here for well over 50 years every Thursday. Chamber of Commerce held numerous events here at the club. Many of the local nonprofits in the area, the churches, held fundraising events here. It was a private club, but everybody was welcome here.

Craig told us rebuilding the 28,000 square foot clubhouse is going to take upwards of $20 million and three years. Are you insured for this loss? Yes. So you're going to be all right? I mean, it's hard to tell what construction costs are going to be going forward, what the cost of labor is going to be, what the cost of materials are going to be. So it's hard to know if the insurance that we have is going to cover everything. But we will manage through this.

So you're a long-time resident. You're a long-time employer, right? You run a business. And even though you're going to rebuild, it's going to be different. And I want you to tell me what you think is going to be lost because of this fire. That's a tough question. I would hope nothing would be lost, but of course there will be something. I think we're going to lose a number of our families who are not going to

be able to stay in the Altadena community. I mean, I could name a family who they lost their home, they lost their club, and they lost their children's school.

So where do you go from there? They're currently living down in Manhattan beach and I don't anticipate they're going to come back. I think as we go through the process, we get further down the road. I think we're going to be hearing more and more of those stories. Um, but we are going to be here. We're going to rebuild. We're going to bring back our, our, as many current members as possible. And then we're going to, we're going to bring in new members. We're going to new people. We'll be, we'll be, uh, living in Altadena and building homes here. And hopefully we will be, um,

attractive for them as well and they'll come and join the club as the vacancies become available. The clubs stopped billing members for their monthly dues, a couple of hundred dollars a month up to about $450 or so and it's obviously not bringing in new members. Those fees can run in the thousands. In the meanwhile, they've worked out a partnership with clubs nearby so that members can go for free and the kids' swim team can still practice this summer. Swim team I understand was pretty good.

Not bad. 31 years in a row, championships. And, you know, we're going to have swim team again this year, and we're hoping to get our 32nd. As long as they're closed, obviously, they're not bringing in any revenue. And Craig says they're going to have to dip into savings to make up what insurance can't cover. But building back is their only option because this business only works in this location. The Altadena Town and Country Club can't be anywhere but in Altadena.

If you want to see some video of what we saw while we were up there, we have it on our website. It is, of course, Marketplace.org. Coming up on the program tomorrow. Immediately, people started calling me, asking me, you can come and use my space. Running a business out of a temporary location. Coming up. When she asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I always said a garbage man. So I'm out here living the dream. One man's trash, another man's treasure. First, though, let's do the numbers.

Dow Industrials off 699 today, 1.75%, 39,669. The Nasdaq dropped 516 points, 3.1%, 16,307. S&P 500 down 120 points, 2.25%, 5275.

The rush to buy, buy, buy before tariffs hit pushed retail sales up 1.4% February to March. That's the biggest increase in two years. Cars, sales thereof, up 5.3% today. Bonds up, yields down 4.28% on the 10-year. You're listening to Marketplace. ♪♪

This Marketplace podcast is supported by the University of Illinois' Gies College of Business. Earn a world-class MBA degree completely online at your own pace. Through our engaging online MBA program, you learn from esteemed faculty and network with classmates on a global scale without having to put your career on hold. Take your career to the next level by applying what you learn in real time. Get started at onlinemba.illinois.edu.

Drexel University is a global leader in experiential education, allowing students to follow their passions and explore the world through advanced research, a renowned cooperative education program, and so much more, enabling them to discover their perfect career before graduation. Create your own path and experience what education can be at drexel.edu. And here we have a specimen from the early 2000s, a legacy investing platform.

Please don't touch the exhibit, folks. It could crash. Ready to step out of the financial history museum? At public.com, you can invest in almost everything. Stocks, bonds, options, and more. You can even put your cash to work at an industry-leading 4.1% APY. But the real game changer? Public was designed this century. The experience is clean, intuitive, and just makes sense.

Look, if you're still on one of those legacy platforms, we get it. Change is hard, but so is building your wealth on outdated tech. Discover why NerdWallet gave Public five stars for its ease of use and investment selection. And leave your clunky, outdated platform behind. Go to public.com slash marketplace and fund your account in five minutes or less. They'll even give you up to $10,000 when you transfer your investments. Only at public.com.

Paid for by Public Investing, Inc., member FINRA, and SIPC. Full disclosures at public.com slash disclosures. Are you looking to invest in municipal bonds? For extra protection, buy bonds insured by Assured Guarantee.

It guarantees 100% of your principal and interest will be paid when due. Assured Guarantee has demonstrated its reliability and financial strength for nearly four decades. That's why the bonds they back are one of the safest investments you can make. Visit assuredguarantee.com. Assured Guarantee, a stronger bond.

This is Marketplace. I'm Kai Risdom. We've been talking about safe havens quite a bit since the tariff palooza of April the 2nd. Places that investors put their money when the world turns to chaos. There is U.S. debt, U.S. Treasuries, right? Backed by the full faith and credit of the United States. But even that's considered less safe than it used to be. We saw bonds sell off after those tariffs were first announced, right? There's gold, the OG safe haven, if you will. It hit yet another record high today.

In 2025, there is also Bitcoin, which crypto types would love to tell you is going to be the future digital gold. Marketplace's Matt Levin's on that one for us today.

In the last couple years, when the stock market threw a temper tantrum, Bitcoin seemed to have an absolute hissy fit. Like back in the summer of 2022, when the Fed started raising interest rates to fight inflation. We had a large decline in Bitcoin associated with a pretty large decline in the Nasdaq. Lee Drogon is at Starkiller Capital, a crypto investment firm.

He says that's because investors have viewed Bitcoin more like a risky tech stock than as an actual currency capable of storing value.

But in the past few weeks, we've seen a significant amount of relative strength that Bitcoin's shown to other risk assets. It's been less volatile. When Bitcoin cost around 84 grand right before those massive April 2nd tariffs, and after dipping some, it's now right back at around 84 grand. Bitcoin true believers say that's a milestone. Bitcoin is a teenager from a literal perspective.

Matt Hogan is chief investment officer at Bitwise Asset Management. It's, you know, 14, 15 years old. And so it's going from this early start as this risky asset to its eventual adult life as a hedge asset, just like gold. Bitcoin backers argue that because it has a limited supply that can't be tampered with, Bitcoin should be immune from, say, the inflationary impacts of tariffs or eroding faith in the U.S. dollar.

Lee Reiners at Duke University is skeptical. You could apply that logic to any asset with a fixed supply, right? If that's, you know, if that's your thesis, like, why not? Like, why not beanie babies or like baseball cards or something, you know, or something else? Reiner says Bitcoin is still far more correlated with risky tech stocks than actual gold and

and worries that embracing crypto as something safer than it actually is could endanger the non-crypto economy. I'm Matt Levin for Marketplace.

There's an Adam Smith quote that I like to trot out from time to time. Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, 1776. Consumption, Smith wrote, is the sole end and purpose of all production. That is, the only reason we make stuff is so that people can use that stuff. Which, fine, we can argue about that. But one of the great challenges of this consumer economy is what happens after we use all the stuff that we use.

That's the setup for today's installment of our series, My Economy.

I am Joshua Costa of Sleepwell Recycling in Burlington, Vermont, Vermont's only mattress and box spring recycling facility. I've been in the waste industry since I was a young boy. My first job was in precious metal recycling, and I've always just been interested in garbage. If you ask my mom, she says when she asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I always said a garbage man. So I'm out here living the dream.

When I started in 2020, the main garbage company up here was charging $15.95 per mattress. And so I came in at 18 and I said, hey, just for $2.05 extra, we will recycle 75% to 100% of these items and keep the contents, the foam, the topper, the metal, and the wood out of the landfill. ♪

So we got the warehouse in August of 2020, and we had our fingers crossed to get 77 mattresses to pay the bills for the warehouse. And that week we ended up getting 900 from one hotel in southern Vermont. We paid our rent, needless to say, but then we had to learn how to do mattress recycling at a quicker pace than what we had thought of before.

We've slowly increased our prices with the market price, the throw it away, just because we spend seven to 10 minutes per mattress and box spring, disassembling it, sorting it out. So right now we are right around $35 per mattress.

A lot of our employees, or at least 50% of our employees, are new Americans. So they're either in refugee resettlement programs or just folks around town that haven't necessarily been given a great shot at retaining a good job. During the spring and summertime, our busy time, we can get up to right around 12 to 15 employees. ♪

Just moving one mattress is enough for most people in a day. But today we've moved over 125, not to mention rip them up and recycle the contents. So it's a really difficult business. But honestly, I just love doing a good thing. And when people come in and they see the hard work my guys are putting in, they go, wow, I am so glad that you're here in our state doing this. And I say, well, you're welcome.

Joshua Costa, Sleepwell Recycling in Burlington, Vermont. How about that guy? No matter where you lay your head, we need your stories to make this series work. Get them to us at marketplace.org slash my economy.

All right, we got to go. No time for a final. I had to get that Jay Powell cut in there. It's my bad. All right. Our media production team includes Brian Allison, Jake Cherry, Jessen Duller, Drew Jostad, Gary O'Keefe, Charlton Thorpe, Juan Carlos Torado, and Becca Weinman. Jeff Peters is the manager of media production. And I'm Kyle Risdell. We will see you tomorrow, everybody. This is APM. If there's one thing we know about social media, it's that misinformation is everywhere, especially when it comes to personal finance.

Financially Inclined from Marketplace is a podcast you can trust to help you get serious about your money so you can build a life you've always dreamed of. I'm the host, Janelia Espinal, and each week I ask experts important money questions like how to negotiate job offers, how to choose a college that you can afford, and how to talk about money with friends and family. Listen to Financially Inclined wherever you get your podcasts.