Taxes due today on goods sold tomorrow
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On the program today, it's not what the data is so much. It's what the data means from American public media. This is Marketplace.

In Los Angeles, I'm Kyle Rizdahl. It is Monday today, the 28th of April. Good as always to have you along, everybody.

We are starting to get to the point where we're going to get a better sense of the damage that President Trump's trade policies are doing to this economy. Remember, a whole lot of data lags. So we're going to get some pre-tariff information this week. The March trade balance, an update on gross domestic product and PCE, the Personal Consumption Expenditures Price Index. As all y'all know by now, the Federal Reserve's preferred measure of inflation index.

We're going to get the April jobs report on Friday and the conference board's consumer confidence survey for the month just ending as well. But we are also getting sort of a crystal ball thing going on with what's coming down the pike on the inflation front. Shein and Temu, which ship mostly from China, have already raised their prices to account for those tariffs. Marketplace's Kristen Schwab gets us going with how policy is affecting pricing and whether those new higher prices are likely to stick.

Companies usually wait as long as they can to raise prices. But Scott Lincecum, VP of Trade at the Cato Institute, says many firms have already hit their breaking point. It's quite rational to preemptively raise prices because you're going to need the capital to cover the eventual tariff payment. Tariffs are taxes owed today on goods sold tomorrow.

The next big change to tariff policy comes Friday when the de minimis exemption is set to end. That's a rule that allows parcels worth $800 or less to be imported tax-free. More than 90% of cargo enters the U.S. this way, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection. And it's key to the business plans of Sheehan and Taimou. You know, we're really reaching a crunch time now.

with all of this. Maybe tariff policy will soften. Maybe it'll become more extreme. Either way, importers can't wait forever. They have to start making decisions on pricing. Diana Smith directs retail and e-commerce at Mintel. I think one of the strategies that they could be employing is to use more of a dynamic pricing kind of model. Adjusting prices based on supply and demand as companies gauge how consumers respond to sticker shock. J.

Jason Miller, a professor of supply chain management at Michigan State, says that will also influence inventory strategy. Importers are likely to only bring in the best-selling items for which they make a strong margin for. It means our selection of toys and toasters may shrink. And Miller says eventually, as the supply of merchandise retailers stocked up on to get ahead of tariffs dwindles, more companies will increase prices.

A couple more months, we will certainly start to see an impact. There's also less cargo coming in through West Coast ports than there was a year ago. That could mean supply shortages and even more inflationary pressure down the line. I'm Kristen Schwab for Marketplace. Wall Street started a fresh week today, mostly calm. We'll have the details when we do the numbers. ♪

The reality of tariffs is that there ain't no getting away from them. Not for consumers, because if you're buying something that's imported into this economy these days, you're going to wind up paying more. And not for businesses, which have to figure out whether and how much of the tariff to pass along to said consumers. But...

There are, give or take, 300 places in the United States where businesses can park their imports and temporarily not get hit with tariffs while they figure out what to do about the tariffs. Marketplaces of Rebentishore has today's tariff economy primer about foreign trade zones.

Back during the Great Depression, Congress allowed the creation of little magical kingdoms where tariffs didn't apply. People can bring things into a foreign trade zone, import them in from all over the world with no duties paid at the moment. Jeff Toffel is president of the National Association of Foreign Trade Zones. Congress created these tariff sanctuaries because the U.S. then, as now, was behind a wall of tariffs, the Smoot-Hawley tariffs, some of them as high as 53%.

During those times, very similar to what we see right now, tariffs were making it difficult for U.S. businesses to compete on the global market. So Congress wanted to cut businesses a break. But there were some catches. Once the goods leave a foreign trade zone to go into the rest of the U.S., their tariffs do have to be paid. Think of it like a waiting room. Tim Huizenga is director of Warehousing Solutions for Traffics, a logistics company that also helps firms set up FTZs.

There is no limit on how long you can store it for. So the deferral of those duties is really, really big for a business in terms of managing their costs, cash flow.

It used to be that a company could choose to wait out high tariffs and bring goods out when the rates might come down. But the Trump administration has ended that option. Tariffs are locked in now. The FTZs are, though, still giving companies needed time and flexibility. Porfirio Waters is president of TradeFlex Group, a customs broker and consultancy that helps companies set up and operate FTZs. At least hold the goods in the foreign trade zone.

until their customer pays for the goods or agrees to pay for the extra cost of the duties. If a customer doesn't want to do that, the goods can just be sent back to where they came from. The National Association of Foreign Trade Zones says in some regions, there's been a quadrupling of inquiries about FTZs.

Like a couple weeks ago, I was on the phone from 7 in the morning till 9 at night, literally nonstop. Some companies use foreign trade zones by kind of becoming one. They can get their factory certified as an FTZ. That way, they import parts tariff-free, then assemble them into some new thing, and then when the final product comes out, they pay a lower tariff or no tariff on it.

And an automotive is very widely used because you can bring in different components, different raw materials that may have a higher duty rate than the finished good that is produced. So a high tariff on parts comes down to a low tariff on whole cars. But the Trump administration has also removed that option. Again, Jeff Toffel with the National Association of FTZs. The administration has inadvertently pulled the rug out from these companies. There's over half a million U.S. workers that work in these zones.

Without the ability to bring in parts duty-free, there's less incentive to manufacture final goods. Here, business models have been upended, and not just by the changes to FTZs, but by the unpredictability of it all. Ray Grove is with Thomson Reuters, which makes software to help companies operate FTZs. This is something that's impacting our customers across the board, regardless whether they're in oil and petrol, pharmaceuticals, vehicle parts, consumer electronics, vehicles, chemicals, you name it.

Foreign trade zones can help with tariffs. They can't do anything for uncertainty. In New York, I'm Sabri Beneshour for Marketplace. Sometimes when you look back, you realize just how much this economy has been through the past five years or so.

Case in point, the ongoing saga of Christina Stembel, who we call from time to time about the ups and downs of her direct-to-consumer flower company. It's called Farm Girl Flowers.

There was the shutdown of her warehouse in San Francisco just as the pandemic hit in March of 2020. You know, we had to throw out $150,000 worth of flowers. We had to furlough almost 200 people. There was the drama of those PPP loans. Remember those? The first round of which she missed out on because the money got snapped up so fast. Also, there was spending big money on COVID safety precautions.

Over $100,000 a month, keeping our team safe. The great shipping and supply chain crisis. Almost 50% of our Valentine's Day packages not delivered on time. Inflation. Roses were more than doubled. And oh yeah, the failure of not just her primary bank. I get a text message from my chief of staff and she says, have you heard about Silicon Valley Bank? And I was like, what? What?

but also her secondary bank. First Republic. And they're like, oh, get your money out immediately.

So how are things now, we wondered, with tariffs just a couple of weeks before Mother's Day? It definitely threw a wrench in everything. I feel like I've said that phrase with you a lot over the years. It's never when or if the shoe's going to drop. It's always when. We were getting ready the next Monday after that. We were supposed to launch our Mother's Day offerings. So we'd already priced it all out with all of our partners. And then we found out about the tariffs and everybody just...

kind of freaked out a bit. I'm not going to lie, you know, a little bit of freak out to start. You know, one of our bouquets, you know, usually has about 20 different types of flowers and greens in it. So, you know, they're sourced from everywhere, from the U.S., from South America, from Europe. So trying to figure out, you know... So like in one bouquet, you have...

Various sourcing supply chains, right? Absolutely. So, you know, at first it was 25% from Europe and 10% from South America. And, you know, then it's like, okay, well, which products can we sub or, you know, how much is going to go up from this partner and this partner? So it was a lot of spreadsheeting and trying to figure things out and then getting on the phone with every vendor to figure out what it was going to look like. We've talked a lot about

you and I, about the trials and tribulations of the logistics of your business. And I can't imagine how much, I mean, you just described it for me, but it's incomprehensibly more complicated now because of what the president is doing. Absolutely. It's, you know, and I wrote a letter to all of our customers and followers about it. And, you know, I was really trying hard not to get political about it because that's the first way to get people to just turn off their ears, especially because, you know, when I started, you'll remember,

You know, when we talked way back when, you know, we were only sourcing American grown flowers. And, you know, I really believed in this. I grew up on a farm in northern Indiana. You know, I tried the only American flowers and we ran out of flowers and we had to start sourcing internationally. I tried to do only American manufacturing. We made everything in-house from our, you know, 40,000 square foot warehouse in San Francisco. We made no profit. So, you know, I had to try a different way. And so it is a bit scary to me to see how we think that it's going to bring manufacturing back.

when I tried that. And it, you know, I couldn't go back to that. There's no way I could go back to that. You and I have spoken, I don't know, six, eight times over the last, I don't know, eight-ish years. I'm making that up. We could go back in the archives. But the point is, almost every time that you and I talk, you have a relentless optimism and hope. And granted, we're talking on a phone line and you and I have never met in person, but you sound a hair more, um,

Not downbeat, not defeated, but there's a... Okay, sorry about this pun that's about to come. The bloom is maybe off the rose. Oh, that's interesting because I actually feel the opposite. I think in the past... Good, good, good. Yeah. I think right now I have a lot of assurance because I've...

you know, had to pick up the pieces so many times that I know that we can get through it. I just know it's going to be hard where in the past there were so many times that I really didn't know if we were going to, I mean, and sadly it means people's jobs. It means, you know, cutting corners in ways that I don't want to cut corners, but I know we can get to the other side of it. So you probably are hearing a calmness about me that usually isn't there. I'm usually amped up on too much coffee. I'm probably hearing fatigue. Yeah. It's tiring. How much longer are you going to keep doing this?

You know, that's interesting. You know, I think when I talked to you a couple of years ago, I was really determined to sell the company. You know, that's what I built it for. I gave myself 10 years and then I gave myself 15 years. Even my passcodes on some of my computer things were like, you know, what that date was going to be. And, you know, always went past that date many times. Yeah.

Now I've completely changed my perspective. And I think that's also given me a bit of calmness a bit because now I'm not building it to sell and building it. I'll probably be doing this another 10 or 15 years at least. I'm just building it to be like the 99% of businesses out there that are small businesses and that aren't doing the Silicon Valley dream of trying to get, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars at the end of the day. And that has actually given me a lot of peace. Yeah.

So I'll probably be doing it a lot longer. We'll probably talk another eight to 10 times, hopefully. And there'll probably be at least 10 more shoes dropping. But I know we'll get to the other side of it. Mother's Day is coming up. Farm Girl Flowers. I'm just saying. Christina Stembel runs it. Christina, thanks a lot. I appreciate your time. Thank you, Kai.

Coming up... Broadway sales are up. Pedestrians can cross streets more easily. How taxing drivers is changing New York City. But first, let's do the numbers. ♪

Dow Industrial is up 114 points today, about three-tenths percent, 40,227. The Nasdaq subtracted 16 points, about a tenth percent, 17,366. The S&P 500, we'll call that flat, 55 and 28. DoorDash is offering to buy London-based delivery service Deliveroo for $3.6 billion. DoorDash ticked up less than a tenth percent today. Deliveroo rocketed up 16.5%.

Domino's Pizza reported a first quarter profit of just under $150 million in its earnings report this morning. Shares served up six-tenths of 1%. Papa John's, ticker symbol PZZA, up seven-tenths percent. Yum Brands, which operates Pizza Hut, delivered three-tenths of 1%. Bonds, basically flat. Yield on the 10-year T-note, 4.2%. You're listening to Marketplace.

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This is Marketplace. I'm Kai Risdahl. It's possible, possible, barring late-breaking tariff news, that the market will be a little bit more expensive.

that the economic through line of this week is going to be the labor market. By this time Friday, we're going to have a bit more clarity on what uncertainty is going to mean labor-wise with new data about job openings, JOLTS, which comes out tomorrow, and the April unemployment report at the end of the week, as I said, up at the top with Kristen Schwab. What we do know right now is that a lot of companies are taking kind of a wait-and-see approach for making the investment that is hiring new people. A lot of companies, but not all,

With some insights into who's hiring in this economy, Marketplace's Elizabeth Troval reports.

It's a great time to be looking for certain upper-level jobs, like in health care, says Alan Guarino with consulting firm Korn Ferry. So huge demand for hospital administrators, health care operations execs, senior clinical managers. Higher-level roles in AI and data science are also open, as well as certain parts of the energy marketplace, like utilities, construction, and green energy.

So renewable energy, modernizing infrastructure, government stimulus is driving some of this. So you've got senior project managers, engineers, top execs. Employers are also looking to fill roles in finance and accounting, says Karen Warren with talent firm Robert Half.

It's well documented that the employers we're seeing are still competing for a specialized talent, in particular in finance, maybe at that senior accounting, accounting manager space. These are bright spots at a time when the hiring rate is low, according to Yelena Shaletsova, an economist with the conference board. Companies are extremely cautious about hiring new employees. And this situation is exacerbated by

This extremely high level of uncertainty that we observe. That uncertainty is already showing up in compensation packages, says Jack Jones with the human resources firm Mercer. I think employers are being more cautious, not only given the

like kind of economic uncertainty, wanting to be more conservative with their compensation and how they're hiring. But also, he says, it's a steadier labor market, so there's less of a need to hike up salaries for new hires. I'm Elizabeth Troval for Marketplace. According to the Department of Agriculture, in the year 2024, American farmers exported $176 billion worth of agricultural goods.

In the year 2025, it is not going to be near that much. The latest batch of export data from the USDA shows that in the week after the U.S.-China trade war really got going, overseas sales of American cotton and soybeans were down 50 percent, 5-0 percent over the week before. Sales of U.S. pork off 72 percent.

President Trump has said, first of all, that there are going to be government payments to farmers affected by the trade policies he put into place that shut those farmers out of foreign markets. But also, the U.S. farmers should just get ready to start selling their crops and livestock here. As Marketplace's Savannah Peters reports, it is not that simple. Picture, if you will, 12,000 metric tons of U.S. raised pork.

That's the volume of orders canceled by Chinese customers in the first full week of the president's trade war. Yeah, we got to find a home for that pork. Carl Setzer with Consys Ag Consulting says China is a key destination for American meat with no ready international substitutes. Setzer says we can count on U.S. consumers to eat up some of the surplus. That's

especially ahead of the U.S. grilling season. But we can't snap our fingers and make the whole population grill a rack of ribs every night. Long term, there's just not much room for the domestic market to grow. Then there are crops like U.S. cotton, some 85% of which is exported. We've developed crops.

to supply foreign markets. Primarily China, says John Robinson, an agricultural economist at Texas A&M. He says the infrastructure needed to process cotton into fabric doesn't really exist here, so American farmers would have to attract new international markets. If there are bails, they're going to move, but they'll have to move at lower prices. And most farm commodities have a shelf life.

Peter Friedman with the Agriculture Transportation Coalition says manufacturers can pause production while they wait for clarity on tariffs. But a soybean crop or a hundred head of cattle? They keep producing. They keep growing. So if China's not buying and domestic markets can't absorb the surplus, what happens to those crops and livestock? You know, it's a darn good question.

And one the ag sector is trying to figure out in real time. But if the U.S. and China don't reach a deal soon, Friedman says some crops could be destined for landfills. I'm Savannah Peters for Marketplace.

Here's a story from the Marketplace Desk of incentives that really do matter. This one comes with a side order of politics. It's been almost four months since New York City started charging people to drive into parts of Manhattan, the part south of 60th Street specifically. Nine bucks for passenger cars, if you feel like taking a drive. New York, both the state and the city, say the first congestion pricing program in this country is working, that it's reducing traffic and it's raising revenue for the city's transit system.

The Trump White House, though, is trying to end it, calling it fundamentally unfair. Sean Duffy, the secretary of transportation, is given New York until May 21st to shut it down or risk losing federal funding and approval for other transportation projects. Oh, and there are lawsuits, too. Like I said, incentives. Marketplace's Samantha Fields has more.

On Fifth Avenue, just north of 60th Street and just outside the congestion pricing zone, Peter Caballero is double parked in front of a hotel, loading equipment into a white van. I'm an audio-video engineer and I do corporate events. He's based in Staten Island and these days he tries not to come into Manhattan much anymore because of congestion pricing. It's just too expensive. It makes no sense.

And when you've got to transport equipment, you've got no choice. So it sucks. When Caballero does have to come in for a job, he generally passes the toll along to his customers. Which the client is always not happy about. But you have no choice. I mean, who has to pay it? It's the little guys that are paying it. The guys are just trying to make a living.

Plenty of people, including the president, agree with Caballero. Congestion pricing is not exactly popular. But public opinion is shifting. A February poll by the nonprofit Partnership for New York City shows 37% of New York City voters support it now, more than when it went into effect.

And among those who actually drive into the zone a few times a week and pay the toll, 66% are in favor. Folks who commute from New Jersey or Long Island or the Hudson Valley see that they're saving time. I met Tom Wright, president of the nonprofit Regional Plan Association, on the corner of Canal Street and Broadway in lower Manhattan on a recent weekday afternoon. Six months ago...

Canal Street was a parking lot this time of day. I mean, all time of day, because it's a major east-west connector.

Before congestion pricing, this was one of the few ways people could drive from Brooklyn, Queens or Long Island into New Jersey for free. So we were essentially incentivizing truckers to use this local road as their route. And so it was a parking lot most of the day. But now that it costs $9 for cars and up to $21 for trucks to drive into lower Manhattan during peak times, Wright says that's changed. What we're kind of seeing here is

Things are moving along. There are still plenty of cars and trucks on the road, but traffic is flowing. It's down by about 8% in the zone. As a city planner, you try and model outcomes and make the best guess as to how a policy will work out. And it's remarkable how this one is working out pretty much exactly as we had hoped and anticipated. The new toll is also generating revenue for the MTA, the city transit system. About $100 million in the first two months.

Only about 10% of people who commute into Midtown and Lower Manhattan drive. Most take public transit, and it's in dire need of upgrades. We're operating with a 100-year-old subway system, which is often subject to traffic

track failures or signal failures. So these upgrades are essential. Sarah Kaufman, director of the Rudin Center for Transportation at NYU, says money from congestion pricing will also go toward improving bus service. It's a win for transit riders, especially if we're talking about advocating for lower income populations. Bus riders tend to have a

On average, lower incomes than car drivers or even subway riders. Buses are already moving faster just because there's less traffic. And Kalkin says there are other positives too. Overall, activity in the zone is up in terms of foot traffic and commercial activity. Broadway sales are up. Pedestrians can cross streets more easily and noise is vastly reduced. She says it's noticeably quieter by her office downtown on 17th Street.

In New York, I'm Samantha Fields for Marketplace. All right, we got to go. No time for a final today. Too much me talking, too much news. Our daily production team includes Andy Corbin, Nicholas Guillaume, Maria Hollenhorst, Eru Ekpenobi, Sarah Leeson, Sean McHenry, and Sophia Terenzio. 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.