WNBA franchises are a slam dunk in this iffy economy
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From Oregon Public Broadcasting in Portland, I'm Rima Kheis, in for Kai Rizdal. It is Friday, the 23rd of May. Good to have you along. You know, normally the Friday before Memorial Day weekend, it's kind of quiet, not a ton going on. But we know these are not normal times. And there is a lot of news to unpack today. So let's get into it. Amara Amokwe is at Bloomberg. Jordan Holman is at The New York Times. Hey, you two. Hi. Hey there.

Amara, I'll start with you. So we woke up this morning to, of course, more tariff announcements, more tariff chaos. Trump got on social media. He threatened to impose a 50 percent tariff on imports from the European Union. And he also warned about slapping a 25 percent import tax on Apple's iPhones if they're not produced here in the U.S. You cover the Fed. There have been a lot of conversations about how the Fed is weighing these kinds of headlines. If you're Jay Powell and you woke up to this news this morning, what are you thinking? Mm hmm.

If I'm Jay Powell, I'm thinking that the stance that I and other Fed policymakers have taken is probably the right one. And that stance is that the Fed should be on hold because there is just an immense amount of uncertainty around.

around President Trump's economic policies, tariffs being the chief among them, but others around taxes and regulation and immigration and all these things. And what we've heard from Fed officials consistently in recent weeks is that they just feel like they are going to be in wait and see mode, that this is just not a good time to be adjusting interest rates

when there is no clarity around where these tariffs will settle, when there are ever changing developments on the level of the tariffs. And so Fed policymakers have really signaled that in the near term, they're probably not going to be cutting rates and they really want more clarity on where all of this is going to settle out before they feel comfortable making any kind of adjustments.

Jordan, let's talk about how big retail chains are reacting. Last week, Walmart said, you know, because of these tariffs, we can't absorb these price increases. So sorry, consumers, it's going to fall on you. Meanwhile, we reported on how Home Depot said it's holding prices steady. How are retailers deciding whether to take the hit or make the shoppers pay more?

Yeah, from the reads of retailers this week, we heard from Home Depot, we heard from Lowe's, we heard from Target. All three of those retailers were really emphasizing that adjusting price, a.k.a. raising prices, was their last resort as they try to navigate this tariff situation, which is a bit different from what we heard from Walmart. They really took pains to say that they have different levers and whatnot. But the reality is that the prices are going to be raised in some other categories.

cases, like the vendors or their suppliers might have to pay more. It's not a matter of that just because these are big retailers, they don't have to deal with tariffs. They just have to pull out prices in other areas of the business. And how are they conveying that to investors? What are they weighing?

Yeah, they're saying that they're trying to change their supply chain. A lot of people are emphasizing the percentage of where they get their stuff from from China is dropping. You know, you're hearing people say by next year we'll be at 10 percent or maybe we're 25 percent. So they're really trying to give investors. They're trying to signal to them like, oh, we're not as exposed to China. But the issue, like even today with these tariffs, it's like, OK, but are you exposed to somewhere else?

So it's just a really changing dynamic and the communication styles have to change basically every day. How do you think the consumers are feeling? Do you have a sense of that?

Yeah, I think a lot of people are just confused right now. You don't know if you need to rush out and buy your iPhone because things are going to get really expensive or if you're just like, I shouldn't buy anything. So especially with retailers kind of not being as direct as possible about how much prices will be raised, if there'll be raised, it's just creating a really confusing situation for shoppers right now.

Yeah, no, I feel that I'm weighing those things myself. I want to talk about the bond market real quick. Amara, so the bond market had a big reaction this week to the House bill that would extend the Trump era tax cuts and add to the national deficit. It seems like there are growing doubts, right, about the strength of the U.S. economy. What is the market really trying to tell us about how investors are feeling right now?

I think investors have a couple of concerns, right? So the sell-off in treasuries that we saw earlier this week was because there are fears that, you know, no one is going to address the ever-growing deficit and debt problem that we have in this country, right? And so, you know, when the House passed their version of Trump's big, beautiful bill, that just kind of exacerbated those concerns. But then today, we saw that treasuries rebounded, we saw that stocks sold off because of

a lot of because of what we're hearing around tariffs. And so there are concerns that we have these ever-growing deficits, and then we could possibly see a slowing in economic growth because of the uncertainties around these trade policies, right? Uncertainties are a big problem for businesses.

They can't invest, they can't necessarily hire, they can't make the kinds of decisions that lead to economic growth. And so you see with these gyrations in the market, these concerns about where the US economy is headed, both in the near term with these tariffs and in the long term with our debt and deficit levels.

Yeah. I want to stick with you for a second and talk about hard data versus soft data. I feel like there's been this disconnect, right, between the hard data and the soft indicators like consumer sentiment and the business surveys, which are sounding pretty glum. So how is the Fed thinking about that gap right now? And when do you think we might start to see some of those things more aligned? Yeah.

Yeah. So the hard data is holding up well. And Fed officials point to that when they make the case that it makes sense for them to stay on hold. Right. Because if we were seeing the labor market data weaken or if we were seeing the inflation data really start to heat up, then that might be that might make a more compelling case for the Fed to consider moving. But because all of the economic data is pretty much stable right now, that gives the Fed comfort in saying, OK, we can remain on pause.

But Fed officials do pay attention to the softer data, too. And they have taken a note of the worsening in consumer sentiment. And they've also taken note of the fact that inflation expectations in some of the consumer sentiment data have risen. And Fed officials are watching that carefully. They say they're not too concerned yet. But it's really important for them to keep inflation expectations in check because if people start to expect inflation,

that prices are just going to be ever increasing, that makes it really hard for the Fed to do its job. And so they're paying very careful attention to where inflation expectations data are. But because of all the complications that Jordan was talking about, how companies are thinking about pricing and passing on price increases and all those things, it is really difficult to know when the hard and soft data are going to align. There's just so many complicating factors here that it could be several months before we really start to see it show up in the hard data. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, makes sense. Amira Amokwe is at Bloomberg. Jordan Holman is at The New York Times. Thanks so much, you two. Thanks for having us. Wall Street today. The market did not love the tariff news. We'll have the details when we do the numbers.

The legal battle between Harvard and President Trump continues. Today, a federal judge blocked the administration's decision that would have barred Harvard from enrolling international students. About 6,800 students, 27% of its student body.

But even if Harvard wins, the way the Trump administration has been dealing with colleges and universities, and international students in particular, is already having an economic impact. One that, as Marketplace's Kimberly Adams reports, is likely to last.

It's important to remember that with all the talk here in Washington about trade deficits. We have a trade surplus on services. Dean Baker is a senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research. In fact, it was a $294 billion surplus in 2024, according to the Commerce Department. And a big chunk of that is the foreign students, this $56 billion that we get from foreign students coming here.

Money they spend on tuition and fees, housing and food. The best students from places like China, from Europe, from India, they want to come to Harvard. And it's not just Harvard, but they have enormous respect for U.S. universities in general. But with student visas getting revoked and potential enrollment bans like Harvard is facing, foreign students are starting to look elsewhere. We saw that just with the spring pandemic,

sort of enrollment and intake, there was a 13% decline in enrollment of graduate students in the United States. Fanta Av is CEO of NAFSA, Association of International Educators.

And we know the spring semester has a smaller intake. The majority of intake for universities are in the fall. NAFSA's research shows foreign college students and the money they spend while they're here translates into more than 300,000 jobs. Madeline Zavodny teaches economics at the University of North Florida.

That's a lot of jobs supporting those students from professors to just kind of the support industries for colleges and universities and then the towns and cities in which those college and universities are. Zavodny looked into what would happen if the decline in foreign students continues.

So if we just kind of froze where we were and didn't get new ones, we would lose about 2% of our undergraduate students and 11% of our graduate students over the next decade or so. Which would mean that trade surplus we have exporting education would shrink pretty drastically. In Washington, I'm Kimberly Adams for Marketplace. As we talked about at the top of the show, a whole lot of tariff whiplash.

This morning, President Trump threatened 50% tariffs, this time aimed at the European Union, which of course comes just a week after the Trump administration eased up on tariffs against China, or at least until August. If you're having a hard time keeping up, just imagine what it must feel like to run a business right now. They're trying to plan for the future with no idea how tomorrow's headlines, or let's be real, even the next hour's headlines, how that might change things for them.

Eric Bauer is the owner of Turner Hat Company, which sells wide-brimmed hats. We checked back in with him. So before the tariff rollback, we had $60,000 worth of goods on the water. We had reached out to a couple of bonded warehouses in the port of Mobile, where we receive our products, to see if they could take our inventory and then basically hold on to it until we had more clarity on what was going to happen with the tariffs.

The bottom warehouse was actually pretty reasonable. We would have ended up paying $3,500 all said and done. Monday came around and it was a bit of a relief, but also I think the same feeling I've had over and over again of just why did we do this in the first place? That this was just going to go back to the way that it was. So while one, I was relieved that we had a firm plan going forward.

I was also frustrated that I had spent two or three cumulative days across the past couple of weeks reaching out to bonded warehouses, setting up all these terms, signing credit agreements, all that, just to have it all kind of go away. And that is also to say we did pay that bonded warehouse part of the agreement to have them unload and then reload the container. So it still ended up costing us $2,000 just to have this kind of partial delay.

The thing that I keep thinking about is cash, and I don't think that's unique to me.

I keep looking for ways to save and reduce investment and things that we would have done previously. We're reviewing every reoccurring subscription and cost that we have. But that's kind of my big overarching concern is cash. The cost of swapping out my supply chain, it involves a lot of upfront costs before we can get those up and running. And then two, if there's any downturn in the economic situation, we want to be well prepared for that.

So like everything else, the constant changes just keep forcing us to consider other options and spend time on priorities that weren't priorities going into 2025. That's Eric Bauer from the Turner Hat Company in Washington. And to follow all the headlines with the context you need as you start the day, make sure to tune into the Marketplace Morning Report hosted by David Brancaccio.

Coming up... It's really just about wanting to be a part of something from day one. Things are looking pretty good over at the WNBA. But first, let's do the numbers. ♪

The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 256 points, 0.6%, to close at 41,603. The Nasdaq dropped 188 points, 1%, to finish at 18,737. And the S&P 500 subtracted 39 points, 0.7%, to end at 5,802.

For the week, the Dow sank 2.5%. The Nasdaq also dropped 2.5%. The S&P 500 stumbled 2.6%. U.S. steel jumped 21% after word that President Trump gave the green light to a merger with Nippon Steel of Japan. U.S. steel is based in Pittsburgh.

Macroeconomic uncertainty related to evolving global trade policies is the why. Declining to give full-year guidance for FY26 is the what. Decker's outdoor maker of Ugg boots is the who. Shares stepped down 19%. Also withdrawing full-year forecasts is Ross, the discount retailer. For the same reason, tariff uncertainty, Ross shrank 10%. Bonds rose. The yield on the 10-year T-note fell to 4.50%. You're listening to Marketplace.

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That's V-A-N-T-A dot com slash marketplace p.m. for $1,000 off. This is Marketplace. I'm Rima Grace. Lithium. It is a crucial ingredient in electric cars. Helps power the batteries. Which, you know, also makes it pretty crucial for the transition to clean energy.

But zoom in and you'll find that pulling this metal from the earth comes with some real consequences. Lithium mining, it dries out the land and it's facing pushback from communities in so-called Lithium Triangle of the Andes. A newer method called direct extraction promises to use less water, but it's still a long way from becoming the norm. Emily Johnson has more from northern Argentina.

I'm at a llama farm outside the picturesque desert town of Tilcara, and Santos Manfredi is telling me about protests against lithium mining here in the mineral-rich province of Pujui. Mid-interview, he suddenly stops, listening. The river, he says. Let's go see.

he takes off for the bone-dry river basin next to his farm. It must have finally rained up in the mountains, because it's filling with water so powerfully that boulders tumble in its path. Here, in the spectacular multicolored mountains of the Lower Andes, el agua es vida. Water is life. During Carnaval, women pour spirits on the ground as offerings to Pachamama, Mother Earth in Quechua, and perform a protest anthem on reed flutes. ♪

For the territory, for the water, for life, they sing. Water was precious in this arid land long before mining companies began pulling salty brine from the aquifer so they could extract lithium carbonate. The most common method involves pumping the water into vast evaporation ponds, allowing the sun to do the work of concentrating the mineral. The

The process can take up to three years, but there is another method. The thing about direct extraction is that it's much faster, says geologist Ashlyn Francos. But just how much faster are we talking? Hours, she says. Days.

Interest and investment in direct lithium extraction has been on the rise in recent years, including from giants like ExxonMobil. The method allows for water to be pumped back into the earth once the lithium has been obtained. Better for the environment, but that's not all. It's more expensive, she says. And there's the rub.

Proving the technology is efficient and economical enough to work at commercial scale has been an obstacle to widespread adoption. Francos worked for California-based Lilac Solutions, one of several companies leading the charge to improve this technology. But lithium prices are down more than 80% from their 2022 peak because of a global oversupply. So it's fair to say companies are risk-averse. So for now, we're in the option of

So for now, we are on the cheap option, Franco says. But rising demand for electric vehicles and battery storage is projected to catch up to the oversupply. And when that happens, the painfully slow speed of old-school lithium extraction will be a problem.

Meanwhile, there's momentum against lithium exploration. In January, a summit in Jujuy drew more than 200 representatives from communities affected by lithium mining in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, and Peru. Here in Jujuy, a January Supreme Court decision upheld the community's right to be consulted on any lithium exploration in the watershed. If there are no agreements between the community and the government...

If there is no agreement between the community and the government, Eloy Quispe says, you can't do it.

We're standing on the vast, windswept salt flats known as Las Salinas Grandes. Quispe is a sixth-generation representative of the Cochaposo, Colorado, one of several indigenous communities here. What we have here is something worthy and wonderful for our future generations, he says. That is what we fight for.

In Argentina, I'm Emily Johnson for Marketplace. It is a tough time to start a business in this economy. Not exactly the friendliest of conditions. Unless, apparently, you're a women's basketball team. Last week, the Golden State Valkyries, the WNBA's first new team in 17 years, played their very first game. The crowd? Sold out. 18,000 fans packed into the Chase Center in San Francisco, a record for a debut. But the crowd was not the same.

Teams set to join the league next year over in Toronto and here in Portland are watching closely. They're taking notes, figuring out how to build a fan base from scratch. Marketplace's Savannah Peters has that story.

Way up in the nosebleeds of that sold-out opening night crowd were Zach Boyden and Alicia Gonzalez. Everyone there had been waiting a long time for this. Yeah. It felt very... It was so lit. They say the arena was loud. Julie Van Loo! Especially when Julie Van Loo led the Valkyries on a third-quarter run. Hype City here inside Chase Center as she lets out a roar!

It was invigorating. Like, yeah, we weren't even winning and it was just like, we're coming back. The Valkyries did not come back. They went down 84 to 67 to the LA Sparks. But Alicia and Zach didn't really care. It was worth the three-hour drive from Sacramento and the price tag. I mean, we paid, what, $800? $275 each for two of the cheap seats, plus gas and parking and some very expensive nachos. And they were like,

This couple came to their Valkyries fandom on different paths. Alicia's been hooked on the W long enough to remember when it wasn't cool. No one cared. I remember no one caring. Zach's only been following since the Caitlyn Clark hype drew his attention. But they're both all in on this brand new team. It feels like people are just ready to commit. That's Valkyries president Jess Smith.

who doesn't take credit for getting people to drop hundreds on a team before it ever played a game. The consumers are the ones driving this. Like, make no mistake, right? They are the ones driving that we want this product, we are watching this product, give me more of it. But the team's fierce branding and viral merch definitely help. Like exclusive Founding Guard letterman jackets just for 2025 season ticket holders. It's really just about wanting to be a part of something from day one. Something meaningful.

The team doesn't have any superstar players. It can't use legacy or rivalry or nostalgia to entice new fans. So it's selling them community. I think that a lot of people...

are hungry for that. Says Joanna Schwartz, a sports marketing expert at Georgia College and State University. It's something that people don't get from men's sports, especially that women don't get from men's sports. Schwartz says women's sports fans of all genders are driven by values in a way that men's sports fans aren't.

And the WNBA's expansion teams can fall back on that. That's part of the trick also for teams that are going to be below 500. That's a polite way of saying these fledgling teams might not do a whole lot of winning to start. In its 29 seasons, the WNBA has had moments of hype and expansion, followed by contraction. Six of its franchises have folded. But Schwartz says today's teams are operating in a different environment.

They don't have to convince audiences that women's basketball is worth watching. There's pent-up demand. You know, people want this. Just look at Portland's expansion team. It sold 7,500 season ticket deposits ahead of its 2026 debut, before it has a single player on its roster, or even a name. I'm Savannah Peters for Marketplace. ♪♪

This final note on the way out. More Americans are looking abroad. Between the months of January and March, a record number of Americans applied for British citizenship. That's according to figures from the UK Home Office.

Roughly 2,000 Americans put in an application, which I know sounds like a low number, but apparently it's the highest since records began in 2004. And it's a 12% jump from the previous quarter. Applications had already been trending upward late last year, right around the time Trump was reelected.

Our theme music was composed by BJ Lederman. Marketplace's executive producer is Nancy Fergali. Donna Tam is the executive editor. Neil Scarborough is the vice president and general manager. Big thanks today to OPP. I'm Rima Grace. Have a good weekend. We'll be back on Monday. This is APM.

Personal finance isn't just about spreadsheets and investing. It's emotional. Talking to your partner about money, negotiating a raise. Even the smallest decisions, like splitting a bill, can bring up feelings of shame or anxiety. I'm Rima Reis, host of This is Uncomfortable, a podcast from Marketplace about life and how money messes with it.

In this season, we get into topics like workplace drama, tough financial trade-offs, and the quiet tension that builds when love and finances collide. Listen to This is Uncomfortable wherever you get your podcasts.