A muffin recipe that includes chocolate, blueberries and tariffs
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And thank you. Who could say no to tariff stories looking at either chocolate or blueberries? I'm David Brancaccio in Los Angeles. First, real estate. In about a quarter of the country's 100 largest metropolitan areas, the price and square footage of new homes are going down. That's from a report this morning from Realtor.com. Marketplace's Stephanie Hughes takes a look.

A lot of these cheaper, smaller new homes are being built in metro areas in the American South. We're seeing a lot of new communities developing kind of on the outskirts of a lot of these southern cities. Economist Joel Berner wrote the Realtor.com report. He says it's cheaper to build farther from the city centers. Also, in the Sunbelt, he says there's more available land and more permissive zoning than in, say, the Northeast. In the South, you can kind of do whatever you want.

And builders are reading the room in terms of what people want to buy, says civil engineer and developer Thomas Brett. He's based in Nashville, one of the areas where new home price and size dropped. The target right now is people that are just entering the homeownership market, which is a smaller home, a more affordable home. But economist Joel Berner is keeping an eye on tariffs on Canadian lumber. He says if they go up this fall as planned, that'll make new homes in the U.S. more expensive to build.

I'm Stephanie Hughes for Marketplace. The Federal Reserve left interest rates alone to continue waiting to see if tariffs and uncertainty surrounding policies cut into economic growth, jobs and or boost inflation. By one count, the Fed chair, Jerome Powell, used the word wait or its synonyms 22 times in his briefing yesterday. Bonds are down this morning with the 10-year interest rate up at 4.31%.

And here's one more number, a range really, minus 30 to 40 percent. That's the drop in shipping container volumes running between the U.S. and China, as calculated by the cargo company Maersk. Still, Maersk of Denmark is sticking to its profit forecast for this year, with shipping rates elevated because of attacks by Houthi rebels in the Red Sea. ♪

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When President Trump halted his big jump in tariffs just over four weeks ago now, it left in place a tariff hike of 10 percent that was essentially universal. The fourth largest island in the world, Madagascar, is still adjusting to the idea of 47 percent tariffs if and when Trump's pause runs out two months from now.

Beyond Good is a company that would have a tough time sourcing somewhere cheaper because Madagascar is a key part of the artisanal appeal of its Madagascar vanilla chocolate. Tim McCollum is the CEO and founder. His first impulse was to pass the tariff cost to customers.

So we have a $4 retail. That's no longer going to be a choice if there's a 47% tariff. And so our price goes up to $6.99 or $7.99. But the business is still whole and intact. But that's not what he opted for. And with an option B still not clear beyond good is, like so many businesses dependent on imports, has been left waiting to see where tariffs go next.

You get through something like COVID or last year in the case of the chocolate industry, we had a 300% increase in cocoa prices. You just get through those things and eventually you realize nothing's going to stop the business. It's just going to cause the business to pause momentarily and figure some challenges out that it wasn't thinking about.

a week ago or at the beginning of the year. Then there is a made-in-the-USA crop that still finds itself on the wrong side of tariffs. Turns out a lot of blueberries from Washington state do a loop through Canada for packing, processing, and cold storage. Hit that tariff buzzer. Northwest Public Broadcasting's Anna King reports. At one of the largest blueberry farms in the U.S., there are rows and rows of bushes to the horizon. This variety here is Draper.

Ray Billings' family owns this farm in Franklin County, Washington State. There are around 800 workers to harvest just this farm. Our decisions do impact other people. Decisions like how to navigate tariffs. That's why it's important to stay even keel and try to make the best decisions in the landscape we're given. Billings' family has other large farms in the U.S., but also in Canada.

Biltz says the blueberry industry is totally interdependent across the border. Most of his Washington fruit is processed and packaged in plastic clamshells up north in British Columbia. And then the berries come back, stickered as U.S. fruit.

That means his produce could be tariffed twice, once going into Canada and again on the return. Just the idea is putting his big plans in a blender. You know, we have projects on pause now on both sides of the border. About 40 million pounds of Washington's blueberries are shipped to Canada for packing or processing each year.

When the berries are ripening at the hilt of summer, it's go time to get them sold fresh or frozen right away. The tariffs could lead to cut off isolated berry islands without access to processing or cold storage. We're going to have a large oversupply. That's Paul Senga. He grows berries in the very north of Washington state. Plus, he distributes mass amounts of fruit around the country.

Sanga's imagining August with loads and loads of berries in his 10-acre shipping yard with no place to go. How do we in such a short window handle that? Alyssa Houtby is a director with the North American Blueberry Council.

She's hoping for at least some sort of silver tariff lining for U.S. blueberry producers. We want to see the tariffs in Vietnam addressed, in Japan addressed, Malaysia, Taiwan. Those are countries that import a lot of frozen, fresh and dried blueberries from the U.S.,

So if the Trump administration strikes the right deal, maybe at least some in the domestic blueberry industry will win out. In Franklin County, Washington, I'm Anna King for Marketplace. The Trump administration hopes its higher import taxes will encourage more jobs on U.S. soil. The tariffs are also taxes that raise money. Some administration officials have seen that as a way to help offset the Republican tax cuts that are in the works.

We're also waiting for confirmation after the White House flagged that it's come up with a new trade arrangement with Britain, a template that could shape deals between the U.S. and other countries. In Los Angeles, I'm David Brancaccio. This is the Marketplace Morning Report. From APM, American Public Media.

Hey, it's Jill Schlesinger, CBS News business analyst, certified financial planner, and host of the podcast Money Watch with Jill Schlesinger. It's a show where we answer your questions about your money, from investing to retirement and completing your taxes. I'll be your financial coach and help take the stress out of managing your money, but

Plus, we might even have a little fun along the way. Follow and listen to Money Watch with Jill Schlesinger on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts.