A summer of fewer jobs for teens
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The U.S. and China may not have repaired trade relations, but they're back on track. I'm David Brancaccio in Los Angeles. U.S. and China trade negotiators have agreed to extend the partial truce after two days of talks in London. The next move is up to President Trump and President Xi, Marketplace's Nancy Marshall Genzer reports.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Besson, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, and U.S. Trade Representative Jameson Greer represented the U.S. in London. After the talks ended late last night, Lutnick told reporters the negotiators agreed on a framework for next steps. So once the presidents approve it, we will then seek to implement it, and it is a

By definition, two giant economies have lots of complex issues, but we pounded through, I think we pounded through all of them, and I think we've reached a framework to implement the agreements that have been reached.

That framework will be implementing an agreement first reached at talks last month in Geneva. It's meant to resolve issues the two sides thought were settled, like China's restrictions on exports of rare earth minerals to the U.S. Once that is resolved, Lutnik says, the U.S. will roll back its restrictions on exports of advanced technology to China.

A statement from the Chinese delegation says the two sides have agreed in principle on the framework. The deal now just needs a thumbs up from Trump and Xi. I'm Nancy Marshall-Genzer for Marketplace. And a federal appeals court has temporarily allowed Trump tariffs on most countries in the world to stay in place, pending a legal challenge to use assumed emergency powers to enact them.

Tesla CEO and former White House cost-cutter Elon Musk now says he regrets some posts about the President of the United States. Quote, they went too far. Tesla stock is up 2% in pre-market trading now. The U.S. Forest Service is now inviting back firefighters who left amid government efficiency firings and offers of getting paid through September if they resigned this winter. You see, there's something called peak wildfire season. Marketplace's Savannah Peters reports.

These Forest Service workers who keep getting sent home and called back are the same ones who spent the last few years bracing for a possible pay cut while Congress repeatedly kicked the can on making their pandemic raises permanent. Those people kind of have been burned. No pun intended by Michael Wara, a climate policy expert at Stanford. What the federal employees that support wildland fire really need.

are adequate pay and benefits and some degree of stability. And they really haven't had that. Now heading into the hottest and driest months of the year, the Forest Service has downed thousands of experienced firefighters and support workers.

It'll decrease the speed, efficiency, and scale that people can operate. Lucas Mayfield, president of the advocacy group Grassroots Wildland Firefighters, says the agency's invitation to sidelined workers may not be well-received.

There are a great deal of negative feelings that wouldn't make me want to jump off the couch. To perform the tough, dangerous work of fighting and preventing destructive wildfires, I'm Savannah Peters for Marketplace.

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Summer hiring of teenagers crests right about now, but seasonal jobs are predicted to be harder to find this time around, according to a report from the outplacement firm Challenger Gray in Christmas. And when teens don't find a summer job, there can be long-term consequences, Daniel Ackerman reports. When Rich Harrell was 17, his dad came to him one day just after the school year ended. And he said, be ready in the morning. I said, where are we going? He said, don't worry about it.

The next day, Harrell's dad dropped him off at a peach farm on the edge of their town in South Carolina. And that's where Harrell worked for the next seven summers. Working in the shed, working in the field, whatever was needed. Harrell is now a professor of hospitality at the University of South Carolina. And even though that's a world away from peach farming, he says those summers taught him something. Things I needed later in life.

the perseverance and discipline. These soft skills are a crucial benefit of summer jobs. This is what teaches you good work habits. Alicia Modestino is a professor of public policy at Northeastern University, and she says good things come to students who work summers.

their attendance at school increases, and they're less likely to fail courses. And they see higher average earnings in the future. Modestino says youth employment surged in the summers after the COVID lockdowns. Suddenly we decided to reopen the entire world, and we had this amazing boom in youth employment where...

We got to a really low unemployment rate. Summer of 2023, we were down to 10%. Now, though, unemployment for teenagers is up to more than 13%. What we're seeing is the general cooling off of the labor market. And unfortunately, you know, youth are the leading indicator here. So they are always the last to be hired, the first to be fired. And this year, there are just fewer summer jobs available for them, says Alison Shrivastav, an economist at Indeed Hiring Lab. And the

And a lot of that is, you know, because of what I'm sure everyone is sick of hearing, and that's economic uncertainty. She says with tariffs and travel restrictions, businesses just don't know how much demand they're going to see this summer. So they're more hesitant to staff up. Hostings for summer jobs even started a little bit later this year. You know, people really held off. But beyond the chaos of this particular summer, there's another force that could reduce work opportunities for teens, says Nicole Smith, an economist at Georgetown. And that's automation.

That's a slow-moving tsunami that has eaten up a lot of the repetitious entry-level teen jobs. Think the grocery store checkout counter. Retail stores now have all of these machines and you don't necessarily need a human being. There are still some summer jobs that require a human touch. Robot lifeguards? Probably not coming soon to a pool near you. I'm Daniel Ackerman for Marketplace.

And we've been monitoring work by the Trump administration to ease off prosecutions using the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. The Justice Department said yesterday it's now pulled the plug on about half of its investigations of alleged U.S. company misbehavior in foreign countries. And the government says there will be a new, more narrow focus on shenanigans that hurt U.S. competitiveness, suggesting corruption that helps U.S. companies may increasingly get a pass. In

In Los Angeles, I'm David Brancaccio with the Marketplace Morning Report from APM American Public Media.

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