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California summer adventures are calling. Get out there and explore behind the wheel of a brand new Toyota Hybrid with 17 fuel-efficient vehicles to choose from, like the all-hybrid Camry, adventure-ready RAV4 Hybrid, or the roomy Grand Highlander Hybrid. Toyota has the hybrid for you. Every new Toyota comes with ToyotaCare, a two-year complimentary scheduled maintenance plan, an exclusive hybrid battery warranty, and of course, Toyota's legendary quality and reliability.
Visit your local Toyota dealer and test drive one today. Toyota, let's go places. See your local Toyota dealer for hybrid battery warranty details. In which we have a look at our economic future. From American Public Media, this is Marketplace.
In Los Angeles, I'm Kyle Rizdal. Wednesday, today, the 25th of June. Good as always to have you along, everybody. We are going to begin today with an eye toward the calendar because it's going to be a busy couple of days to end the week. Tomorrow is going to bring us an update on gross domestic product, an early peak at the trade gap as well. Also, May orders for durable goods.
And then Friday, consumer sentiment and this week's featured economic attraction, the personal consumption expenditures index, which is, as we all know, the Federal Reserve's favorite way to measure inflation. I am also obliged to point out here, calendar-wise, that we are right now just two short weeks from when President Trump's pause on those global tariffs of his is set to expire and when we are supposed to be getting a whole bunch of new trade deals. 90 in 90 days was the promise. Marketplace's Subri Benishore takes it from there.
Beth Pride is in the business of helping other businesses manage international trade. We are knee deep in the tariff. She's president of consulting from BPE Global. Two weeks from now, we could get a bunch of trade deals. We could also see super high tariffs come roaring back. We could get an extension. We could get all of the above. I can't predict anything because I would have never predicted what has already happened.
So Pride is focused on bracing for all possibilities a business might face. What are we preparing? It's information so that they understand if they continue with their existing supply chain, what the financial impact is going to be. Managing uncertainty, not reducing it. So far, only one trade deal has been signed, and that's been with the UK.
I would say it's 80% aspirational and 20% substantive. Bill Reinsch is a senior advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. The U.S. and U.K. both made some concessions on making it easier to trade things like steel, beef, ethanol, but... Most of it is agreements to...
talk in the future about specific topics. Reinsch says this is probably a preview of what to expect with all the other countries. There are active negotiations with major trading partners, including Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Canada, Mexico, the EU, and China, he says. Expect agreements where there's a lot of commitments, a lot of kicking of the can, but also expect agreements where there are a couple substantive concessions
which will allow the United States to declare victory. As the world watches, there's one spectator in particular that may affect the outcome. Alan Wolff is a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. The stock market gets very antsy if the United States moves to put high tariffs on others. So I think that the president will try to be more selective in easing in the amount of tariffs that are imposed.
So Wolf sees the 10% baseline tariffs sticking around for a while. In an emailed statement, a White House spokesperson told Marketplace that President Trump's strategy of leveraging access to the American economy is paying off and the administration expects to announce more custom-made deals in short order. In New York, I'm Sabri Beneshour for Marketplace. Wall Street today, everything's still fine. We'll have the details when we do the numbers.
We heard yesterday, Daniel Ackerman did the story for us, that consumers just aren't feeling all that great. Not about right now, and not, according to the conference board, about the economy yet to come. Along those lines, General Mills reported quarterly earnings today. The maker of Lucky Charms and Cheerios and Haagen-Dazs, among many, many others, said
made less money than it had been expecting and said it's going to make less money in the year to come than it had been expecting. Said CEO Jeff Harmoning, consumers are, and this is a quote, pressured by widespread uncertainty and that we, that is to say the company, expect consumers to remain cautious and continue seeking value.
How, though, exactly does one seek value? Marketplace's Henry Epp explains. When retailers say consumers are value-seeking, what they mostly mean is people are trying to save some money because they're worried about their economic future. Mike Daher is with the consulting firm Deloitte. They're looking at purchasing alternative ingredients, store brands. For travel, they're booking alternative lodging. They're booking lower-cost airline fares. They're buying used cars.
A lot more consumers have been looking for those lower costs for a while now, ever since the big bout of post-pandemic inflation. Mark Cohen, the former director of retail studies at Columbia Business School, says the prospect of tariffs hitting consumer prices soon could keep the trend going.
Because, he says, a lot of brands won't be able to keep a lid on prices as they face higher costs.
They also can't necessarily use the same tactics now that they did a few years ago. Wendy Liebman, CEO of WSL Strategic Retail, says, for example, shrinkflation.
You know, same size package, but less in the package. That raised a lot of issues for people around, you know, do I trust you? I know what you're doing. I'm not stupid. Because value seeking, she says, isn't just about saving money. It's also about consumers getting better quality and convenience out of the money they do spend. Liebman says that's why a lot of price conscious consumers are still opting for Amazon Prime or Walmart Plus subscriptions.
So they see the value proposition of, I'll pay the whatever it is, $80, $90 a year, so I'm paying more, but actually I'm saving on the transportation to get to the store to save money. In times of chaos, Liebman says, consumers take control any way they can. Retailers just have to respond. I'm Henry App for Marketplace.
Time to check in as we periodically do on an economic indicator of the less traditional sort. And it comes to us from Winnebago, the company practically synonymous with American-made motorhomes. The OG RV maker gave investors a downbeat snapshot of its business today, lower profits last quarter, and it adjusted full-year revenue expectations down as well. RV sales may seem a bit more
I don't know, peripheral than inflation or unemployment data. But that is exactly the point. These are big, non-essential purchases. So whether they're going up or down can be a leading indicator of which way the economy is steering. Marketplace's Megan McCarty Carino has more now on what the RV index is saying. RV sales hit an all-time high in the pandemic as Americans hit the road to escape isolation outdoors. Purchase
Purchasers pumped the air brakes in 2023, and the market has kind of been puttering along ever since, says Morningstar analyst David Whiston. It's gotten to be a broken record. They keep saying, you know, we expect this recovery to happen, and then it just keeps getting pushed out. First by inflation, then rising interest rates, and this year... For most of 2025, it's been a lot of tariff headline news.
Consumers who are still buying are more often looking for value, opting for lower-priced and lower-margin towables over pricey motorhomes. And tariffs eat into profits even more, says Michael Hicks, an economist at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana. Most of the industry is based just 150 miles away in Elkhart, Indiana.
There are huge cost increases on what are probably somewhere between a third and a half of the component parts to a recreational vehicle. So the price is skyrocketing. Elevated interest rates have kept borrowing costs high for what can be a six-figure purchase. So there's not a lot of wiggle room for dealers to raise prices.
And the peak buying season of the year is almost over. And so I think what you're likely to see is a cascade of layoffs in the coming weeks. The softened demand doesn't reflect a lack of enthusiasm for the RV lifestyle, argues James Ashurst at the RV Industry Association.
Long term, we still feel very positive about the RV industry. He says surveys of consumers show high intention to buy over the next five years and attendance at RV expos remains strong. There's a lot of people that are interested. They're just hoping to have some of the headwinds removed. No one likes to drive an RV through a gusty storm. I'm Megan McCarty Carino for Marketplace.
The list of safe havens in economic days like these is pretty familiar. U.S. Treasury bonds, that's historically right, less so of late as we've talked about. The dollar, pretty much the same thing. Gold has been trading at record highs this month.
But don't sleep on silver. It's up about 75% over the past year and a half. It hit a 13-year high last week on the news out of the Middle East. Analysts are guessing it could hit 50 bucks an ounce by the end of the year. It's $37 today, if you're curious. And that'll trickle down to all of us because silver is used in countless industrial applications. But it's also the raw material for artisans and craftsmen all over this economy.
Marketplace's Savannah Peters brings us this story of indigenous silversmiths dealing with those higher input costs. At Thunderbird Supply Company's Midtown Albuquerque warehouse, you'll find hanks of glass beads, turquoise and malachite stones by the pound. And behind the sales counter, the company's bread and butter. Sheets, loops and wire spools of silver ready for artists to stock up.
You know, they come in and they buy this kind of stuff. And then when they show you what's made out of it. Bracelets and belt buckles and squash blossom necklaces. You're just like, wow, how do you even do that? Right. It's like magic.
Store manager Mike Chavez says most of Thunderbird's customers are indigenous. Navajo and Pueblo and Apache artists. Some who drive hundreds of miles to buy silver here. From Laguna, from Santo Domingo, from Santa Fe, some from Taos. But maybe not today. There's a little whiteboard by the cash register that updates the base price of silver.
A lot of people probably stay at home today and say, OK, I'll wait till tomorrow and see what happens. And if it stays up, they're like, oh, crap, I'm going to have to go buy it anyway because I got to finish this order. For Thunderbird's customers, silversmithing is a traditional art form and a livelihood, one that can feel hyperlocal to the American Southwest, but is tied to a global market.
Chavez has worked here since the 80s and has seen artists weather silver price swings before. I think all this political angst that's in the air is not helping things. And I think this time we're going to find out where the threshold is. In a bull market for precious metals, gold prices tend to heat up first. Then, as investors get priced out and seek a cheaper, safe haven, silver starts to catch up.
George Francis, a master Navajo silversmith, remembers the last time prices surged like this, around 2011. That happened. A lot of people quit.
silversmithing because it was just too high. They couldn't sell the products. Francis mentors up-and-coming artists on the craft and the business of silversmithing out of his studio in Waterflow, New Mexico. Silver's mandated by what's happening in the world that causes the prices to go up and down. And it's tough. It's tough. I always just tell other silversmiths, just charge more.
But Francis says lots of Native jewelry on the market is already undervalued. And when silver prices are rising on economic uncertainty, customers are often tightening their belts for the same reason. In fact, I had a gentleman that really wanted a certain ring, and I told him the price. He said it was not within his budget range.
Navajo and Hopi artist J.J. Otero recently raised the price of his high-end silver rings and bolo ties by about 10%. He can do that because he's been at it for a decade or so, and he's curated a loyal following on social media, where he markets his work to wealthy clients all over the country. The folks that have the means, they're not bothered by the increase in prices.
For now, anyway. But Otero says artists who serve more price-sensitive customers and those who sell roadside or via middlemen, like trading posts and galleries, have less pricing flexibility. I'm always reminded of what my dad told me that first year I started making jewelry. He would say to Navajo that my tools and the things I make with my tools are going to take care of you.
Today, Otero's mostly online jewelry business takes care of him and his aging parents. It allowed him to leave Albuquerque and his career in IT and move home with them to Torreon on the eastern edge of the Navajo Nation. But for Indigenous artists just now getting their start, he worries that path to a rural livelihood is slipping out of reach. In New Mexico, I'm Savannah Peters for Marketplace. ♪
Coming up. If you are willing to stay and clean, I will split my tips with you. Sometimes you got to get your hands dirty, you know. First, though, let's do the numbers. ♪
Dow Industrial is off 106 points today, about a quarter percent, 42,982. The Nasdaq, 61 points to the good, three-tenths percent, 19,973. The S&P 500 essentially unchanged, 6,092. Henry Epp was talking about value-seeking consumers. Dollar General down about a half percent today. Dollar Tree grew eight-tenths percent. Ross stores fell eight-tenths percent.
Savannah Peters was talking about rising silver prices. Pan American Silver, that's a mining company, shined up 1%. Wheat and precious metals discovered 8 tenths percent. Fortuna mining. Doug
dug out about a tenth percent. The RV index came to us courtesy of Megan McCarty Carino. Today, Minnesota-based Winnebago slowed nearly 10 percent. Indiana-based Thor Industries, whose subsidiaries include Airstream and Cruiser RV, down 1.3 percent. Bonds were up yield on the 10-year Tino, down 4.28 percent. You're listening to Marketplace.
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Visit your local Toyota dealer and test drive one today. Toyota, let's go places. See your local Toyota dealer for hybrid battery warranty details. This Marketplace podcast is supported by Dell, introducing the new Dell AIPC, powered by the Intel Core Ultra Processor.
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This is Marketplace. I'm Kai Risdahl. The idea that technology can change this economy faster than regulators and lawmakers can keep up isn't new.
The catch is that technology keeps on changing ever faster. And right now, the technology that's changing the fastest and causing the most disruption is artificial intelligence. As AI has gotten better, some of the images and the videos that it can create have gotten much, much worse. Texas has just put a new law on the books that will outlaw AI-generated child pornography.
Now, here's where I tell you this next story is going to talk about that a little bit. And Marketplace's Kimberly Adams is going to tell you about the reaction to that law from some Texas businesses.
Texas Senate Bill 20, which the governor signed into law over the weekend, makes it a felony to create or have obscene depictions of children. Stephen Collis teaches First Amendment law at the University of Texas. SB 20 prohibits the possession or access or creation of essentially child pornography, but that also includes images created by children.
Specifically, the anime and manga communities, says Jeff Trexler of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. Those are Japanese or Japanese-inspired cartoons and comics.
They've often been targeted for some mangas and some animes representations of characters that appear to be minors. Often not minors, but have that appearance of minors. Think adult characters that maybe have petite bodies and big childlike eyes, or fantasy stories featuring a thousand-year-old demon lord in the body of a ten-year-old. One of the things that's really tricky about manga and anime is
that it comes from a different cultural context. Manga editor, researcher, and journalist Deborah Aoki says in Japan, for example, there's a tradition of communal bathing, and that's often represented in anime and manga. It's no big deal.
But in America, as soon as you saw any kind of nudity, collective gasps of horror. But supporters of the law say some of the more adult-themed anime and manga can cross the line. The vast majority doesn't, but some books and shows do include sexualized depictions of preteens. And like any other medium, some content is.
is straight-up pornographic. And that's why the law worries comic book legal defense funds Jeff Trexler. It's the very definition of a chilling effect, where people say, well, you know what, this stuff is too risky to stock. It's a risk bookstore owners are already weighing. Benjamin Napier owns and operates a brick-and-mortar comic store in Mansfield, Texas, and gets about 15 to 20 percent of his sales through manga. He says when he first heard about the bill, while the legislature was considering it...
I was pretty immediately alarmed, but I kind of dismissed it at first as just being kind of ridiculous and kind of frivolous, you know, just kind of another sort of misguided puritanical onslaught. Now it's the law, set to kick in September 1st.
We're basically just waiting for the impact of it at this point. But Napier doesn't plan to change any of his inventory. I don't think that I should cow to the puritanical regime and just say, uh-oh, I better change my whole business and better change all my inventory for this. Neither the bill's sponsor nor the Texas governor's office responded to my request for comment. Law professor Stephen Collis at the University of Texas says the industry's concerns are valid.
But I also think that it's entirely plausible that this law could get rolled out and applied in a way that will find their fears unbounded at the end of the day. Collis says the law has been carefully drafted to pass muster under the First Amendment, and he thinks Texas authorities will want to avoid overreach, such as by going after all manga and anime, and run the risk that a judge rules the law doesn't pass muster. I'm Kimberly Adams for Marketplace.
What does it take to start a small business? Well, a business plan, yes, of course. First, though, an idea, right? And sometimes the best ideas come from just looking around and seeing what mess you can help clean up. Here's today's installment of our series, My Economy.
My name is Nadia Porter. My business is Club Clean, and we are a high-traffic bathroom cleaning company based in Durham, North Carolina. This business was actually inspired by dirty nightlife bathrooms because...
Why aren't people cleaning this has been a reoccurring thought literally every time I go into a public bathroom. And it's just an important need for the community. I will go in before the party starts or the event starts, and I will do a full comprehensive clean of the bathroom.
And that's really helpful because what I'll do is I'll come back in periodically throughout the night and do a quick clean and sanitation. And so I love what I do because I get to go hang out and party with the crowd and then go back and check on the bathrooms and go back to the fun.
The pricing varies. My first client that I have, she has three individual bathrooms and I charge her $200 a night for about a four-hour service. And then I have a non-profit client. They also have three bathrooms and I deep clean their bathrooms twice a month for about $500 even. When I do a consultation, I like to do it in a way that I can
I like to ask the establishment to actually reflect and rate their own bathrooms. And so I have like just a little scale that I came up with. The very first time that I cleaned, I have a really good friend of mine who's a DJ. He had an event coming up and I told him about it, this business idea. And he said, well, we don't have a budget for it, but you're welcome to clean.
And although I volunteered, there was a bartender that said, hey, if you are willing to stay until the end of the night and clean, I will split my tips with you. And that really helped to show me the value of the business, not just for the folks who are using the bathrooms, but for the people who need to clean them as well.
I love the entertainment world. I love people and places where we socialize, and I just want to help make them safe. Nadia Porter, she's the owner of Club Clean in Durham, North Carolina. We cannot do this series without you. Wherever you are, whatever you do, write to us. Let us know what's going on. Marketplace.org slash my economy. As final note on the way out today, in which clearly I am way behind the times, which is not in and of itself surprising.
But apparently the hot new thing in footwear is something called, and I am not making this up, something called a Snofer. S-N-O-A-F-E-R. A portmanteau of sneaker and loafer. Nike was late to the party too, it seems. Saw this on a hype beast that the company is finally making one. A Snofer, that is. A sneaker sole paired with a regular loafer upper. Price TBD, but I'm just going to say they're just really funny looking.
Our media production team includes Brian Allison, Jake Cherry, Justin Duller, Drew Jostant, 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.
This Old House has been America's most trusted source for all things DIY and home improvement for decades. And now we're on the radio and on demand. I think you're breaking into this wall regardless. I was hoping you wouldn't say that. I need to go and get some whiskey, I think. I would get the whiskey for sure. Subscribe to This Old House Radio Hour from LAist Studios, wherever you get your podcasts.