What’s driving the GDP slowdown?
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That's right. All right, let's go. Let's go. I got things to do. I should find the script. You don't need a script. Hey, everybody. I'm Kyle Rizzo. Welcome back to Make Me Smart, where we make today make sense. Kimberly is off gallivanting around the great white north. Amy Scott is on the pod today. Amy Scott, as I live and breathe.

That's me. I'm here. Good to be back, everybody. Thanks for joining us on this Wednesday. It is April 30th. We are going to do what we do on a Wednesday, news and smiles and get this show on the road.

That's right. I think you should go first because I'm so intrigued by the minimal notes you have here. So we got an advanced look at first quarter GDP today, gross domestic product. And of course, as everybody listening to this podcast knows, there is a formula for gross domestic product. And the formula is C plus I plus G plus X minus M in parentheses equals GDP. As everyone knows. Everybody knows. C equals consumer spending.

I equals business spending. G equals government spending. And X minus M is exports minus imports, which is net exports. Okay? So all the consumer spending that happens, all the business spending that happens, all the government spending that happens, plus net exports, right?

gives us the entire size of this economy. And I bring that up because today we got the advanced look at first quarter GDP, which showed that gross domestic product in this country shrank. The economy actually got three-tenths of one percent smaller, according to that formula, than it had been in the prior month. Okay? And that's on an annualized basis. Now,

That is empirically bad news because one never really wants an economy to get smaller. But if you go into that formula and you realize that what happened was that

So much buying in this country, that is to say, so much importing of goods in this country was pulled forward, happened sooner than it ordinarily would have because of the threat of tariffs. Right. Imports were up sharply January through March. That changes that equation. And when you change the imports part of that equation, net exports changes. And so it looks worse than it actually is.

Now, three tenths of a percent shrinking in economy is bad, but consumer spending is still robust. Business spending is still not robust, but they are making capital outlays for things like, you know, equipment and new plants and stuff like that. And government spending, shockingly, somehow Elon Musk, to the contrary, has actually not gotten smaller.

Yeah, how's that doge working out for you? Right, exactly. So if you dig into the nuts and bolts of that GDP number today, it is bad, but not horribly, terribly bad. And I just want to make sure everybody knew that. Which is why you see the Trump administration, you know, celebrating it right now. Although definitely blaming Biden for what's happening in the stock market. Oh, that's the most ridiculous thing. So let's tell people what that is. He goes out on True Social today and literally the first line of the tweet is, this is Biden's stock market. And you're like, shut up, man.

Yeah. And then side by side, that is a declaration. This is Trump's stock market from January. Yeah. There you go. What do you got? Well, that's super interesting. And my my bit is is related. So I don't know if you heard Sam Fields, a story about this this morning, but yesterday, Punchbowl News. Oh, I did. Yeah.

Yeah, which is a D.C.-focused news site reported that Amazon was planning to start showing customers how much the Trump administration's tariffs add to the price of products. So, like,

it would be listed right next to the sale price. So, you know, this is how much you're going to be paying extra because of tariffs. So the White House immediately complained about this report. Press Secretary Carolyn Leavitt said the move would be, quote, hostile and political action and asked why Amazon didn't do the same with inflation under the Biden administration. President Trump reportedly called Jeff Bezos personally after this report came out.

And then Amazon quickly denied this was ever going to happen, saying it was something that was considered, but only at Amazon Hall, which is its low-cost store, but that it was never approved. But this is something that, you know, other retailers are either doing or considering doing. Timu, the Chinese real retailer, has added this, you know, 145% import charge that people see at checkout.

I read, I guess, in Bloomberg about this maker of showerheads that is slapping a Trump liberation tariff fee on top of its $150 showerheads. And, you know, meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg both had editorials today saying Amazon should do this. Right. I mean, it's not that different from listing sales tax. People know that fee is going to cost them more and who's paying it.

A tariff is another form of tax, which I think is a really interesting idea. This sort of transparency about who's paying what. I totally agree, especially because everybody in the Trump administration from Trump on down is gaslighting the American public saying we're collecting all this money from the countries upon which the tariff is placed. And that is just bullfunky. Yeah.

Yeah. So apparently it's not going to happen on Amazon, at least anytime soon. But Alison Schrager wrote in Bloomberg Today, quote, if anything, the Trump administration should encourage a tariff fee because it may drive consumers to buy goods made entirely in America, which are not subject to the tax. And isn't that one of the stated goals of the president's tariff policy?

One imagines it would be, but who knows? All right. Let's do a little smile and then get people back to their day jobs, shall we? All right. All right, go ahead. Okay. So I don't know about you. I'm a little anxious these days. Things are tense. Totally. A thousand percent. Things are tense.

So I saw this in the Denver Post. Anxious about the world, cow cuddling or bee buzzing might help ease your stress. Sorry, cow cuddling? Cow cuddling. You know how big cows are? They're huge. I'm not going to cuddle a cow. And the lead picture in this story is like a little girl leaning against a cow. Oh, my Lord. And I have to say, it looks really reassuring. Oh, man. So this is basically just a list of things you can do to chill. Definitely.

One of them is a ranch that offers these two bee huts where visitors can reserve 30 to 60 minute sessions to sit in wooden huts while their happy bees buzz safely below. There's apparently a membership plan if you want to do this. Wow. Apparently this is this whole thing called like

I don't know if I'm pronouncing it right, apitherapy, like apitherapy for bees. Well, a bee house is called an apiary, right? Yeah, so apitherapy maybe. And you can like eat honey made by the bees and breathe in the air of the hive, which apparently is good. But what about the stinging? Is there no stinging issue here? Well, it warns people who are allergic to bees to maybe skip this therapy. All right, good. That's me. So I'll just go hug some cows.

Well, that's the next one on the list. Cow cuddling. Then there's goat walking. Something called head spas and forest bathing, which I think means maybe just like lying in a forest and soaking it in. Anyway, it's a helpful list for those of you who might need a little bit of help unwinding. These are uneasy times. Mine is, it's not such a smile thing. And probably we should have had you go last because yours is a much better note to send people out on. But,

This today actually is the 50th anniversary of the fall of Saigon. Right. April 30th, 1975. Right. Everybody hopefully listening to this podcast knows what I'm talking about. On the 29th of April, 1975, one of the most famous pictures of that war was taken. The helicopter on top of what everybody thinks was the American embassy, but it wasn't really. With that long line of people, Vietnamese mostly, trying to get onto this last, one of the last Huey helicopters out of Vietnam. Anyway.

Damien Cave at the New York Times, who's their brand new Vietnam bureau chief, has been doing a whole bunch of stories on the 50th anniversary of the end of that war. And he did a story on that building.

And it's just in my continuing series on this podcast of History is Cool. It's about what's happened to Hanoi since or what's happened to Saigon since then, now known as Ho Chi Minh City. What's happened to that building and the people in it. It's really interesting and it's worth a quick read. And he's also got a photo essay on the photographs of that war. It's just it's pretty cool. So we'll have that on the show. That's such an amazing image. Well, here's a note to go out on that's happy. Yes.

I was on a flight for spring break. We flew from BWI, which people probably know is near D.C., to Denver. And on that flight were hundreds, well, maybe not hundreds, dozens of older veterans, including Vietnam veterans, who were on an honor flight to go out and visit the memorials in their name on the mall. Oh, that's so cool. Wow. It was the most moving experience. The whole plane, I mean, we must have applauded for those guys. Yeah.

five or six times. And then when we got off the plane in Denver, there was a whole group waiting to welcome them and gave them like an arch. And one of the Vietnam vets said, it wasn't like this when we came home from the war. You know, they were not welcomed with open arms. And so it was just really moving to see that happen and to show my kids, you know, this is what it means to fight for your country and

And the principles we uphold. There happened to also be on that same flight a group of high schoolers who'd just come back from debating about the Constitution. That's quite a flight you had. There's too much symbolism on this one plane. Yeah, it was quite a flight. History matters. History matters. We will go out on that one. Back tomorrow. Comments and questions, as you know, get to us at makemesmartatmarketplace.org. Voicemail comes to us at 508-UBSMART.

Thanks for spelling it. Yeah, well, I take that from you. You're the one who's like, it could be Y-O-U-U or it could just be you. And so now I spell it every time. Make Me Smart is produced by Courtney Bergseeker. Our intern is Zohan Malik. Today's program was engineered by Charlton Thorpe. Ben Taladay and Daniel Ramirez composed our theme music. Our senior producer is Marissa Cabrera. Bridget Bodner is the director of podcast. Francesca Levy is the executive director of digital.

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