For high-end consumers, revenge travel never really stopped
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America's fifth largest trading partner now has a special trade deal. I'm David Brancaccio in Los Angeles. Let's better understand this new deal governing imports, exports, the U.S. and United Kingdom.

The first of many, President Trump says. My Marketplace BBC colleague Leanna Byrne joins us from the UK. Leanna, I see with your Minis, Range Rovers, your Jags and Rolls Royces, tariffs went up to 25% last month under this deal, down to 10%. Yes, for up to 100,000 UK-made cars a year. And then tariffs on steel and aluminium, they're also being slashed after earlier hikes.

And then beef also got a mention. Both countries will allow up to 13,000 metric tons of beef from the other side to come in tariff-free. They're also saying stateside over where you are, David, that overall this creates a $5 billion opportunity for American exports. Still...

Quite a bit of mystery here. Lots we don't know. Yeah, you're right. Quite a bit. I mean, there's no signed agreement yet. And the details from both sides, they were quite vague. We don't have clarity on timing. We don't have clarity on quotas enforcement or what regulatory hurdles might still apply. So while it's a de-escalation of sorts, it's definitely not a full free trade deal like the one the UK hoped to strike post-Brexit.

post-Brexit. All right. So your little set of islands over there, but there are many other countries. Could this be a template for the U.S. as it tries to figure out the arrangements with other countries? Well, possibly. I think you can see that there is a pattern here that's transactional. So you drop tariffs and

in exchange for market access. And that's a playbook Trump could apply to China. But you've got much bigger issues with China, like concerns over tech, subsidies and IP theft. So I guess I'll have to say we'll see. Oh, and Leanna, aluminum. No, aluminium. Come on. Thank you. The BBC's Leanna Byrne does an early version of the Marketplace Morning Report. It's in our podcast feed now.

The end of the year 2045. That's the new deadline billionaire Bill Gates has set for his folks to give away virtually all of his money. This is a faster timeline. When Gates started his philanthropy 25 years ago, his earlier idea was for the money to last several decades after his death. Marketplace's Stephanie Hughes has more.

The Gates Foundation will be spending more than $200 billion over the next 20 years. Gates Foundation CEO Mark Sussman says scaling up its giving will help it tackle major issues related to poverty and public health. We hope by that 2045 deadline, we will have eradicated some of the key diseases like polio. So no one else is going to have to fund that in the future.

Sussman's boss, Bill Gates, has been a vocal critic of the giant cuts to USAID. But Sussman says this accelerated giving timeline had been in the works prior to the cuts and that it wouldn't be able to replace those lost funds. Simple mathematics is, you know, neither we nor any combination of philanthropies can fill that gap. Sussman also says that the Gates Foundation's strength lies in things that the government and private sector either can't or won't do, like taking big risks on certain vaccine trials.

Still, Judea Moore with the Center for Global Development says the increased spending by the Gates Foundation could help plug some of the holes left by the missing government spending. You simply see a decline in the amount of, say, the deaths that would have happened would be reduced. Moore also says the Gates Foundation could provide a template to other charities that are trying to figure out what to do in what can be considered a time of crisis for international aid. I'm Stephanie Hughes for Marketplace. ♪

Thank you.

Economic uncertainty both here and abroad and foreigners leery of travel to the U.S. is hitting the travel industry hard. Stock in Expedia fell more than 9% yesterday after that company failed to meet profit expectations and said demand is down. And this week, hotel giant Marriott cut its sales expectations for the year after Hilton and Hyatt did the same, along with some airlines. Many are traveling less, as they say, but not everybody. And therein lies Daniel Ackerman's story.

Farrah Fasenden runs Videre Travel, a consultancy, according to its website, in the vanguard of luxury travel. Big things, you know, African safaris, all the big bucket list destinations. Amid the economic uncertainty right now, Fasenden says her well-to-do clients are taking longer to book trips. She says for her, It definitely makes a business owner nervous. But they are booking, often at accommodations with four-figure nightly rates. And they're certainly not flying coach.

to fly to Dubai, it's really uncomfortable to do that unless you're in business class. And so people are willing to spend to not ruin their vacation and arrive feeling good. This mirrors what airline and hotel CEOs have been saying lately in results call after results call. For high-end consumers, post-COVID revenge travel never really stopped.

For everyone else, though? I think there's more booking hesitancy. Mike Bellisario is senior research analyst at Baird. He says some companies are in wait-and-see mode about corporate travel. They may not be booking that all-staff retreat to, say, a mountain ski lodge just yet. If you're a big group that's going to sign a $20 million piece of business later this year, you probably didn't sign it. And government travel has tanked as President Trump tries to cut federal spending.

That sector typically makes up 4% of room demand at Marriott hotels. So not huge, says Jan Freitag, a travel analyst at CoStar. But that varies widely by region, right? Obviously, Washington, D.C. is completely dependent. And Freitag says some airlines are reporting fewer international travelers coming to the U.S.,

United specifically said demand from Canada down 9%, from Europe down 6% for the year. So those are all, you know, sort of manageable numbers, but certainly something that could get worse. Still, despite the declining forecasts for travel this year, there's a rule of thumb that many in the industry live by, says David Katz, a lodging and leisure analyst at Jefferies.

Travelers will travel, provided that employment holds up, right? So if you have a job, you're going on vacation. It's just a question of where and how you get there. So for those not flying first class to Dubai, Kat says maybe that means a road trip will replace air travel altogether for this year's vacation. I'm Daniel Ackerman for Marketplace. And in Los Angeles, I'm David Brancaccio. It's the Marketplace Morning Report from APM American Public Media.

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