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cover of episode Some trade deficit whiplash

Some trade deficit whiplash

2025/6/5
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Marketplace Morning Report

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A
Andrew Kim
B
Betsy Stevenson
D
Diane Swonk
J
Johnny El-Hashim
M
Matt Groh
S
Sarah Slain
S
Shannon Grein
Topics
Diane Swonk: 四月份美国贸易逆差的大幅收窄,实际上是前期贸易政策变动所导致的一种“鞭打效应”。第一季度为了规避即将生效的关税,企业大量进口了药品和黄金,导致四月份相关进口需求下降,贸易逆差也随之收窄。然而,新关税的实施也开始对制造业产生影响,部分制造商因为进口零件受阻而被迫停产,制造业的乐观指数也因此大幅下降。虽然钢铁关税在一定程度上促进了钢铁行业的就业,但同时也增加了制造业的投入成本,反而损害了制造业的整体利益。总的来说,贸易政策的变化对美国经济产生了复杂而多样的影响,需要仔细分析和应对。 Shannon Grein: 关税的影响不仅仅局限于商品贸易领域,也开始渗透到服务业。即使是不直接销售商品的服务业公司,也需要购买各种商品来维持运营,而这些商品同样受到新关税的影响。例如,一家新开的餐厅需要购买照明设备、桌椅等各种物品,这些都会因为关税而变得更加昂贵。目前尚不清楚这种价格压力是否会长期存在,但可以肯定的是,关税已经开始对服务业的成本结构产生影响。 Betsy Stevenson: 为了应对关税带来的冲击,许多企业在四月份提前囤积了大量库存。然而,随着库存的逐渐消耗,企业将不得不以更高的价格重新进货。这意味着企业之前所做的努力可能已经不足以完全抵御关税的影响。随着时间的推移,消费者也将逐渐感受到关税带来的压力,尤其是在夏季消费旺季到来之际。因此,我们需要密切关注关税对经济的长期影响,并及时调整应对策略。

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The trade deficit surprisingly shrank in April, following its largest-ever increase in the first quarter. This was partly due to reduced pharmaceutical imports from Ireland (front-running tariffs) and gold bullion imports from Switzerland. The impact of new tariffs on employment will be clearer in upcoming reports.
  • Record decrease in trade deficit in April
  • Reduction in pharmaceutical imports from Ireland due to front-running tariffs
  • Increased gold bullion imports from Switzerland in the first quarter
  • Potential minor impact of new tariffs on manufacturing activities
  • Plummeting optimism index in the manufacturing sector

Shownotes Transcript

Translations:
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Hey there, and thanks for listening. We want to know more about our audience. Stick around at the end of this episode to hear about how you can help provide feedback and have a chance to walk away with a $75 gift card. Some states look at prediction markets online and say, wait, isn't that just betting?

I'm David Brancaccio in Los Angeles. First, there's news the difference between what America imports and what it exports shrank by the most ever recorded in a single month. Goods and services imports way, way down. But to understand what really happened in April, you have to appreciate what happened the month before, given changing trade policy. Diane Swonk is chief economist at the audit tax and advisory firm KPMG.

It's a bit of whiplash here. We saw 55.5% narrowing of the trade deficit in April. That is simply stunning. And it follows the largest widening of the trade deficit in the first quarter on record. Now, a big part of that narrowing was a reduction in imports from Ireland.

of all places? Well, guess what we get from Ireland? Pharmaceuticals. And in fact, we saw a lot of front running of tariffs. Pharmaceuticals are actually on the list of things to be tariffed even separately, in addition to the country 10% tariffs that we see out there. And there was a lot of front running in the first quarter. So we didn't see as many in April. And what's this with Switzerland? We actually imported a lot more something here. I mean, it's not cuckoo clocks.

It's gold bullion. We imported a ton of gold bullion in the first quarter from Switzerland. And so now that we got it here, we don't need to import it again. Now, tomorrow will be the big employment report and the big hiring report. We didn't see the new tariffs reflected much in the employment reports from the earlier month. You think we'll start seeing it tomorrow?

We could see a very minor imprint from the New Terras on manufacturing activities. Some manufacturers actually had to idle production because some parts didn't make it in already due to disruptions from trade. And the manufacturing sector, certainly the National Association for Manufacturers, their optimism index absolutely plummeted.

in May. And that was before we saw the steel tariffs. We know from 2018, 2019, the steel tariffs of only 25 percent, and this is now at 50 percent. On top of that, those steel tariffs actually created 1,000 jobs in the steel industry at the expense of 75,000 in manufacturing because of higher input costs. Diane Swonk, Chief Economist, KPMG. Thank you for the briefing. Thank you.

Maybe the clip art for economic output might be a factory with a smokestack, but the service sector is also a huge part of what we do. And there is news service sector activity has fallen for the first time in about a year. The May data is from a survey conducted by the Institute for Supply Management. It found a lot of business people focused on tariffs. Marketplace's Henry Epp has that.

Higher import taxes are trickling into the service sector because even if they're not selling goods, service companies have to buy goods to operate. And a lot of those goods were subject to new tariffs last month. Take a new restaurant, for example, says Shannon Grein, an economist at Wells Fargo. You need the lighting and you need the chairs and you need the tables and you need all the things that set that operation up.

Companies in food service to retail to finance and insurance all reported paying more for the stuff they needed in May, according to the ISM. But what's not clear yet, Grind says. How sustained or sticky is this price pressure? It'll take a few months to find out.

What this report does show is businesses across the economy have been trying to prepare for the impact of tariffs. Many stocked up in April, but as they work through that inventory, they'll have to restock at higher prices, says Betsy Stevenson at the University of Michigan. So now, she says, The things companies have done to try to brace for the storm, it's starting to not be enough.

And soon, she says, consumers will start to feel more of a pinch from tariffs as the summer goes on. I'm Henry Epp for Marketplace. Stock markets now open and the Dow is down 114 points, three-tenths of a percent. The S&P and the Nasdaq are both down two-tenths percent. The European Central Bank was able to cut interest rates by one-quarter of a percentage point this morning, with inflation there dwindling. ♪

A court decision before the last presidential election allowed companies to take bets on who would win. You can also buy predictive contracts for all sorts of things, from your view on what the Federal Reserve would do on interest rates to who will win the Oscar for, say, best picture. But some states see this as gambling and want to treat predictive contracts as such. WYPR's Scott Massione reports.

Predictive contracts let people with a hunch try to cash in on that hunch for guesses about all kinds of things. Who might be the next Nobel Peace Prize winner or how many tornadoes will hit the U.S. this month? The options are taking trading apps by storm. CalShe, the predictive market company, now pairs with online brokerage platform Robinhood to offer the options. Sarah Slain's the head of corporate development for CalShe. We do think that this is going to be one of the largest financial instruments that's out there.

Trade prices fluctuate on demand, but the payout is always $1 per contract. So traders could buy 10 contracts predicting which team will win the NBA final. And if they're right, they get 10 bucks. If they're wrong, they get nothing. According to Slane, Kalshi processed more than a billion dollars in prediction trades this year for just two events, the Super Bowl and March Madness. It's capitalizing on predictions that traders have already been making for years.

Like GDP growth rates, inflation levels, unemployment, weather derivatives. Johnny El-Hashim is a partner at Holland & Knight who specializes in gaming regulation. But what is happening now is that we're, I could say we're like at a crossroads where financial innovation and public regulation are colliding in a way.

They're colliding because six states now say the contracts are essentially bets and are not properly regulated or taxed. They've issued cease and desist letters to Kalshi and Robinhood. It's a classic battle of state versus federal jurisdiction. At the end of the day, this is a federalism fight. Andrew Kim's a partner specializing in gambling at the law firm Goodwin. Congress left it unclear as to what kind of role that the state regulators should play in this space.

As of now, the states seem to be losing. The Federal Commodity Futures Trading Commission gave Calchi approval for trades last year, and state attempts to challenge that in court have so far failed. I'm Scott Mascione for Marketplace.

Question, can you spot super realistic deep fake videos online? Now you can take a test developed by Northwestern University to see how well you do at spotting them. At our sibling program, Marketplace Tech, our Nova Sappho took the test, sifting through a bunch of real and fake images. He got five out of six right, which makes him average. Give Nova a C. Here's researcher Matt Groh, who helped develop this litmus test, a series of things to look for to spot deep fakes.

The taxonomy here is anatomical implausibilities, like way too long neck, you know, six fingers kind of thing. Stylistic artifacts. This is when it's too waxy or too shiny. Or functional implausibilities. That's like where the guitar strings or the tennis racket strings are not taught like you'd expect them to be. Or any other kind of thing around that. Violations of physics. Or

where the shadow doesn't match up with the other shadows in the scene and what you expect the source of light to be. And then sociocultural implausibilities, where it just doesn't make sense with whatever the social or cultural or historic context might be. Anatomical implausibilities. You can hear more of this discussion and get tips on how to spot deep fakes. It's all at marketplace.org. A critical thinking test every time an image opens, right? Marketplace Morning Report from APM, American Public Media.

Really quick before you go, please complete a short anonymous survey by going to marketplace.org forward slash survey. It should only take about 10 minutes. And as a token of our appreciation, you can enter your name to win a $75 gift card when you've completed the survey. You do all of us at Marketplace a huge favor by filling it out.