Marketplace - Could economic feelings become fact?

Episode Date: March 12, 2025

Just 44% of employees feel confident about the next six months at their company, a Glassdoor survey found — the lowest in nine years. Thank government layoffs, tariff uncertainty and a toughening job market. Are these negative predictions warnings of a coming recession? Also in this episode, the overall cost of food at home was flat in February, electric grid battery storage grew 66% in the U.S. last year, and Angelenos worry dumped wildfire debris could be toxic.

How long do you suppose we can go today without saying that word? From American Public Media, this is Marketplace. In Los Angeles, I'm Kyle Rizdall. It is Wednesday today, 12 March. Good as always to have you along, everybody. We begin on this Wednesday with an old reliable, a data point familiar to most of us and untouched so far by the new dynamics of this economy. We got the latest consumer price index this morning. Headline inflation in February eased a bit 2.8% year over year. That is down from 3.1% in January.

So good. Still sticky, but good. The specific category most sticky and stubborn is shelter. Price increases there were enough, all by their lonesomes, to account for nearly half of that monthly CPI increase. Meanwhile, another essential category, food at home, to the statisticians among you, mostly that's what you buy at the grocery store, came in lower than the historical average. And that too is good. But why does a trip to the supermarket still feel so bad?

Marketplace's Kristin Schwab starts us off. Inflation for food at home was flat in February, literally 0%. David Ortega is a food economist at Michigan State University. So there was no change in grocery prices, but there's a lot of movements within categories. So much movement within categories that a lot of the bad categories. So much movement within categories that a lot of the bad price hikes canceled out a lot of the good price drops.

In February, beef was up nearly 2.5%. And of course, the biggie, eggs, were up nearly 10.5%. Meanwhile, lots of categories were down. Bacon fell more than 2%,, fruits and vegetables fell half a percent. From a data perspective, you know, it's good news. Good news because if you're a little flexible with your grocery list, you can stick to your

budget. Maybe skip ground beef and go for chicken. But doing that kind of math does not make consumers feel good, says Charlotte Ambroseck, a food economist at the University of Minnesota. Our preferences are what they are. They're really hard to move. That's especially true for lower-cost, higher-value items like eggs. Two things matter. The price of eggs matters, but the price of the thing that I'm substituting also matters. An alternative like breakfast sausage might be too big of a price leap.

And for bakers, there isn't really a perfect substitute for eggs at all. And after years of high prices and grocery cart negotiations, people are tired, says Ricky Volpe, an agricultural economist at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. RICKY VOLPE I think consumer sentiment right now for food prices remains pretty negative. Remember, between 2020 and 2024, food prices rose by nearly 24%. And I think a lot of consumers continue to wait for food prices to come down. It's worth pointing out they almost never do. And that just feels bad, even if people's wages are keeping up.

I'm Kristin Schwab for Marketplace. And that just feels bad, even if people's wages are keeping up. I'm Kristin Schwab for Marketplace. On Wall Street today, buying the dip is the phrase you're looking for. We will have the details when we do the numbers. Well, look at us. We made it 4 minutes and 55, 56, 57 seconds into the program today without saying the T word. Tariffs are on, they're off. Tomorrow they could be higher than they were yesterday.

Honestly, it's anybody's guess. In the great trade war of 2017, businesses could apply for tariff exemptions for specific imports. This go-round, as far as we know, those exemptions don't exist. So past experience isn't proving all that useful. And anyway, as it turns out, this time is really different.

My name's Todd Adams and I'm the president of Santa Tube. And we are a manufacturer of stainless steel tube valves and fittings for the food, beverage and dairy market. And we're based in Lakeland, Florida. Last time in 2017, the exemption process was flawed from the beginning. We participated because we had to, but it was random who was selected for exemptions. It was random who could contest an exemption. And people who shouldn't have gotten exemptions got them and people who should have were denied. So I'm okay with the fact that we no longer have

the exemption process. The biggest issue right now is the uncertainty. There's no guidance. We've had to really scale back any kind of expansion plans. We had some initiatives already underway early this year that we were excited about, but unfortunately the capital required for that is now being allocated to a reserve account for tariffs. We don't know if tomorrow there will be an announcement that we're now looking at 300%

tariffs. These are not unreasonable numbers I'm throwing out based on the rhetoric I'm hearing. We just don't know. We want to see a game plan rolled out. We want to know that they will be stable for the next six months to a year, because that's how long our cash conversion cycle is. When I order material from China, it's six months in advance before it reaches the United States.

So the tariffs that are being applied to material now were ordered before the election. This is something that we could have never anticipated. The Chinese factories were paid long ago. So the way these tariffs were implemented, it was designed to tax American companies. China had nothing to do with the payments that went out to US customs that I made just last week. That is a third gripe, the the rollout of these tariffs.

And the timeline has been just unforgiving for the initial 10 percent tariffs. There was an allowance for material that was already on the water as of February 1st. But if it didn't arrive stateside by, I think it was March 7th, you don't get that allowance and you do have to pay the 10 percent. And unfortunately, we have no control over storms in the Pacific Ocean. We have no control over congestion in the Panama Canal, especially when there's a mad rush to get to the United States before March 7th. So a lot of shipments didn't make it. And we lose, we have to pay the 10%. And it just sounds a lot like a game because

How does that affect China? It doesn't affect them at all. They're not paying for that That's just a game that the US Customs is playing with US importers Ain't none of this a game Todd Adams the president of Santa Tube stainless steel tube valves and fitt are what they do in Lakeland, Florida. We were telling you yesterday about how small business owners are feeling given all the chaos in this economy right now, most specifically how a lot of small business owners are more hesitant in their hiring of late. Today the flip side of the employer-employee coin, a new survey from Glassdoor finds worker confidence dropped in February to the lowest it's been in nine years. A bit more than 44% of workers in this economy don't feel good about how the next six months

are gonna be at their companies. Marketplace Samantha Fields has that one. The hard economic data we've gotten recently, like the latest jobs report, shows the labor market is still solid. But of course, a jobs report is looking backward. Some of the forward-looking measures are the stock market as well as various confidence surveys.

Jed Kolko is an economist who focuses on the labor market. He says those forward-looking measures are not so solid, and it's worth paying attention to how consumers, employees, and business leaders are feeling, because how people feel can affect how they act. People who might be worried that they could lose their job might cut back on spending even before it happens. That in turn can slow economic growth. As economic uncertainty rises, Daniel Jow, lead economist at Glassdoor, says anxiety

tends to rise too, and confidence tends to fall. Everybody hates uncertainty. These days, Glassdoor found, people are increasingly worried about their own job security, especially those who work in government. There are a lot of workers who are seeing headlines about layoffs and worried about it affecting them. And he says people aren't just concerned about being laid off themselves. We also see a lot of workers who talk about the downstream impacts of layoffs. So feeling the pressure to pick up work that somebody was let go would have done.

And so there's a lot of people who are talking about layoffs in the context of overwork, stress, and burnout. None of this is a great sign for the economy, according to labor economist Catherine Ann Edwards. Recessions tend to tell us that they're coming. They give us lots of us that they're coming. They give us lots of warnings that they're on their way. And falling confidence is one of them. She says when we start seeing those warnings… Policymakers have the chance to adjust what they are telegraphing in order to try and

prevent that recession from taking hold. What's most troubling about the economy right now is that the messaging coming from the White House has already been, sometimes painful things have to happen. Instead of trying to make people confident again, I'm Samantha Fields for Marketplace. I was driving through Altadena the other day, the westernmost part of where the Eaton fire burned, and amid the dozens and dozens of burned out lots, I saw exactly two that had had all their debris removed. Point being, as we sit here more than two months on, cleaning up after one of the biggest wildfires in recent memory takes a while.

The first phase was hauling off truckloads of hazardous household stuff, the propane tanks and the batteries and the paint cans and whatnot. All of that went to landfill specifically designated for hazardous waste. Part two involved removing everything else. And that stuff isn't going very far at all. It's staying right in Los Angeles County, some of it ending up hundreds of yards from homes and parks and schools,

which is not, as you might have guessed, especially popular with the people who live in those homes that are near those parks and schools. Marketplace Kelly Wells reports now from Calabasas. Dozens of protesters are standing in a line at the entrance of the Calabasas landfill, about 30 miles from downtown LA, blocking trucks from carting in garbage. You might hear Calabasas and think really wealthy, like the Kardashians. And to be fair, Courtney is among the protesters today. But on this side of town, the sea of mid-century tract homes is more upper middle class. The median home sale price of 1.2 million dollars isn't much higher than the county average of nearly 900,000. They're mad because LA County

selected this landfill to receive the ash and dirt that was left over from the LA wildfires after the household hazardous materials got cleared. That's the job of the Army Corps of Engineers, which didn't respond to a request for comment. LA County Sanitation Department told me in a statement that all the toxic stuff gets separated out of the debris headed here. They cannot guarantee that it's non-hazardous and our argument is there's no way to sort through the ash. Resident Kelly Martino says this is a local municipal landfill.

It's not designed to receive hazardous waste. At this landfill you're not even allowed to throw away a paint can or an energizer battery. So why are you allowed to bring homes full of burnt batteries, iPads, televisions, cars? God knows what else. When you're sorting through ash and dirt, finding all of the toxic stuff is a tall order. Some of it might still be in there. Asbestos, lead, PFAS, arsenic, mercury.

Calabasas Dr. Tanya Altman is with the American Academy of Pediatrics. What I'm concerned about as a pediatrician is that in years to come we are going to see more cases of cancer and tumors and autoimmune issues and illnesses and diseases just from the environmental exposure of these contaminants. Thousands of residents live within a mile of this landfill. Dallas Lawrence leads the local school board. It's in the immediate vicinity of five schools. It's a hundred yards away from a park used by kids every single day.

This is not a not in my backyard, a NIMBY issue. This is a not in anybody's backyard. And until a couple weeks ago, this waste wasn't supposed to come here because it was coming from too far away. But the L.A. County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to allow it. The board also expanded the landfills' operating hours and the number of tons of waste it can take every day. The bordering city of Calabasas filed for a preliminary restraining order to stop the trucks, but the court denied it. Because legally, under current circumstances, the county

is allowed to send this waste to landfills where it wouldn't normally go. Here's Calabasas Mayor Peter Crout. The ordinance in 2020 was specifically designed to allow for an expedited cleanup in the event of an emergency declared by the governor. It's also happened before. The landfill took in debris from the last major wildfire, the Woolsey fire in 2018. There are upsides to doing things this way. This landfill is closer to some of the fire-devastated areas than the alternatives, which means truck trips are shorter so the cleanup goes faster and doesn't require as much

diesel fuel. The state can stop it at any time if there's a threat to public health, but until then... You know, I feel cheated. I feel blindsided. Kraut says the city of Calabasas didn't know this was coming until the day the public found out. Now, his hands are tied. The Palisades homeowners are entitled to a speedy cleanup. What I don't want to see is a speedy cleanup and a help hazard brought into the city of Calabasas.

After about an hour, police arrived and broke up the protest. On the last day of February, the landfill received its first loads of debris. Calabasas and its residents have filed lawsuits to try and stop it, but while they wait for the courts, the trucks keep coming. In Calabasas, California, I'm Kaylee Wells for Marketplace. Coming up. This is a soda that contains dietary fibers that feed bacteria already living in your system. Soda that's healthy...ish?

First, though, let's do the numbers. Dow Industrial's down 82 points today. Two tenths percent finished at 41,350. NASDAQ added 212. That's up 1.2 percent. Closed at 17,648. S&P 500 found 27 points, a half percent, 55 and 99 on a relatively calm day. Intel accumulated 4.6 percent today after Reuters reported that Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing

Company, TSMC, is trying to put together a joint venture to take over operating Intel's chip factories. Get this, TSMC has reportedly pitched joining that combine to Nvidia, which added 6.4% today, Advanced Micro Devices, which rang up 4.2%, Broadcom, which picked up 2.2%, and Qualcomm, which dipped 0.2%. That would be quite up 2 and 2 tenths percent and Qualcomm which dipped 2 tenths of 1% that would be quite the conglomerates no bonds down yield on the 10-year T-note up 4.31 percent you're listening to Marketplace This is Marketplace, I'm Kyle Rizdal You want to have a clean energy transition which the assumption is we do want to have You're gonna have to have batteries clean energy transition, which the assumption is we do want to have, you're going to have to have batteries.

Lots and lots of big, big batteries. Sun don't shine all the time, right? Wind, same. And it turns out that last year, according to the Energy Information Administration, the United States made pretty good progress on the energy storage front, increasing capacity by 66%, almost twice as, could be added to the grid in 2025, as Marketplace's Henry App reports. A battery storage system isn't much to look at, says Michael Craig at the University of Michigan. It's just a, you know, a large, unremarkable set of rectangular structures hanging around. But inside those unremarkable rectangles are lithium-ion batteries. Seth Feaster at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial

Analysis says they have something pretty remarkable. The ability to time shift power. Meaning store up power generated at times when demand for electricity is low and then push it out into the grid when demand is high. A lot of these battery systems are up and running in Texas. Feaster says the other morning at say 5 a.m. The market power price in Texas was below $20. But once you hit about 630, 7 o'clock, as demand increases, power prices jumped. So a power company could have charged its batteries on the cheap at 5 a.m. And then gotten two or three or four times that price for that power during the morning period of peak demand. And the costs associated with batteries have come down, says Joshua Rhodes at the University of Texas at Austin,

thanks to all the demand for them in EVs, laptops, smartphones and storage systems. The price of lithium has gone down by like 80 percent. The cost of batteries to install have gone down by a factor of two or three. Battery storage has also benefited from government incentives, including a tax credit in the Biden-era Inflation Reduction Act. The GOP Congress could repeal it, but says Allison Feeney at Wood Mackenzie, Even if the IRA phases out earlier or goes away entirely, we'll still see strong storage installs, but they just won't be probably as high.

They could stay strong, she says, because demand for electricity is likely to increase, and battery storage is, for now, a cheaper way to meet that demand. But there's one more wild card on the price side, Feeney says. You guessed it, tariffs. I'm Henry App for Marketplace. You walk down the soda aisle of your local Piggly Wiggly, there are choices galore. The old stand-bys, of course, legacy sodas, if you will.

And now something new. Gut Pops apparently are the new new thing for those trying to cut back on sugar maybe or just trying to be a little bit healthier. Laura Cooper wrote in the Wall Street Journal the other day about this shake up of the soda market. Thanks for coming on. Thanks so much for having me. Gut Pop, what is this? So Gut Pop, you've probably seen it in the supermarket, maybe walked by it, didn't know what it was, but they're prebiotic sodas. So like Ollipop and Poppy, a lot of people know Poppy from their two

Super Bowl commercials this year and last year. And yeah, it's really taken up. All Gen Z really enjoys it. Well, we'll get to Gen Z in a minute. And clearly, I must have just spaced out during those Super Bowl commercials because I have no memory of them. What are they supposed to do, this prebiotic thing, just to get the biology out of the way? Yeah, so obviously I'm not a doctor, but I spoke to a lot of smart people, dieticians, and doctors, gastroenterologists about this. And so essentially prebiotic versus probiotic. Probiotic, you might know kombucha, yogurt, things of that nature. Prebiotic is you might know, kombucha, yogurt, things of that nature.

Prebiotic is, you know, it's a soda, so this is a soda that contains dietary fibers that feed bacteria already living in your system. And probiotic puts more microbes into your system. So this is feeding what's already inside your body. And when you think about prebiotic soda and any perceived health benefits you could get from that, digestive health, people are all in on trying it. So, you know, as opposed to maybe having

just a regular Coca-Cola or a Pepsi, people are, they're still having those, just like not as often, they'll have multiple of these a day. These things are gonna cost me two and a half bucks a piece. Did I read that right? It really depends where you're buying them, but yeah, you know, soda also is around, it would be, it depends what you're buying, but similar pricing.

But yeah, no, it's really disrupting. There's actually something at Walmart called Modern Soda, and this falls under that, just that aisle where they would all live together all these different drinks I'm definitely gonna have to look for him next time I'm in the grocery store. I Mentioned coke and Pepsi the biggies clearly see this and they say we got to get in on this. Oh 100% I mean coca-cola already put out their first prebiotic soda. It should be on shelves I I haven't seen it yet, but I wrote about it back in, I guess that was February. And essentially, it is called Simply Pop, and it's their prebiotic soda.

I tried the strawberry at a conference, very strawberry. It has a lot of juice in it. It also has just things that are different from Ollipop and Poppy. I believe it's vitamin C for one and zinc. So people are trying to make sure that along with the prebiotic fiber that's in this drink, Coca-Cola tested and wanted to add other perceived benefits like vitamin C and zinc. So PepsiCo, I believe, plans to enter this space as well. It is definitely, it's picking up steam with Gen Z. And as you know, Gen Z is a share of the market everyone wants to get a piece of.

Yeah. Hey, do you drink these things on the regular or no? I drink soda. I have drank these. I just don't drink a ton of them. But I've tried them all, especially in reporting this. I drink a lot of them. And spoken to a lot of people who are just huge fiends of this.

Yeah, a word about the magnitude here. You point out that the co-founder and CEO of Alipop announced the valuation last week with a new round of investment puts that company at like 1.8 billion dollars, which is I mean, that's not peanuts. Yeah. Yeah, last month they raised money. I believe it was peanuts. Yeah, yeah, last month they raised money, I believe it was raised with JP Morgan in the lead. So, you know, it's not, this is a big business. Is it, you know, Coca-Cola, Pepsi business? Unclear, but it's definitely picking up steam and getting a following. And I think that all the big guys are aware that they want to be involved with this. I wouldn't be surprised if Kerry Dr. Pepper was also interested. All right.

Well, now I got to try it. Laura Cooper at the Wall Street Journal, beverages, tobacco and cannabis. Thanks, Laura. Thanks so much. This final note on the way out today, a brief, a very brief I promise detour into the foreign exchange markets. On Inauguration Day, 1 euro would have cost you a dollar and 4 cents. Today it's a dollar nine. So in what, seven, seven and a half weeks, the dollar-euro trade has weakened

on the dollar side a full nickel in a market where currency traders often make profits on tenths of a penny in swings. If you're thinking tariffs and chaos is the proximate cause, you would be right. A weaker dollar, of course, is good for American exporters. Their stuff is cheaper overseas. Bad for importers, though, and thus consumers who are now paying more. Our Media Production team includes Brian Allison, Jake Cherry, Jessen Duhler, Drew Jostat, Gary O'Keefe, Charlton Thorpe, Juan Calestorado, and Becca Weinman. Jeff Peters is the manager of Media Production, and I'm Kyle Rizdall. We will see you tomorrow.