Marketplace - The weakening dollar

Episode Date: March 13, 2025

The U.S. Dollar Index has fallen sharply in the last few weeks, thanks largely to tariff flip-flopping and overall economic uncertainty. Typically, significant sustained changes in a currency’s value indicate the relative strength of a nation’s economy. Should we be worried? Also: New tariffs triggered a January import rush that will ding GDP, student loan borrowers are temporarily blocked from income-driven repayment plans and Amazon pulls back on its brick-and-mortar grocery biz.

A dollar here, a dollar there. Pretty soon you can learn some things about what's happening to this economy. From American public media, this is Market Plans. In Los Angeles, I'm Kyle Risnall. It is Thursday, today the 13th of March. Good as always to have you along, everybody. You are familiar with major stock indexes, yes, the Dow, the Nasdaq, and the S&P, about which today, by the way, can we just not?

We though are going to talk about a different index as a way to get started today, one less familiar perhaps, but no less important. It's the U.S. dollar index, just like it sounds, a gauge of the greenback against the other major currencies. And we are talking about it because it's down more than 5.5% from a more than two-year high on Inauguration Day, falling really sharply in just the past couple of weeks. We should mention here that leading up to the election in November and until mid-January, the dollar was on a roll.

The U.S. economy was the strongest in the world. Markets figured the Federal Reserve was going to cut interest rates some more before too long and the tax cuts and other fiscal stimuli were coming. Things are, as you know, different now and that's playing out in the foreign exchange markets. Marketplace's Mitchell Hartman gets us going. Textbook economics will tell you that significant sustained shifts in a currency's value can indicate a country's economic strength or weakness.

And says Jonas Goltzerman at Capital Economics, the recent rise in the euro versus the US dollar. It's a pretty sizable move. The euro, it's about 6% up against the dollar. And the move last week in the euro was one of the biggest over the past three or four decades. It's a significant reversal in economic fortunes, says political economist Sharon O'Halloran at Trinity College

Dublin. Last year, the US was doing well, while Europe was very sluggish. Now, Germany's new government has pledged to boost spending on infrastructure and defense, which will juice the continent, says Jonas Goltzerman. In Europe, there's a newfound optimism, sense that maybe we hit rock bottom

and that now things are going to change for the better on the economic front. While here in the US, amid growing uncertainty about tariffs, inflation, interest rates, taxes, and federal spending, the stock market has fallen sharply. There's a question around big US tech firms. Are they going to be able to hang on to their perceptionism causing people in Europe and the rest of the world

to reconsider whether they want to put so many eggs into the US basket? Now, keep in mind, heightened global economic uncertainty typically boosts the dollar. But Goltemann says these are not typical times. We often say the dollar is a safe haven, but if the uncertainty is emanating from the U.S., it tends to be less true. Bottom line, says Joseph Gagneau at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

There is so much uncertainty, and the tariffs are so destructive. They're causing people to put spending, especially big business investment plans on hold. And that raises the risk of a recession, scares the markets, and would also call for Fed cuts in a weaker economy. And he says drive down the dollar. I'm Mitchell Hartman for Marketplace. Speaking of scaring the markets, one dismantles an economy at one's peril. We'll have the details when we do the numbers.

["Skyline"] This kind of got lost in the fire hose of news about this economy the past couple of weeks, but the Bureau of Economic Analysis told us the other day that U.S. imports rose 10% in January, which in turn drove the biggest surge in the trade deficit in a decade. Importers brought in a whole lot of electronics and pharmaceutical products and a bunch of other goods that are exposed to the Trump administration's new tariffs. And while it kind of goes without saying, because we've already said it a lot, there are still plenty of questions around which countries and which products are going to be affected. One thing though is for certain, the trade barriers that the White House is building

around this economy are going to end up affecting one of the key ways that we measure this economy, gross domestic product. Marketplace's Justin Ho reports. First, a quick refresher. Gross domestic product measures the country's production, and it's the sum of consumer spending, which accounts for about two-thirds of it, plus business investment, plus government spending, plus the balance of trade, also known as net exports. Which is exports minus imports.

Megan Schoenberger is senior economist with KPMG economics. So imports tend to count against the GDP calculation. Exports count towards the GDP calculation. The reason imports are subtracted from GDP is because an imported t-shirt, for instance, isn't something an American company made. It's not our domestic product. So Schomburger says all those imports in January will have a negative impact on GDP growth. While none of the other categories of GDP are expected to collapse in the first quarter. We could see a very weak first quarter number due to the fact that imports surged. The balance of trade lately has averaged around 4 percent, the size of the economy as a whole. GDP growth has been averaging a little over two and a half percent a year.

Schoenberger says there are some big caveats to keep in mind with January's jump in imports. For one, that surge probably won't last. It is probably likely that we're just going to see it for the first couple months in the year. Importers will stock up and then they may be in a wait and see mode. The other caveat is that the surge of imported goods will have a positive effect on other parts of the GDP formula once those goods are sold. Take the example of imported computers and computer parts. Jason Miller is a professor of supply chain management at Michigan State University.

The number one sector right now, and I think of with investment booming, is construction of data centers and putting the equipment that needed to support that. Miller says that boom led to a 55% increase in imports of computers between October and January. Some of the computers are going to end up as capital investment in equipment. Others would end up in personal consumption. Bottom line, that big surge of imports in January will drag down GDP, but it won't cause it to tank, says George Perks, macro strategist at Bespoke Investment Group.

Because we should see offsetting increases in investment and consumption under the hood over the course of the quarter and perhaps in the next quarter or later this year. Perk says a bigger concern is what could happen to GDP if the trade war continues or escalates. In that case exports which add to GDP are likely to fall. Because we're gonna see countervailing duties applied by trading partners it's already happened from China it's already happened from China. It's already happened from Canada. And if imports fall at the same time, Perk says there are plenty of domestic industries that would feel knock on effects. So for instance, transportation of those goods, retailing of those goods, the services that

those goods enable, those are all relatively high value add activities. And if you don't have those imports and you haven't spun up domestic production to offset them, you're left sort of in the lurch. In other words, slowing down trade slows down economic growth. I'm Justin Hup for Marketplace. The reality that underlies this next item is that actual brick and mortar physical retail is hard and being really good at e-commerce does not make it any easier. The news here is that Amazon is consolidating its grocery business after a rough couple of years for its retail stores. There's going to be some synergy, I think, is the generic corporate speak, for what the company is going to do with its Amazon Go convenience stores and Amazon Fresh grocery

stores, having closed about half of those tech-centric convenience stores over the past couple of years and slowed expansion plans for its grocery stores. Interestingly, Amazon does still have more than 500 Whole Foods locations, the upscale stores over the past couple of years and slowed expansion plans for its grocery stores. Interestingly, Amazon does still have more than 500 Whole Foods locations, the upscale chain that it bought in 2017. Marketplace's Megan McCarty-Corino has more now on why and how the e-commerce giant has struggled to branch into brick and mortar. Amazon, which is a marketplace underwriter, launched its Go and Fresh Store concepts in

2020. And the focus was on high tech. Customers could walk in, pull products off the shelf, and walk out, their purchase tracked by a system of sensors. It didn't go well. Phil Lembert at Supermarket Guru says the novelty wasn't enough. When people go shopping for food, guess what they want? They want food. They want to talk to, you know, Betty the Baker and Bob the Butcher and, you know, sell the seafood monger. Amazon has mastered the technical side of retail, says Neil Saunders, a consultant at Global Data, optimizing supply chains and logistics for its online operations. Stores, you certainly need those skills, but you need softer skills as well. It's about the customer service.

It's about the experience, about the ambiance. It's about how customers feel. Last year, Amazon began revamping its grocery stores, adding everything from better lighting and more colorful signage to a bigger selection of products and a heavier emphasis on fresh prepared foods. The problem now, says CFRA analyst Arun Sundaram, there just aren't enough of them. I think to really be successful in grocery, you need to have a strong physical footprint

as well as a strong online presence. He points to Walmart, which has almost 5,000 locations. There are 15 Amazon Go convenience stores and 60 Amazon Fresh grocery stores nationwide. Amazon has been tentative about plans to open new stores. My guess is they're kind of keeping this warm as and when there might be a day where it makes more sense to go after it. Dylan Cardin, an analyst at William Blair, says low margin grocery stores might not be on the front burner

for big capital investments right now. Grocery is not the species of industry, right? Especially since AI started turning heads in tech. I'm Megan McCarty-Corino for Marketplace. You know, sometimes you see a news item and you're like, wait, what? How does that even work? Daniel Ackerman pitched a story in our meeting this morning about restaurant worker productivity, and I said, wait, what? Because the classic formula for worker productivity is widgets produced per hour worked,

and how does that even work in a restaurant? There are something like 15 million people in this economy who work in restaurants, and it turns out, and this is from a study out this week from the National Bureau of Economic Research, that those workers have gotten about 15% more productive since the early days of the pandemic as measured by the value of restaurant sales per employee. And it follows decades of basically stagnant productivity among restaurant workers. Here's Daniel. Jonathan Fox has owned Fox Bros. Barbecue in Atlanta for two decades. We were one of the original spots in Atlanta. Start serving smoked wings and Atlanta is a big wing town.

So our smoked wings really took off. When the pandemic closed their dining room, Fox had to figure out how to keep those wings fresh all the way to customers' homes. He wrapped them in foil, insulated the takeout boxes. We would do test orders where we'd deliver to ourselves, find the quality, and just try to ensure that it arrives in a quick manner. And there were benefits for restaurants that figured this out, because takeout hasn't gone away.

Americans have gotten used to doing takeout and delivery. We like it. Chad Mutre is chief economist at the National Restaurant Association and he says some restaurants have even retooled their staffing. Most extreme are so-called ghost kitchens. Where there really is not a front of the house, right, it's really just an operation to cater to takeout and

delivery. For sit-down spots too, takeout allows the same number of staff to produce more meals says Robert Byrne, director of consumer research at Technomic. That's great incremental business. You know the guest counts can go up without having to actually service them in your dining room. That's why the study said restaurants are more productive lately. It's a complete shift in labor from hospitality to fulfillment. But Betsy Stevenson, an economist at the University of Michigan, says it's really hard to compare the restaurants of today with the before times.

With takeout, consumers don't get table service, they have to clean up themselves. It's just, we're sort of buying a different product. She says restaurants are just meeting a different set of customer needs these days. Needs that apparently include a plate of smoked wings consumed on the couch. I'm Daniel Ackerman for Marketplace. Coming up. Think of it like a normal screen, but instead of visual pixels, they're tactile. Making sure everybody can follow the game. But first, let's do the numbers.

Yeah, you getting sick and tired of the wah-wahs yet? I am. Dell Industrial is off 537 today, 1.3%, 40,813. The NASDAQ subtracted 345 points, just shy of 2% there. 17,303. The S&P 500 down 77 points, one and four tenths percent ended today at 55.21. The S&P, by the way, the broadest of the market indices,

now officially in correction. That is, come on, you know this, I said it the other day, down 10% from its most recent high. Megan McCarty-Corino was telling us about Amazon struggles in the brick and mortar world. Amazon down 2.5% today.

We got widely divergent outlooks from some other retailers today. American Eagle predicts its annual revenue will come in below expectations. American Eagle Outfitters sagged 1.4% today. Build-A-Bear Workshop sees a good year ahead. The stuff toy retailer expects its profits to beat expectations despite those tariffs. Build a bear workshop? A publicly traded company? Who knew? Down 4.10% today. Bonds up, yield on the 10-year T-note down 4.27%. You're listening to Marketplace. If you want to be savvy about the economy, the Marketplace newsletter is just what you need.

Every Friday you'll get explainers and analysis that make sense of everything from the moving markets to grocery prices. No jargon, no hype, just smart takes delivered to your inbox. Sign up today at Marketplace.org slash subscribe. This is Marketplace. I'm Kai Rizdal. There are, give or take, 42 million people in this country carrying student loan debt. Debt that totals in all almost $1.8 trillion, second only should you be looking for context to mortgage debt.

Obviously, repaying all that debt, individually, of course, is a challenge, and the landscape for borrowers is constantly changing. Our example today are income-driven repayment plans. Marketplace's Samantha Fields has more. By the time Shanna Lorienzo finished college and grad school, she had taken out about $100,000 in student loans for both. A decade later, she now owes much more than that. That's because her interest rate is 6.5%,

and she's been making payments on an income-based plan. So a lot of the time, and in my case, it doesn't even cover the interest. And that's how you get that ballooning, out-of-control loan balance. Income-driven plans cap a borrower's monthly payments at a certain percentage of their income, usually 10 or 15 percent.

The idea behind income-driven repayment is let's make a program that lets people pay in a way that isn't going to cause them to go into default. Jane Fox, with the Attorneys Chapter of the Legal Aid Society Union, says these plans have been around for 30 years, and they're critical for many borrowers, particularly those who might not be able to afford their student loans on a standard repayment plan. The cost of higher education is just astronomical. So most people rely on loans, understanding that when they graduate, they will be able to make a monthly payment that is reasonable.

That's the promise of income-driven repayment. Another promise? If borrowers still have a balance after 20 or 25 years of paying, it will be forgiven. But people who are trying to get into income-driven repayment plans right now can't. Hurses Yu at the Student Borrowers Protection Center says that's because of an ongoing court case over one particular income-driven plan the Biden administration tried to implement called SAVE. Which was going to be the most affordable option for millions of borrowers across the country. And a number of Republican-led AG's offices sued the Biden administration and

got the court to block the SAVE plan. That was last spring. But a few weeks ago, a judge expanded that injunction and blocked other income-driven plans, too. It's a mess right now, and it has caused a lot of chaos for a lot of borrowers. This is a particularly big deal for borrowers who are not already on an income-driven repayment plan, but want to be, says Jane Fox with the Legal Aid Society Union.

What is likely to happen is that millions of Americans will be sent bills for their student loans that they will not be able to pay. Lacey The difference between a monthly payment on a standard repayment plan versus an income-driven one might be hundreds of dollars. Jane Fox And if you don't know what your student loan payment is going to be next month, so many economic decisions ripple out from that, right? People can't make decisions about whether they can take a different job, whether they can move, can they pay down their credit cards.

Borrowers have been panic-emailing Betsy Mayotte, who runs a nonprofit called the Institute of Student Loan Advisors. And she's trying to reassure people that income-driven repayment plans won't disappear permanently. The Department of Education is required to offer at least income-based repayment and another income-driven plan to borrowers. When people will be able to start applying for them again, though, is unclear. And Adam Minsky, a lawyer who works with borrowers, says this is happening at an already tumultuous time for people with student debt. After nearly five years,

The collections machine for the federal student loan system is turning back on again. All the pandemic-related flexibilities and relief, all of that has ended. And so things are going to get real for people very quickly with this stuff. For Shanna Lurienzo, it's a stressful time for this to be happening. She's been working at a nonprofit and paying her loans for nearly 10 years, so she should be almost eligible for public service loan forgiveness. Knowing that PSLF is going to be there at the end was kind of my saving grace. But she doesn't know what's going to happen now, because her loans are caught up in the

ongoing court case over the save plan, and she's not able to make qualifying payments. She says all of this uncertainty now feels like a feature of the student loan system. Under the last administration, it felt like a moving goalpost all the time. The Biden administration did a lot with loan forgiveness and repayment plans, which benefited and confused many people. The constant change is a lot to loan forgiveness and repayment plans, which benefited and confused many people. The constant change is a lot to keep up with. Borrowers want to know where they stand, she says, so they can plan. I'm Samantha Fields for Marketplace. Even with the very best play-by-play calls in their ears, sports fans who are visually

impaired can't quite experience all the excitement of the game in question. Being able to see what's going on, where the ball is, what players are doing, is kind of part of the whole deal. So enter now the first tactile sports broadcast. Oregon Public Broadcasting's Crystal LaGaurie has that one. For 11-year-old Hank Vogel, watching a basketball game is a little bit different. I'm blind, but I don't just see blackness. Blindness does not mean blackness.

Hank has aniridia, which is a rare degenerative eye disease that caused him to be born without irises, the colored part of our eyes. It just means I can't see as well as other people. So I can see, it's just fuzzy. Hank reads large print text, uses a monocular to see in the distance, and a white cane to help him navigate

when walking. And when he attends a basketball game, there's a brand new technology he can use. It's from OneCourt, a Seattle tech company trying to make sports entertainment more accessible to folks with visual disabilities. Jared Mase is the founder. We've essentially developed a laptop-sized haptic display that's capable of communicating dynamic information, like sporting events, through touch. The technology uses real-time data that's already collected by the NBA,

using cameras installed high up in each arena that track the movements of every player on the court. So you can think of it like a normal screen, but instead of visual pixels, they're tactile. And you can feel the motion of the player or the ball moving around the court in real time. It's sort of like an oversized iPad with a rubber mat on top,

which has a raised outline of the court. The tech could be a game changer to help blind and low-vision sports fans get engaged. Patients with low vision, especially children, they tend to participate less in social activities and they tend to have lower quality of life scores. That's Alan Labrum, a low-vision optometrist at Oregon Health and Science University. I think it's awesome to find ways to improve accessibility to just having fun. One cord can be used for all kinds of sports since the mat can be swapped out for a different

game field. The Portland Trail Blazers were the first team in the NBA to make it available for fans. Consumers can't buy it on their own yet, but founder Jared Mase says that is the ultimate goal. We are well aware that accessibility concerns cost as well. So we are doing our best to keep the cost around the range of a cell phone or a gaming console. For now, blind or low vision fans at Blazor's home games can check out a device free of charge.

Just make sure you bring it back here to return and let us know how it works. Right, thank you. Enjoy! And that's just what 11-year-old Hank Vogel is here to do. Tonight, the Portland Trial Blazers are up against the Charlotte Hornets. Rip City makes the noise because this is our house. As the game gets underway, Hank tracks the movement of the players and the ball through vibrations on the rubberized court. And when they shoot... The team wins!

It said in my headphones, score, Blazers, three points. And it was really cool because I could feel it. This is a much different experience than Blazer Games Hank has been to before. It was just boring. I would just sit there and then I also felt like I was missing out on a lot because it would be like standing up and cheering and I'd be like, I really wish I knew what was going on. And now with this new tech, he does. In Portland, Oregon, I'm Crystal Liguori for Marketplace. This final note on the way out today comes to his courtesy of economist Martha Gimble, an occasional guest on this program.

She is now at the Budget Lab at Yale. They did a little math about the cuts that Elon Musk and his operatives are making to the Internal Revenue Service. If the IRS shrinks by half, the Budget Lab says, the government loses $350 billion in revenue over the standard 10-year budgeting window that we use as we manage this economy. And that is people just doing the standard work of collecting taxes. If those personnel cuts lead to a substantial increase in noncompliance — that's economist talk for people not paying what they owe — that lost revenue could go up by $2.4 trillion

over 10 years. Once again, and because it's important when you're talking about the government and savings, often those savings are not. John Buckley, John Gordon, Noya Cardiant, the Parker, Amanda Petra, and Stephanie Sieck are the Marketplace editing staff. Amir Bibawe is the managing editor. And I'm Kyle Rizdal. We will see you tomorrow, everybody. This is APM. Consumer confidence had its sharpest monthly decline since 2021, which means we're all in our fields about money. And while uncertainty is the only constant these days, it's also a great reason to get serious about understanding personal finance.

I'm Janelia Espinall, host of Financially Inclined, a podcast from Marketplace that makes learning about money simple. Learn about practical skills like negotiating job offers, dealing with money and friendship and love, entrepreneurship, and student loans. Get serious about your money and build a life you've always dreamed of. Listen to Financially Inclined wherever you get your podcasts.